Another controversy for Donald Trump that voters will struggle to shrug off

Another week in the world of Donald Trump, and another controversy. This time, the former president is reported to have “dined and conversed” with white nationalist Nick Fuentes at a Mar-a-Lago dinner.

In several posts on his Truth Social platform, Trump said that Kayne West, now known as Ye, had shown up to the dinner with three friends Trump said he “knew nothing about”. Trump added: “We had dinner on Tuesday evening with many members present on the back patio. The dinner was quick and uneventful”. In a statement about the meeting, the White House said: “Bigotry, hate, and antisemitism have absolutely no place in America – including at Mar-a-Lago”.

Over the weekend, two more of Trump’s endorsements of midterm election candidates were revealed to have come to nothing. Democratic representative Mary Peltola won her re-election bid against former Alaska governor and 2008 Republican vice-presidential nominee Sarah Palin for the state’s sole congressional seat, and incumbent Republican senator Lisa Murkowski – who voted to impeach Trump in his second impeachment trial, over the storming of the US Capitol in January 2021 – fended off a challenge from fellow Republican Kelly Tshibaka.

These events will probably only add to the sense that appears to be prevalent among a significant number of Americans that Trump’s decision to make another run for the presidency in 2024 is a bad idea. According to a Quinnipiac University national poll released at the beginning of the week, 57 per cent of Americans said it was a bad thing that Trump was running again, while just 34 per cent said it was a good thing.

When that number is broken down by party support, 88 per cent of Democrats would rather not see Trump run again – which is unsurprising. However, Trump’s team should be more concerned by the fact that 27 per cent of Republicans would rather not see the former president run again, and that when asked who they would prefer to win the 2024 GOP nomination for president, 44 per cent of Republicans picked Ron DeSantis, who has just been re-elected as Florida governor and is seen as a potential Trump rival for the presidential nomination. That percentage is equal to the percentage of Republicans who chose Trump.

Outside of the two parties, a majority – 58 per cent – of independent voters also think Trump shouldn’t run. Trump would likely need to win over some of those voters in order to get back into the White House. But reports like the one about the dinner at Mar-a-Lago are extremely damaging, however much the former president tries to shrug them off.