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Former President Donald Trump speaks at the Mar-a-Lago Club in Florida on Nov. 15, 2022. |
In a last-ditch effort to maintain his hold on power, Donald Trump attempted to annul the results of the 2020 presidential election and incited a violent riot at the Capitol. Now, he has declared his candidacy for president in 2024.
At his Mar-a-Lago club and residence in Palm Beach, Florida, Trump, 76, declared, "I am announcing my candidacy for president of the United States." He was surrounded by enormous American flags.
The news and official filing come only one week after the 2022 midterm elections, which witnessed underwhelming results for Republican candidates supported by President Trump in crucial Senate seats and tight House races. Democrats were able to keep control of the Senate as a result.
Trump declared that "America's comeback" will begin immediately and that "your country is being destroyed before your eyes."
The gloomy image brought to mind Trump's inauguration speech, in which he claimed that the country was experiencing "American carnage" and needed his help to cure it.
Trump's decision to run opens up the possibility of a rematch with President Joe Biden, who will turn 80 on Sunday and has declared his intention to seek reelection in 2024.
Inflation was the top concern among all voters in the midterm elections, according to exit polls. By a significant majority, they said they trusted Republicans on the matter more than they did Democrats. Also reversing a decades-long pattern of declining white voter participation in midterm elections, the electorate was over three-quarters white.
However, Republicans came up short, and Trump is being blamed for this even by members of his own party.
Democrats fared well in these elections thanks to outrage about the Supreme Court's decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, which made abortion legal in this country. However, voters also made it clear that they did not want extremes by rejecting all of the Trump candidates, who ran on his bogus election claims.
In tight Senate contests in purple states including Pennsylvania, New Hampshire, Arizona, and Nevada, Republicans were defeated. In a runoff election in Georgia, which will take place in three weeks, another Trump supporter who has struggled mightily could help Democrats increase their margin of victory.
Republicans are on the verge of taking control of the House, but with a much smaller majority than they had hoped, which will probably make it harder for them to pass legislation in the coming year.
Trump received support from voters in 21 of the 64 House races that the Cook Political Report designated as toss-ups or leaning one way or the other. Only seven have succeeded. In the closest races, it was even worse for Trump's candidates. Trump supported nine candidates in the thirty-two close contests. There has only been one victor.
And yet, despite the fact that his brand and his political approach have been shown to be radioactive in competitive states and districts over several election cycles in a succession, Trump is making yet another bid for the presidency and falsely claiming that his candidates fared well.
Trump's action reveals some vulnerability as it aims to lock out the other Republican presidential candidates and push them to come out in support of him.
Additionally, he doesn't want to give any possible competitors any airtime in case they sense a possibility, particularly someone like Florida Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis.
What about "DeFuture"?
Numerous members of the party are now publicly debating whether it makes sense to stick with the former leader, particularly with Florida Governor Ron DeSantis poised to challenge him.
Last week, DeSantis was re-elected with ease as governor of Florida. He is viewed as a more disciplined version of Trump and is a fervent conservative who caused controversy by transporting migrants from Texas to Martha's Vineyard and other liberal cities and enclaves.
DeSantis was dubbed "DeFuture" by the Rupert Murdoch-owned New York Post, which turned against Trump after the findings from the congressional committee hearings on January 6. Trump was branded "Trumpty Dumpty," who "couldn't build a wall" and "had a great fall," according to the newspaper.
Today's cover: Here’s how Donald Trump sabotaged the Republican midterms https://t.co/YUtDosSGfp pic.twitter.com/vpI94nKuBh
— New York Post (@nypost) November 10, 2022
Very soon after the election results, some conservative groups also made polling findings public that showed DeSantis leading Trump in early presidential primary states and states like Texas.
It's time for someone else, was the unmistakable message.
But it's important to recognize Trump's power over the GOP base. There have been other occasions when the "fever" might have subsided, but it never did — not when criticizing the late Republican Sen. John McCain's status as a war hero, not when he boasted about assaulting women on the Access Hollywood tape, not when two dozen women accused him of sexual misconduct or assault, not even during the uprising on January 6.
