Out conservative and Trump supporter Richard Grenell said this week in an interview that Donald Trump personally told him that he hopes to run for president again in 2024.
“He’s told me, personally, multiple times that he does want to run again, so we’ll see if that holds, and how that comes about,” the former ambassador to Germany and acting Director of National Intelligence (DNI) told conservative network Newsmax TV.
Related: Beverly Hills Trump supporter who shouted “fa***t” in viral video arrested for being at MAGA riots
Grenell tried to dispel rumors that Trump wants to form a new third party to run on.
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“I think we’ve got a long ways to go, but clearly, Donald Trump is a Republican and should run as a Republican,” Grenell said.
The Wall Street Journal reported in the lead up to Inauguration Day that the outgoing president was considering forming a new “Patriot Party” in an attempt to hold on to his base of supporters in the aftermath of the storming of the U.S. Capitol by pro-Trump rioters. However, there has already been a political group by that name.
The report alleges that Trump is angry that Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) and other party leaders have condemned his role in the insurrectionist attack on the Capitol.
Grenell, however, is convinced that the party is still under Trump’s spell, and talks of finding a new leader of the party are typical and purely speculative.
Grenell affirmed the anchor’s claim that the “reality” is that voters are “nearly unanimous in this transformation to a Trump, America-first, populist, nationalist” party.
“No, we should not start a ‘Patriot Party,’ we should work very hard on the Republican Party,” Grenell scoffed.
“I’ve been to every single Republican convention since 1992, and I don’t think we’ve ever had a situation where we don’t have this conversation of ‘Well, who’s the head of the [party].’”
“I think, actually, that conversation and that tension makes for a better party,” he claims, citing Mitt Romney’s loss to Barack Obama in the 2012 election as an example of such “tension” being positive in the party, and leading to Donald Trump’s election in keystone states.
“I’m not trying to dismiss the very real issues that the Republican Party has,” he adds, but he believes the party is in good hands with current Republican Party chairwoman Ronna McDaniel.
Grenell’s tenure as ambassador was rocked with repeated scandals and German officials reportedly “shunned” the gay Trump sycophant, describing him as “narcissistic” and calling for him to be fired.
Grenell’s appointment as acting DNI made him the first out gay man to hold a Cabinet-level position, though he faced financial misconduct allegations and was considered unqualified for the position by a Republican senator.
He was never officially nominated or confirmed by the Senate. That means if confirmed, Pete Buttigieg will be the first out person to officially serve in the Cabinet.
After serving as ambassador and DNI, Grenell became the LGBTQ outreach director for the Republican Party during Trump’s failed campaign, and spent months after the election assisting in Trump’s attempt to invalidate ballots across key states that he lost.
Now that he’s not doing that, he’s returned to regularly attacking the media on Twitter.
On Trump’s way out of office, he appointed Grenell to the Holocaust Memorial Council, a group that raises funds for the national museum commemorating the six million Jews slaughtered by the Nazis, as well as LGBTQ people, disabled people, and religious and ethnic minorities. This was despite his support of far-right, anti-immigrant, and anti-refugee political groups during his time as Trump’s ambassador to Germany.
