Synopsis: Donald Trump, the twice-impeached ex-president of US, makes an election announcement despite a shaky midterm election and a surge from rival Ron DeSantis.
Donald Trump announces 2024 run
Donald Trump announced his candidacy for the Republican presidential nomination in 2024 on Tuesday night, likely igniting another period of turmoil in US politics, particularly within his own political party.
“I am tonight announcing my candidacy for president of the United States in order to make America great and glorious again,” Trump said from the ballroom of his private Mar-a-Lago Club in Palm Beach, Florida, where he stood on a stage surrounded by American flags and Make America Great Again banners.
He declared, pledging to defeat Joe Biden in 2024, that “America’s golden age is just ahead.”
The long-awaited announcement by a twice-impeached president who instigated a deadly attack on Congress appears certain to widen a chasm that has fueled fears of increased political violence.
But it also comes as Trump’s standing in the Republican party has suddenly been put into question. Trump spoke at Mar-a-Lago a week after midterm elections in which his Republican party did not make expected gains, losing the Senate and seeming on course for only a narrow majority in the US House.
Donald Trump credited Republicans’ performance victory in the House in his remarks, despite the fact that they are poised to capture a far narrower majority than expected. “Nancy Pelosi was fired. “Isn’t that lovely?” he asked. The Associated Press has yet to predict which party will win a majority.
In a party previously dominated by Trump, defeats suffered by high-profile, Trump-endorsed candidates prompted open attacks on the former president and calls to delay or cancel his announcement. As Trump’s standing has dipped, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has surged into strong contention after winning re-election last week.
Donald Trump’s announcement also coincided with the publication of Mike Pence’s memoir, So Help Me God, in which the former president’s once-faithful lieutenant criticises him for his behaviour on January 6. Despite falling out of favour with the Maga base, the former vice-president is also considering a run in 2024.
Trump insisted that despite Republican setbacks in 2022 and his defeat in 2020, he was the only candidate who could deliver a Republican victory in 2024.
His third Republican candidacy comes as he faces mounting legal problems, including Justice Department investigations into the removal of hundreds of classified documents from the White House to his Florida estate and his role in the 6 January attack. Trump has denied any wrongdoing and has used the attacks to reinforce his narrative that he is being unfairly targeted by his political opponents and a shadowy “deep state” bureaucracy.
Nonetheless, Trump continued his campaign on Tuesday.
Donald Trump painted a bleak picture of America, with “blood-soaked” city streets and an “invasion” at the southern border, and declared his campaign a “quest to save our country.”
Trump accused Biden’s successor of inflicting “pain, hardship, anxiety, and despair” with his economic and domestic policies in the less than two years since Biden took office, a period Trump referred to as “the pause.”
Donald Trump proposed an alternative vision, dubbed the “national greatness agenda.”
Despite promising remarks as “elegant” as the gold-plated room in which he was standing, Trump’s rambling, hour-long speech devolved into name-calling and ridicule, blasting “fake news,” mocking former German chancellor Angela Merkel’s accent, and accusing Biden of “falling asleep” at international conferences. At one point, he appeared to mix up the civil war and the subsequent reconstruction period, and he mocked climate science.
Without admitting defeat in 2020, Donald Trump insisted that defeating Biden in 2024 would be much easier because “everybody sees what a bad job has been done.”
Donald Trump, now 76, has long been regarded as a colourful if divisive presence in American life, a thrice-married New York real-estate mogul, reality TV star, and tabloid fixture who flirted with politics but never committed.
But, in 2015, after carving out a niche as a prominent voice of rightwing opposition to Barack Obama – and promoting a racist conspiracy theory about Obama’s birth – Trump entered the race for the Republican nomination to succeed the 44th president.
He obliterated a massive Republican field, then pulled off a historic upset by defeating the Democratic nominee, Hillary Clinton, in the 2016 election, proving impervious to scandal, whether over personal conduct, allegations of sexual assault, or persistent courting of the far right.
If Donald Trump, like so many other challengers, dismisses DeSantis and wins the nomination and then the presidency, the 22nd amendment to the United States Constitution bars him from running again in 2028. However, a rematch in 2024 is still possible. Despite the fact that Biden will soon turn 80 and has faced questions about whether he should run for re-election, he is planning a re-election campaign.
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