Trump announces ’24 presidential run
PALM BEACH: Donald Trump pulled the trigger on a third White House run on Tuesday, setting the stage for a bruising Republican nomination battle after a poor midterm election showing by his hand-picked candidates weakened his grip on the party.
“America’s comeback starts right now,” the former president told hundreds of supporters gathered in an ornate American flag-draped ballroom at his palatial Mar-a-Lago residence in Florida.
“In order to make America great and glorious again, I am tonight announcing my candidacy for president of the United States,” said the 76-year-old, who filed his official 2024 paperwork with the US election authority moments earlier.
Trump’s unusually early entry into the White House race is being seen as an attempt to get the jump on other Republicans seeking to be the party flagbearer — and to stave off potential criminal charges.
PALM BEACH, FLORIDA: Donald Trump, who has mounted relentless attacks on the integrity of US voting since his 2020 election defeat, on Tuesday launched a bid to regain the presidency in 2024, aiming to pre-empt potential Republican rivals.
Seeking a potential rematch with Democratic President Joe Biden, Trump made his announcement at his Mar-aLago estate in Florida a week after midterm elections in which Republicans failed to win as many seats in Congress as they had hoped.
In a speech lasting little more than an hour, Trump spoke to hundreds of supporters in a ballroom decorated with chandeliers and lined with American flags.
“In order to make America great again, I am tonight announcing my candidacy for president of the United States,” Trump said to the phone-waving crowd, which included family members, donors and former staffers.
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 were the policy achievements of his own time in office.
“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 crimeridden “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 US 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 attempt by his supporters on January 6, 2021, to prevent Congress from certifying Biden’s victory.
President Biden says ‘Trump failed America’
President Joe Biden responded on Wednesday to Donald Trump’s announcement of another run for the White House by saying the Republican “failed” his country while in office.
“Donald Trump failed America,” Biden said in a tweet from Bali, where he was attending the last day of the G20 summit.
This accompanied a video compilation saying Trump presided over “rigging economy for rich”, “attacking health care”, “coddling extremists”, “attacking women’s rights”, and “inciting a violent mob” to try to overturn his 2020 election loss to Biden.
Later, while participating in a ceremonial mangrove planting with other G20 leaders, reporters asked Biden and French President Emmanuel Macron if they had reactions to the Trump announcement. The two looked at each other briefly before Biden said “not really,” while Macron remained silent.