Trump considering third run
Former President declares possibility of 2024 campaign
Former president Donald Trump declared Sunday that he is considering a presidential run in 2024, has ruled out forming a political party and will devote himself to building up Republican efforts to take on Democrats and others he claimed have targeted his movement.
The address before an ebullient crowd at the Conservative Political Action Conference marked Trump’s first political speech since leaving the White House. It was staged as a public declaration of Trump’s intention to play a dominant political role in controlling the GOP through the 2022 elections and, potentially, set himself up for a third campaign for
the White House.
“We began it together four years ago, and it is far from being over,” Trump said of the political journey launched by his 2016 campaign. “Let there be no doubt we will be victorious and America will be stronger and greater than ever before.”
Trump’s speech came as he has been putting the finishing touches on a new political structure that he intends to use to solidify his dominance over the GOP.
“We are not starting new parties,” he said. “We have the Republican Party. It is going to unite and be stronger than ever before.”
Trump also launched an expected attack on President Joe Biden, echoing many of the themes of his winning 2016 presidential campaign and its losing sequel in 2020. He alleged that Biden had “the most disastrous first month of any president in modern history,” before attacking the president for his position on border security policy, his erasure of Trump executive orders and his energy policies.
He predicted withering Democratic losses in the 2022 midterms and a Democratic loss of the White House four years from now, prompting a standing ovation and chants of “USA!” and “Four more years!” He again repeated the false claims about the outcome of the 2020 presidential election, which Democrats won.
“Actually, as you know, they just lost the White House,” he said, falsely, of the Democratic Party. “But who knows, I might even decide to beat them for a third time.”
Later, after predicting a “triumphant” return of a Republican president in four years, he added, “I wonder who that will be. Who, who, who will that be, I wonder.”
Trump took the stage immediately after the release of a 2024 presidential straw poll of conference attendees, conducted by Trump campaign pollster Jim Mclaughlin. The poll found that 68 percent of attendees wanted Trump to run again, and that 55 percent supported Trump’s election in 2024, if he ran, with 21 percent supporting Florida Gov. Ron Desantis. No other contender hit double digits.
Without Trump as an option, Desantis led the field with 43 percent, followed by South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem with 11 percent. Former vice president Mike Pence was at 1 percent in the poll with Trump removed.
The poll also found 95 percent of attendees wanting the GOP to stick with Trump’s policies, and 97 percent approving of his performance in office. “The Make American Great Again movement is the base of our movement,” Mclaughlin said before Trump took the stage.
Trump has made plans to start a new super PAC, which he will be able to raise donations of unlimited size from corporations and individuals while exploring the possibility of drafting an “America First” agenda, which fellow Republicans could sign on to in a show of fealty to his leadership.
He is also moving quickly to formalize a process for endorsing candidates in Republican primaries, with a goal of punishing those Republicans who have criticized him in recent months. On Friday, he formally backed a former White House aide, Max Miller, Friday as a primary opponent to Rep. Anthony Gonzalez, R-ohio, who was one of 10 Republicans to vote for Trump’s impeachment in January. A Trump adviser also has said he is preparing to endorse former Ohio party chair and Trump loyalist Jane Timken to replace retiring Sen. Rob Portman, Rohio.
In his Sunday speech, Trump listed the names of Republicans in the House and Senate who had voted against him in the latest impeachment earlier this year, eliciting boos for each but special venom for Rep. Liz Cheney, R-WY., whom he called a “warmonger.” As he has before, Trump also took credit for the victory of Senate Minority Leader Mitch Mcconnell, R-KY., who has become a critic of Trump after the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol by Trump supporters.
“The only division is between the Washington, D.C., political hacks and everybody else,” he said of the fights he plans to pick within his party. “We want Republican leaders who are loyal to the voters.”
He spent significant time defending his record in fighting the coronavirus pandemic, claiming to have “handed the new administration what everyone is now calling a modern-day medical miracle,” with a variety of effective vaccines. He also criticized Biden for the pace of reopening the schools.
“On behalf of the moms, dads and children of America, I call on Joe Biden to get the schools open and get the schools open now,” he said.
Hanging over the event was an ongoing dispute within the Republican Party and conservative movement over the legitimacy of the 2020 election, which Trump lost but continues to falsely say was stolen from him. Months of such baseless assertions led to a Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol by Trump supporters who sought to prevent legislators from certifying the election results.
In private conversations, Trump has recently backed away from his unsubstantiated claims that voting machine hacking or election supervisor duplicity had been responsible for his loss, according to people who have spoken with him. But he has continued to claim that he was the rightful winner of the election, including on Sunday.
“We must pass comprehensive election reforms, and we must do it now,” he said Sunday, before laying out a long list of changes he deemed necessary, including increased citizenship checks for voters, more voter ID requirements, restrictions on absentee voting, additional ballot chain-ofcustody rules and a single day for voting, among others.