Donald Trump is hoping to revive his outside status that brought him success in the 2016 election as he bids to return to the White House in 2024.
The former President's position as the most likely person to secure the candidacy in the Republican primary came under threat after a lacklustre display in this year's midterm elections.
Many Republicans now see Trump as a liability and those views have only got stronger following his controversial dinner with a Holocaust-denying white nationalist and Kanye West, now legally known as Ye, whose anti-semitic views have seen his lucrative deal with Adidas get terminated.
It underscores the dangers of his limited campaign operation and leaves the former president subject to stinging criticism from fellow Republicans who feel the party needs a new approach.
Accepting the backlash and an effort to prevent a repeat, Trump's campaign is putting new protocols in place to ensure that those who meet with him are approved and fully vetted, according to people familiar with the plans who requested anonymity to share internal strategy.
The changes will include expediting a system, borrowed from Trump's White House, in which a senior campaign official will be present with him at all times.
Trump has repeatedly said he did not know until after the fact that he had had dinner with Nick Fuentes, the far-right activist who has used his online platform to spew anti-semitic and white nationalist rhetoric. Fuentes arrived by car with Ye, the rapper formerly known as Kanye West, and was waved into the club by security, even though only Ye had been on the security list, according to one of the people present and others briefed on the events.
Some aides had advised Trump against meeting with Ye, who has made his own anti-semitic comments. But the two have a longstanding relationship and Trump rebuffed the advice. They were supposed to meet one-on-one in the club's library, but Trump, eager to show off his celebrity guest to his star-struck paying club members, decided to divert the group to the club's main patio dining area where Fuentes joined the dinner at Ye's invitation.
Now as Trump prepares for his third campaign for the White House, many Republican strategists and officials believe it is the right time for new leadership for a chance of winning future elections.
"Republicans, we're looking to 2024 and we're looking for a winner," said New Hampshire Goernor Chris Sununu, who described Trump's dinner as "absolutely reprehensible" and called the ideas of white nationalism or anti-semitism as "the antithesis of what we stand for as Americans".
In 2016, Trump's brash and controversial approach to politics seemed to appeal to voters as he regularly caused outrage with inflammatory comments which would keep him on news channels across the globe.
But eight years later he is no longer the businessman-turned-politician, he has joined an elite group as a former president and those antics are not as easily tolerated as officials and voters have already grown tired of constant drama.
South Dakota Senator John Thune told reporters on Capitol Hill on Tuesday: "If you have people who are constantly creating distractions and taking you off message and forcing people to answer questions like the ones that you're asking, that's not a good thing."
Thune's comments have been supported by a recent poll by Quinnipiac University, which showed that 57% of Americans think Trump running for election is a bad thing, while just 34% believe it is a good thing.
Unsurprisingly, much of this trend is made up of Democratic voters, a remarkable 88% of whom think Trump running again would be bad.
