Donald Trump, a former president, declared Tuesday night that he will be running for president in 2024. He outlined an aggressively conservative platform that included the execution of drug traffickers.
Trump will be running for president for the third time, but this will be his first election campaign since his murderous attack on the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, which was motivated by his inability to accept the fact that he had lost the 2020 presidential election.
"Our country is in decline.” In a speech at his exclusive Florida club, Trump criticized President Joe Biden's performance during his first two years in office and declared that "for millions of Americans, we are a failing nation. I'll see to it that Joe Biden doesn't get four more years,"
Earlier on Tuesday night, Trump submitted documents to the Federal Election Commission in which he proclaimed himself a candidate for the office of president and set up a new campaign committee.
Trump declared, "this campaign will be about problems, vision, and success. We won't stop, we won't give up until we've accomplished the highest objectives and made our nation bigger than it has ever been."
Trump seldom brought up the 2020 presidential election or his two distinct impeachment trials, the first for using American foreign aid to pressure Ukraine into looking into the Biden family and the second for his part in the Jan. 6 Capitol bombing.
Instead of reflecting on his time in office, Trump painted a dystopian picture of America as a failing country plagued by violent crime during "a time of pain, hardship, anxiety, and despair" in his speech on Tuesday. This was in stark contrast to his 2016 campaign speeches.
Trump referred to the weaponization of the Justice Department and the FBI, which is currently looking into his handling of classified documents and his involvement in a massive effort to invalidate the results of the 2020 presidential election and prevent Congress from certifying Biden's victory, as the "gravest threat to our civilization."
He demanded that "the festering rot and corruption of Washington, D.C., be cleaned out from top to bottom."
Trump also stated that he will push for a broad new set of election limitations, including only paper ballots, a single day of voting, picture ID requirements, and "all votes counted by election night."
But states, not the federal government, oversee voting in the United States. Trump would not be able to alter the way that individual states conduct elections, even if he were elected president and received the support of a Republican Congress.
The Donald J. Trump for President 2024 campaign was officially launched by Trump's filing with the F.E.C., and the Republican presidential primary has undergone a significant change in the past week. Trump supported and funded a group of 2022 election deniers running for posts presiding over their states' elections in competitive states during the 2022 election cycle.
Before last Tuesday, polls consistently showed that Trump, 76, had a lead of more than 20 percentage points over his closest competitor, Florida Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis, in the race for his party's presidential nomination.
But that was before DeSantis' astounding 19-point victory, which energized Republicans all around the country and provided the party with a bright spot on a day when Democrats won the majority of the crucial Senate and governorship races.
DeSantis is now ahead of Trump in some of the early post-election polling by YouGov.
According to reports, the governor of Florida has already begun putting together his presidential campaign to take on Trump for the Republican nomination.
In his victory address for his re-election, DeSantis assured supporters, "I have merely begun to fight."
Any upcoming primary and general election contests will also consider Trump's escalating legal issues. Georgia is also looking into Trump's attempts to rig the state's 2020 election results.
Attorney General Merrick Garland will have to determine whether to appoint a special counsel to take over the daily supervision of the government investigations into Trump now that Trump is officially Biden's electoral rival in the 2024 election.
The White House is determined to dispel any notion that the investigation and probable prosecution of the president's main competitor are driven by politics or that they are intended to harm Trump's chances of winning the 2024 race.
President Joe Biden will probably be the opponent of the Republican primary winner. Although the president has not yet formally begun his reelection campaign, plans for one are said to have been more finalized recently.
Trump charged Biden with handling the economy poorly on Tuesday. "The Biden administration has ruined the American economy in under two years. In ruins," he declared.
Democrats would be thrilled with the idea of a protracted primary between Trump and DeSantis, in part because Democratic campaign strategists view DeSantis as a strong opponent.
The notion appeals to Biden as well. On Nov. 9, when a reporter questioned him about Trump and DeSantis, the president responded, "It'll be entertaining seeing them square off."
The Washington Post reported this week that President Donald Trump intends to create a campaign organization that is less like the vast enterprise that his failed 2020 reelection bid developed into and more like the small group of devoted aides who managed his successful 2016 campaign.
Trump enters the race with more than $60 million in cash, which is kept by his leadership PAC, Save America. He also has a massive fundraising organization that collects small donations at an unparalleled rate.
Trump is unable to directly fund his campaign for president using the funds from the leadership PAC, according to Federal Election Commission regulations.
However, in the middle of October, Trump shifted $20 million from the leadership PAC to Make America Great Again Inc., a brand-new Super PAC. The MAGA Inc. funds, according to Trump's campaign at the time, would be used to support midterm candidates rather than the president.
However, campaign finance watchdogs expressed concern that the majority of the funds might ultimately make their way from MAGA Inc. to Trump's presidential campaign, effectively breaking the rules that forbade Save America, but not MAGA Inc., from contributing to Trump's campaign.
