Mar-a-Lago With “USA! UNITED STATES! USA!” chants, hundreds of party guests welcomed their idol, Donald Trump. He is the first modern ex-president of the USA who wants to be president again. “In order for America to be great again, I hereby announce my candidacy for the 2024 presidency,” Trump cried late Tuesday night. “America’s comeback is starting right now,” he vowed in the ballroom at his golf club in Mar-a-Lago, in front of a wall of US flags. “Are you ready?” Trump shouted to cheers.
The formalities are already done. According to the broadcaster CNN, Trump’s team submitted the necessary applications to the Federal Election Commission (FEC) on Wednesday night. It’s official: Trump, who was defeated by Joe Biden after one term in office in 2020, wants to run for the US presidency for the third time in a row.
According to the Washington Post, Trump wants to present himself as an “anti-establishment politician” again. However, the situation today is different from 2016, when Trump broke new ground as a politician and attracted many protest voters. Trump-backed candidates lost in droves in last week’s congressional elections, eroding his party support.
Trump’s 2024 campaign is expected to have fewer staff and budgets, the newspaper continued. It will not be based in the capital Washington, but in Florida. The east coast state is not only Trump’s place of residence, but also home to his current biggest internal party competitor, Governor Ron De Santis.
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Trump’s eldest daughter Ivanka and son-in-law Jared Kushner played important roles in his first two campaigns. According to the Washington Post, they should not have an official position in the new campaign. Trump is also struggling with legal problems: he and his business relationships are under criminal investigation, and Congress is investigating Trump’s role in the storming of the Capitol on January 6, 2021.
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Trump’s speech gave a foretaste of the coming months
But such obstacles played no role in Trump’s announcement. The ex-president claimed he “kept all his promises,” ensuring a booming economy and secure borders. “In my day, entrepreneurs flocked to the country,” Trump enthused, thanks to Republican tax cuts and punitive tariffs on Chinese imports. In reality, Trump’s record is mixed. Although growth under Trump was good at first, towards the end of his term in office he let the corona pandemic get out of hand, resulting in a recession and record unemployment.
Trump’s speech at Mar-a-Lago gave a foretaste of what the US and its allies face in a potential duel with Joe Biden. Biden, who turns 80 on Sunday, has suggested he might run for the White House again. Trump had already called Biden “Sleepy Joe” in 2020, now he attacked the mental and physical condition of the president head-on: “We have a president who falls asleep at conferences. Who just mixes up the names of countries,” Trump sneered while the crowd at Mar-a-Lago giggled.
“With me,” Trump claimed, “there would have been no Ukraine war.” During his tenure, Trump bombed Syria. He had met with Vladimir Putin and North Korea’s dictator Kim Jong-Und, and threatened European partners with leaving NATO.
A second narrative already emerging is opposition to the US green energy transition. The “totally crazy, insane, radical left” gambled away the energy supply of the USA, Trump continued to scold. “They say that in a hundred, two hundred years the ocean water will rise. But hey, nuclear weapons are the much bigger threat and they don’t talk about it!” Trump said.
Trump promised that the Republicans’ poor performance in the midterms would not be repeated in 2024. “People are not yet feeling the pain that Biden is inflicting on them. But they will soon, very soon.”
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You can’t write Trump off
It is unclear whether Trump can once again unleash a similar force as in 2016. The cash flows of the ex-president, as could be observed in rows during the midterms, are no longer a guarantee of victory. Also, the fanatical views of many Trump candidates who spread conspiracy theories about rigged elections had apparently deterred.
In Arizona, for example, Kari Lake, who was supported by Trump, was defeated by Democrat Katie Hobbs. Lake has not yet accepted the election result. And the Republicans could probably have won the US Senate had Trump’s Senate nominees done better – the powerful chamber remains in Democratic hands.
Major conservative media celebrated Florida Governor DeSantis instead of Trump on election night. He is considered a promising candidate for the presidential candidacy. Hedge fund billionaire Ken Griffin recently told Politico that he doesn’t want to donate again to Trump, but to DeSantis.
DeSantis isn’t the only one who could take on Trump in the race for the White House. Ex-Vice President Mike Pence, former UN ambassador Nikki Haley, ex-Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Virginia governor Glenn Youngkin are preparing for a 2024 candidacy.
Trump has attacked several of them over the past few days via his social network Truth Social. The Republican field could be very large in the 2024 primary – possibly even larger than in 2016, when 17 candidates vied for the nomination.
But, as the past has taught us, one should not write off Trump. He is the only US president who went through impeachment twice – and survived it unscathed. It is not clear whether the Republicans will break away from Trump after six years, after all he has shaped and radicalized the party enormously.
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Trump is still the largest fundraiser, and he euphoric parts of the base. In the midterm election campaign, his rallies were packed. Trump has demographically reshaped the “Grand Old Party,” the GOP, to attract more working-class, black, and Latino voters to the Republicans.
Under him, Republicans have made a rapid shift to the right and are pursuing a new “America First” nationalism. However, since following Trump, Republicans have lost three straight elections: the 2018 midterms, the 2020 presidential election, and the 2022 midterms.
Trump continues to claim that the 2020 election was rigged and that Joe Biden lost. There is no evidence for this, more than 50 courts dismissed corresponding lawsuits. To this day, Trump continues to spread the lie about electoral fraud, and a whole movement in the country is rallying behind the conspiracy theory.
On Jan. 6, 2021, Trump had urged his supporters to “fight like hell” to prevent Congress from officially confirming Biden’s election victory. Thousands of Trump supporters then marched to the Capitol in Washington and stormed Congress. Four people died in the violence that day and more than a hundred police officers were injured. About two-thirds of Republican voters believe Biden’s 2020 victory was illegitimate, according to a Reuters poll.
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