President kicks off bid for re-election
President launches re-election bid with big rally in Orlando.
President Donald Trump officially began his campaign for re-election Tuesday night at a special presentation of his signature “Make America Great Again” rallies in Orlando. Those involved believe his outsider mantra of “Drain the Swamp” still resonates.
Four years ORLANDO, FLA. — after launching one of the most improbably successful runs for president in history, President Donald Trump officially kicked off its sequel on Tuesday, again offering himself as a political outsider but this time from — the Oval Office.
Trump, who launched his last campaign from Trump Tower, held a mega-rally in Orlando, hoping to replicate the dynamics that allowed him to capture the Republican Party and then the presidency in 2016 as an insurgent intent on disrupting the status quo. It’s a more awkward pitch to make now that he’s in the White House.
The president’s advisers said he aims to connect the dots between the promise of his disruptive first-time candidacy and his goals for another term in the White House. His promise to rock the ship of state is now more than an abstract pledge, though, complicated by his tumultuous 29 months at its helm.
Any president is inherently an insider. Trump has worked in the White House for two years, travels the skies in Air Force One and changes the course of history with the stroke of a pen or the post of a tweet.
“We’re taking on the failed political establishment and restoring government of, by and for the people,” Trump said in a video released by his campaign Monday.
That populist clarion was a central theme of his maiden political adventure, as the businessman-turned-candidate successfully appealed to disaffected voters who felt left behind by economic dislocation and demographic shifts. And he has no intention of abandoning it, even if he is the face of the institutions he looks to disrupt.
He underscored that on the eve of the rally in the must-win swing state of Florida, returning to the hardline immigration themes of his first campaign by tweeting that, next week, Immigration and Customs Enforcement “will begin the process of removing the millions of illegal aliens who have illicitly found their way into the United States.” That promise, which came with no details and sparked Democratic condemnation, seemed to offer a peek into a campaign that will largely be fought along the same lines as his first bid, with very few new policy proposals for a second term.
Early Democratic front-runner Joe Biden said Tuesday that Trump’s politics are “all about dividing us” in ways that are “dangerous — truly, truly dangerous.”
But those involved in the president’s reelection effort believe that his brash version of populism, combined with his mantra to “Drain the Swamp,” still resonates, despite his administration’s cozy ties with lobbyists and corporations and the Trump family’s apparent efforts to profit off the presidency.
Republicans working with the Trump campaign but not authorized to speak publicly about internal conversations said campaign advisers point to his clashes with the Washington establishment — including Congress, the so-called Deep State and members of his own party — as proof that he is still an outsider rather than a creature of the Beltway. Helping further that image, Trump advisers believe, is that his main Democratic foils are all career politicians: House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, former Vice President Joe Biden and, yes, Hillary Clinton.