Former President Donald Trump has all but removed one key word from his vocabulary: Republican.

He did not say so when he met with supporters, including a defendant on January 6, at the Red Arrow Diner in Manchester, New Hampshire, late last month.

During remarks to a packed ballroom at the DoubleTree Hotel earlier that day, he said so only while praising the work of some Republican governors during the covid-19 pandemic.

Since the election campaign began in early March, according to an NBC review of Trump’s speeches, interviews, video posts and face-to-face interactions with voters, the frontrunner for the 2024 Republican Party nomination has used the name of the party seeks to moderately represent and generally discredit other party luminaries.

Fox News and [Senate GOP leader] Mitch McConnell and the Republican donors have basically signed a pledge to stop Trump at any chance. So why should you promote the Republican Party? Steve Bannon, host of the «War Room» podcast and executive director of Trump’s 2016 campaign, told NBC News. “He shouldn’t be loyal to the Republican Party. They have not been loyal to him, they have scheduled 10 primary debates to hurt him ”.

In essence, according to advisers and allies, Trump is returning to the anti-establishment themes of his successful 2016 presidential bid that rallied voters to end totem poles, orthodoxies and bipartisan favorites.

“Yes, there is still the Republican primary, but some of the strategies and tactics regarding how we engage Joe Biden will be seen a lot more in 2016 than in 2020,” said Jason Miller, a senior Trump campaign adviser who worked on both. . previous offers from the former president.

Trump’s aides say the scant attention he is giving to the Republican label reflects the view that he is the leader of a movement that is broader than a single party.

«It’s an acknowledgment that it’s not just about R versus D, it’s about the current state of the country and who, on day one, is going to fix it,» said another Trump campaign adviser who requested anonymity to discuss internal strategy. . «Whether it’s ‘one party’ or ‘deep state’ or world government, there’s definitely an acknowledgment among the general electorate that there’s an ‘us versus them’ component to all of this.»

During his presidency, Trump moved closer to the Republican Party establishment as he began to take control of it. He hired Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus as his first White House chief of staff and installed Ronna McDaniel, who still holds the position, as Priebus’s successor on the party committee. In 2020 he starred in part of the Republican convention from the White House.

Trump at the time praised the “Republican Party, the party of Abraham Lincolnand said that «we go forward united, determined.»

Trump’s shift from acting as the party’s standard-bearer comes after a year in which he participated in countless Republican primary contests, promoting some candidates who aligned with the Republican establishment and others who did not. He was able to knock out many of his loudest Republican critics, including then-Representatives. Liz Cheney, Republican of Wyoming and Tom Rice, RS.C.

But there seems to be a recognition in Trump’s approach now that he cannot win the general election without expanding his reach beyond the overlapping circles of the Venn diagram of his current base and the Republican electorate. He lost in both the Electoral College and the popular vote in 2020, after winning the former, and the White House, in the more anti-establishment and less Republican 2016 campaign.

“There is a recognition and understanding from our point of view that ‘they’ are going to mean different things to different people,” the adviser said. “There are conservatives who are concerned about the administrative state or what children are being taught in schools. There are people who are concerned about the politicization of the justice system or that the military has been revealed. … All of these things to different people mean different things, so being able to put all of that in the ‘they’ column provides a broader breadth.»

We’re the favourites, dammit, and we act like it.

— A Trump campaign adviser

When Trump talks about the Republican Party, it’s often to criticize his rivals, the Republican establishment, or both. At a rally in Waco, Texas, in March, Trump took a moment to praise House Republican allies, including Reps. Jim Jordan of Ohio and James Comer of Kentucky, by name and party. But he also took aim at Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, an as-yet-unannounced candidate for the 2024 Republican nomination, who ranks second behind him in polls of Republican voters.

“I will protect, unlike DeSanctus, Social Security and Medicare for our great seniors, defending them from both the radical left and the Paul Ryan Republican establishment,” Trump said, referring to DeSantis by a nickname and Ryan, the former president of the Camera. from wisconsin

The former president’s early distancing from the Republican establishment is also a sign of his desire to gloss over internal primary battles and focus solely on Biden.

«We’re the favorites, damn it, and we’re acting like it,» the campaign adviser said. “We are doing what we have to do, and that is to beat Joe Biden.”

National polls at this early stage in the race show Trump and Biden running neck and neck, generally within the statistical margin of error. While Trump’s standing in the GOP primary polls has encouraged him to pursue primarily a general election strategy, that could change if he begins to feel the pressure from DeSantis or another challenger.

On Wednesday, Trump campaign co-chairs Susie Wiles and Chris LaCivita, posted a note to «interested parties» who criticized DeSantis for losing ground in the polls, while his super PAC, Never Back Down, has spent millions of dollars on national and state television ads early in the primaries.

At the end of March, Trump led DeSantis 46% to 30% in the RealClearPolitics average of Republican primary polls. On Monday, the gap had increased to 52% for Trump and 23% for DeSantis.

Trump’s team «will not stop watching the ball of winning the nomination,» the adviser said, adding that they will «continue to rush the passer» when it comes to DeSantis and other rivals.

The DeSantis-aligned super PAC spokesman Never Back Down picked up that ball and ran with it.

“It’s nice to see the Trump team recognize that the person who can win the game and the general election is Ron DeSantis, their admitted quarterback,” Erin Perrine said.

At the same time that he is distancing himself from the Republican Party, Trump is reaching out to a broader set of audiences. He’s scheduled to speak at a CNN town hall next week in New Hampshire, with attendees hinting there may be more efforts on his part to reach voters who aren’t already aligned with him.

One sign of Trump’s commitment to running against the bipartisan establishment, despite his status as the last GOP chairman, is his refusal to pledge his support for the eventual nominee if he loses the primary.

«There are probably people that I wouldn’t be very happy to endorse who are running, so we’ll see,» Trump said when asked about a proposal by the Republican National Committee to require candidates to sign a loyalty pledge to be able to participate in discussions. .

The RNC debate committee, headed by former Trump adviser David Bossie, announced plans for its first televised showdown of the candidates, a debate in Milwaukee in August, without obtaining Trump’s consent to participate.

He is considering skipping that debate and the next one, people aware of his thinking told NBC News.

The spat between his team and the RNC over the first debate may portend a more contentious relationship as he recasts himself as an outsider.

Charlie Kirk, co-founder of Turning Point USA and a Trump supporter, is one of several conservatives promoting the quixotic hopes of the Democratic nomination of Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a liberal vaccine critic, as part of a broader argument about politics. . realignment outside of the two-party system.

“I think a new coalition is being built, not a right-versus-left coalition, but a bottom-up one against the ruling oligarchy regime,” Kirk said on his right-wing radio show Monday. «When Robert F. Kennedy Jr. received standing ovations and incumbent Republican senators were booed at a right-wing conservative event, it’s an exciting time to be alive.»

Trump once proved he could win as a candidate who criticized both parties and their dominance in Washington. Instead of the last war, he may intend to fight a central battle of the 2016 election.

“He is there to defeat the administrative state and the one-party system, which is its political appendage,” Bannon said. «You’re looking at a throwback to the original Trump.»