Is Trump really attempting political comeback?

WASHINGTON — Donald Trump says he has begun a political comeback campaign, telling the Conservative Political Action Conference last Sunday in Orlando, Fla., he’s considering a third run for the presidency in 2024.

“We began it together four years ago, and it’s far from being over,” the one-term president told a gathering of his supporters. “Let there be no doubt, we will be victorious, and America will be stronger and greater than ever before.”

In his first major political speech since leaving the White House after failing to win a second term against President Joe Biden, Trump sounds like someone planning to make another bid for the presidency.

“We are not starting new parties,” Trump said. “We have the Republican Party. It is going to unite and be stronger than ever before.”

At the same time, Trump unleashed a fusillade of attacks on Biden, saying he has had “the most disastrous first month of any president in modern history,” attacking him for his weaknesses on border security and for repealing Trump’s executive orders on foreign and energy policies.

Trump also repeated his false claims about the 2020 election, which Biden won.

“My biggest honor today is going to be that, I think, we are going to be on the stage as, in my opinion, the real, the legitimate, and still the actual president of the United States,” Trump said.

In fact, Biden defeated Trump by 7 million votes nationally, and his victories in key swing states like Georgia and Arizona were instrumental in delivering a decisive majority of the electoral votes.

Moreover, Biden has also maintained far higher approval ratings than Trump in his first weeks in office, with 56 percent of Americans saying last month in a Gallup poll they approve of his presidency.

But Trump, looking for a rematch, was giving no quarter.

Once again Trump falsely told the packed crowd of supporters the Democrats had lost the White House, then added, “But who knows, I might even decide to beat them for a third time.”

Then he asked, “I wonder who that person would be? Who will it be? Who, who, who will that be, I wonder,” Trump said.

Trump spoke shortly after the release of a straw poll of CPAC attendees conducted by his pollster, Jim Mclaughlin. It reported 68 percent of attendees wanted Trump to run again, with 55 percent saying they would support Trump’s campaign in 2024.

In his Sunday speech, Trump also listed the names of House and Senate Republicans who had voted against him in his latest impeachment this year, all of whom elicited boos.

And at one point in his speech, Trump spent a good bit of time defending his record in fighting the pandemic and criticizing Biden for the slow 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 now,” Trump said.

Meantime, Trump has also made plans for a super PAC to raise campaign funds of unlimited size for his presidential campaign.

At the same time, he has begun to formalize a process for endorsing candidates in Republican primaries nationwide, with the goal of punishing Republicans who have sharply criticized him in the past, and supporting those who have stood by him.

This past Friday, Trump backed former White House aide Max Miller as a primary opponent to Rep. Anthony Gonzalez of Ohio, who was one of a group of 10 House Republicans to vote for Trump’s impeachment in January.

In Trump’s CPAC Sunday speech, he also targeted Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming, whom he called a “warmonger.”

But can Trump reignite his candidacy for the presidency? It seems unlikely at this juncture. He’s burned too many electoral bridges since his first term.

The voters will remember him for one thing: He dismissed the COVID-19 pandemic at the height of its virulence, insisting it would go away on its own.

It didn’t, and more than 520,000 Americans have died as a result of his failure to combat this dreaded disease.