Technically the 14th amendment doesn’t require him to be found guilty at trial, although it would be a much stronger argument if he was. That argument also hasn’t been discarded, it’s still being argued in court right now. This was just an attempt to use an alternative approach to accomplish the same thing.

Ultimately with the way things are going it’s looking increasingly likely Trump won’t make it to the general election. He’s either going to fail to secure the primary, going to lose an insurrection case and become ineligible under the 14th amendment, or lose one of his many other criminal cases and wind up in jail. It’s always possible he could campaign from a jail cell, but his already shaky chances of winning in that case go down drastically.

His strategy right now is around delaying tactics because he’s frantically trying to prevent any of his court cases from wrapping up before the general election in the hope that he wins and can effectively become immune from criminal prosecution. The biggest danger to him right now though is actually his own party. On the one hand they know what kind of monster he is and would rather he just disappeared. On the other hand they’re absolutely terrified of his fanatic cult members and know that Trump could easily turn them on anyone who too obviously moves against him. If they can find a way to bury Trump that can’t be tied back to them they’ll absolutely jump at that chance, all while decrying how terrible the situation is, and how unfortunate it is this happened to Trump.