Former President Donald Trump is on his way to becoming a “four-time loser,” New Hampshire’s Republican governor argued on Sunday.
Chris Sununu told Meet the Press that Trump had blown winnable elections and badly hurt Republicans in 2018, 2020, and 2022, while arguing that Trump is more vulnerable in the GOP primary than it currently seems—and warning that he could hurt the GOP in 2024.
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“Republicans want someone who can win in November of ‘24. Donald Trump is a loser. He has not just lost once, he lost us our House seats in 2018, he lost everything in ‘20. We should have 54 U.S. Senators right now. We don’t because of his message,” Sununu said. “So Donald Trump is positioning himself to be a four-time loser in 2024. We need candidates that can win.”
The New Hampshire governor has for months insisted that the Republican Party is ready to move on and won’t nominate Trump again—he declared unequivocally in February that Trump “was not going to be the nominee.”
He was less certain this time, hedging because of Trump’s clear surge in GOP primary polls over the last two months following his arrest and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ recent struggles on the national stage. Trump has recently polled above 50 percent in most national Republican primary polls, nearly doubling DeSantis’ support in most of those surveys, with no other Republican cracking double-digits in those polls.
But Sununu made it clear that he still thinks Trump will be a disaster if he’s the party’s standard-bearer in the next election.
Polls bear this out: While President Biden’s poll numbers are in bad shape, recent surveys show him beating Trump nationally and in key swing states, even as he trails DeSantis.
And the 2022 election showed how much of a drag Trump’s conspiratorial election denialism is in general elections: His preferred House candidates ran about 5 percentage points behind other Republicans in the midterm elections, and his Senate endorsements boosted a bevy of flawed candidates who went on to lose otherwise-winnable races, leaving Democrats in control of the Senate.
Sununu is still publicly toying with a 2024 run himself. He currently barely registers in the polls, but he’s fairly popular in his own home state—which just so happens to be second on the Republican primary calendar.
