Former U.S. president Donald Trump announced on Tuesday he will run for the 2024 Republican nomination for president.
In a speech from his Mar-a-Lago home in Florida, Trump revealed he would seek to return to the White House, four years after his presidential election defeat to Joe Biden in 2020.
“In order to make America great and glorious again. I am tonight announcing my candidacy for president of the United States,” Trump told a crowd of supporters at the beach resort.
“But just as I promised in 2016, I am your voice. I am your voice. The Washington establishment wants to silence us, but we will not let them do that. What we have built together over the past six years is the greatest movement in history because it is not about politics. It’s about our love for this great country, America, and we’re not going to let it fail,” said Trump.
“I am running because I believe the world has not yet seen the true glory of what this nation can be. We have not reached that pinnacle, believe it or not.
“In fact, we can go very far. We’re going to have to go far first. We have to get out of this ditch. And once we’re out, you’ll see things that nobody imagined for any country. It’s called the United States of America. And it’s an incredible place,” he added.
Trump announced his candidacy one week after the Republican Party’s underwhelming midterm election results, which commentators described as more of a “red ripple” than the predicted red wave.
Senate candidates in key states endorsed by Trump were defeated in Pennsylvania and Arizona as the Democrats retained control of the upper chamber, while Trump-backed Herschel Walker was taken to a run-off in Georgia, fueling calls for Trump to step aside for a new generation of Republican candidates, such as Governor of Florida Ron DeSantis.
Conversely, critics of such a theory point out Trump’s continuing appeal with blue-collar White voters, who have become the core of the Republican Party. Regarding the midterms, Trump has been banned from every major social media platform, has no official leadership role in the Republican Party, and the GOP in many instances refused to back his candidates with enough funding, such as Blake Masters in Arizona. Trump has also pointed out that he received 1 million more votes than DeSantis in Florida, albeit during a presidential election year. The vast majority of Trump-backed candidates also won their bids.
Trump remains a slight favorite with the bookmakers to win his party’s endorsement for the Oval Office and will hope that his track record and considerable successes as president, particularly regarding the economy and labor market, will outweigh his 2020 electoral defeat to Joe Biden.
