Trump announces 2024 US presidential bid
Former U.S President Donald Trump on Tuesday night announced his candidacy for the Republican presidential nomination in a bid to regain the presidency in 2024.
“In order to make America great again, I am tonight announcing my candidacy for president of the United States,” Trump said to hundreds of supporters in a ballroom decorated with chandeliers and lined with American flags.
Trump made his announcement at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida a week after midterm elections in which Republicans failed to win as many seats in Congress as they had hoped.
The announcement comes earlier than usual even in a country known for protracted presidential campaigns and signals his interest in discouraging other possible contenders such as Florida Governor Ron DeSantis or his own former vice president, Mike Pence, from making a bid for the Republican Party’s nomination.
Trump will seek his party’s nomination even as he faces trouble on several fronts, including a criminal investigation into his handling of government documents, a congressional subpoena related to his role in the Jan. 6, 2021, assault.
He has called the investigations politically motivated and has denied wrongdoing.
Trump steered clear of the name-calling that has marked other public appearances, opting instead for a critique of Biden’s presidency and a review of what Trump
said was the policy achievements of his own time in office.
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“Two years ago we were a great nation and soon we will be a great nation again,” he said.
Trump laid out familiar dark themes from his playbook, denouncing migrants – “We’re being poisoned” – and portraying American cities as crime-ridden “cesspools of blood.”
He said he would push for the death penalty for drug dealers and rehire members of the military who had been dismissed for refusing to get the COVID-19 vaccine.
Although he assailed the U.S. election process, Trump did not use his speech to revive his false claims of massive voter fraud in 2020 and did not mention the violent
an attempt by his supporters on Jan. 6, 2021, to prevent Congress from certifying Biden’s victory.
Biden, 79, said last week he intends to run for re-election and will likely make a final decision by early next year.
On a trip to Indonesia, Biden said “not really” when asked if he had a reaction to Trump’s announcement.
Trump, 76, is seeking to become only the second U.S. president in history to serve non-consecutive terms, after Grover Cleveland, whose second stint ended in 1897.
There is a long road ahead before the Republican nominee is formally selected in the summer of 2024, with the first state-level contests more than a year away.
Zainab Sa’id
