Donald Trump, who attempted to undermine Biden’s rightful election, has launched a candidacy for the presidency in 2024.
Donald Trump, who attempted to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election and incited a violent riot at the Capitol in a desperate attempt to retain power, has announced his intention to run for president again in 2024.
“I’m announcing my candidacy for President of the United States,” Trump, 76, announced at his Mar-a-Lago club and home in Palm Beach, flanked by enormous American flags.
The statement — and official declaration — comes just a week following the 2022 midterm elections, which saw Trump-backed Republican candidates perform poorly in important Senate seats and competitive House battles. As a consequence, Democrats retained control of the Senate.
“America’s comeback begins right now,” Trump declared, saying that “your country is being crushed right in front of your eyes.”
The bleak vision recalled Trump’s inauguration speech, in which he described a country suffering from “American carnage” and pleading with him to repair it.
Trump’s candidacy sets up a potential rematch with President Joe Biden, who turns 80 on Sunday and has stated his intention to compete for reelection in 2024.
According to exit polls, the #1 issue for midterm election voters nationwide was inflation. They stated they trusted Republicans far more than Democrats on the topic. In addition, the electorate was nearly three-quarters white, reversing a decades-long pattern of white voters declining as a share of the midterm electorate.
Nonetheless, Republicans underperformed — and fingers are being directed at Trump, even from within his own party.
Anger over the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, which legalized abortion in the United States, boosted Democrats in these races. Voters also conveyed a statement that they didn’t want extremes, rejecting Trump candidates across the board who peddled his bogus election claims.
Republicans were defeated in competitive Senate battles in red states such as Pennsylvania, New Hampshire, Arizona, and Nevada. Democrats could increase their advantage even further in a runoff election in Georgia three weeks from now, against another another Trump supporter who has battled terribly.
Republicans are on the verge of taking control of the House, but with a much smaller majority than they had hoped for, which will likely limit their ability to pass legislation next year.
Trump backed candidates in 21 of the 64 House races ranked as toss-ups or leaning toward one party or the other by the Cook Political Report. Only seven people have won. It was considerably worse for Trump candidates in high-stakes races. Trump supported nine candidates in the three dozen close races. Only one has triumphed. Despite the fact that his brand and style of politics have proven poisonous in competitive states and districts for numerous election cycles in a row, Trump is announcing another run for president and falsely claiming his candidates did well.
Trump’s approach demonstrates vulnerability – an attempt to shut down the Republican presidential field and push Republican elected officials to come out of the woodwork and embrace him.
He also doesn’t want to give any potential challengers, particularly Florida Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis, any oxygen.
In his hour-long speech, the former president referred to his administration’s accomplishments as a “golden period,” claiming that “our country was on course for a magnificent future, because I made big commitments to the American people — and unlike past presidents, I kept my promises.”
In contrast, Trump stated, “The past two years under Joe Biden have been a time of agony, struggle, concern, and despair for millions of Americans.”
“We will be assaulted,” Trump said of his reelection campaign. “We will be vilified. We will be persecuted in the same way that I have been… but we will not be intimidated. We shall continue… and prevail in the end. Our country shall triumph.”
Trump, who lost his reelection bid in 2020 but did not concede and has continued to spread false claims that the 2020 election was “rigged” and “stolen,” has repeatedly hinted at another run for the White House over the last year and told a rally crowd last week that a “big announcement” was on the way.
Trump’s third presidential run comes at an unparalleled juncture in American history, with a former one-term president who never conceded his electoral loss entering a bid for re-election as the frontrunner for his party’s nomination.
Trump’s election deceptions culminated on Jan. 6, 2021, with a violent attack on the United States Capitol carried out by pro-Trump fans, for which almost 1,000 people have since been indicted criminally. The former president has frequently minimized the incident and offered to pardon those charged in the attack if he is re-elected.
The Jan. 6 probe, the investigation into Trump’s handling of materials seized at Mar-a-Lago, and an investigation into his fledgling social network company, Truth Social, are all ongoing federal investigations.
According to some advisers, the former president feels that declaring his candidacy will protect him from the investigations; nevertheless, many legal experts believe that a run will not result in any special safeguards for the previous president.
Furthermore, Trump’s eponymous family real estate business, The Trump Organization, is now on trial in New York for tax evasion and fraud – allegations that would continue unaffected if he were re-elected president. The corporation has denied any wrongdoing.
Trump, who was impeached twice during his four years in office but was never convicted, retains a firm grip on his Republican base. According to an earlier this year ABC News/Washington Post survey, six in ten Republicans support the former president as their party’s leader.
Trump’s Super PAC invested millions into crucial races in the run-up to the 2022 midterm elections, and the former president wielded political clout by sponsoring hand-picked candidates for major congressional districts, including Senate hopefuls Mehmet Oz in Pennsylvania and Herschel Walker in Georgia. In the final weeks of the campaign, the former president increased his already hectic rally schedule, performing three events during the weekend preceding up to Election Day.
However, after at least 30 of Trump’s favored candidates, including Oz, lost their races, some have began to question Trump’s capacity to win elections for the party in the future.
Trump has already targeted certain potential presidential primary opponents, including potential 2024 foe Ron DeSantis, who was re-elected governor of Florida on Tuesday. Trump blasted DeSantis as a “average” governor in a statement issued last week, claiming that DeSantis was “politically dead” until Trump endorsed him in 2018 and lamenting DeSantis’ failure to indicate if he will run for president in 2024.
“Well, in terms of loyalty and class, that’s really not the correct answer,” Trump added, mocking Florida Gov. Ron DeSanctimonious.
According to sources close to Trump, Trump has turned against DeSantis as the Florida governor’s political star has grown and several in the party have voiced a preference for DeSantis to run for president instead of him.