But this most recent setback might be jeopardizing winning, which is what Republican officials care about most.
Their tenacity will be put to the test as the party faces a reckoning during the following two years.
Trump seems uncowed and ready for the fight
He recently dubbed DeSantis Ron "DeSanctimonious" and praised polling conducted before Election Day, which he said showed him comfortably leading a fictitious GOP primary.
He has turned to his own social media channel, which he created after being banned from Twitter and Facebook for inciting unrest and distributing false information, to attack his detractors, the media, and to disseminate untrue electoral conspiracies.
Once again, we can anticipate more of the same from candidate Trump.
But given how badly purple states have fared as a result of Trump's brand, his party finds it difficult to ignore the fact that this has been the case since the beginning of his career as a national figure.
Although he may have won the presidential race in 2016, some key states were very tight, and he ultimately came in third place in the popular vote by a margin of 3 million votes.
In the 2018 midterms, his party lost 40 House seats and control of the chamber.
Trump lost his bid for reelection in 2020 after serving as president for four years during which time the majority of Americans continually disapproved of the job he was doing and believed he handled the coronavirus pandemic poorly.
Even though he lost the popular vote by an even greater margin of 7 million ballots, a few swing states were close.
Instead of apologizing for his loss and offering an explanation, Trump refused and claimed fraud.
After numerous court fights, audits, and recounts, Biden's victory was repeatedly upheld. But Trump persisted in lying, encouraging grassroots Republicans to join risky conspiracies that have damaged their confidence in the democratic process.
The 2020 election was free and fair, and there was very little fraud—certainly not enough to cause the results to be invalidated anywhere—according to the courts.
Despite this, Trump used his fabrication of a stolen election as a sort of barometer for who he would support in these midterm elections. They bought in, received support in the primaries, and the majority of them lost in the general election, handing Democratic candidates seats that non-election-denying Republicans may have won.
Broadly unpopular — except with the Republican base
The majority of Americans still express a negative impression of the former president. But he was unquestionably the most well-liked and influential figure inside the Republican Party, at least before the midterm elections.
Despite recent defeats, he remains the front-runner for the GOP presidential nomination. To beat him, a lot of effort will be required, including time, money, and, yes, a lot of conflict with the GOP establishment. Trump supporters now dominate the Republican National Committee and several state parties.
Because of the Jan. 6 hearings and his prolonged absence from office, Trump's hold on the party appeared to be eroding — at least slightly — this past summer. Trump, though, oddly appeared to tighten his hold after the FBI searched his Florida property because Trump was perceived as a victim by the GOP base.
And the former president has always fed his political fire with victimization, particularly white victimhood and grievance.
There are plenty of others waiting in the wings
Trump may face competition for the nomination from more than simply DeSantis. It's also uncertain whether DeSantis will. Being only 44 years old, he will probably exercise caution so as not to anger Trump's core of devoted and, he may hope, formerly devoted fans.
Other Republicans, such as Mike Pence, a former Trump vice president, Nikki Haley, Mike Pompeo, a former Trump secretary of state, and South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem, have all been circling, positioning themselves, and making preparations for a 2024 presidential bid of their own.
Trump's unconventional action to formally join now is an attempt to thwart those efforts, level the playing field, and refocus attention on him, particularly given that he is currently the subject of numerous civil and criminal investigations across several states. In addition, Trump is fighting himself against multiple lawsuits and is under criminal investigation for his financial dealings, including his tax returns and the management of the Trump Organization.
A Trump vs. Biden rematch?
When Trump made his statement, Biden was dealing with a number of political obstacles. Because of rising inflation, higher gas prices, and the resurgence of the coronavirus pandemic, Biden's popularity has declined.
In the summer and fall of 2021, the president's popularity plummeted as a result of criticism directed at Biden's haphazard handling of the Trump administration's decision to withdraw American troops from Afghanistan.
While Trump's loss to Biden was primarily due to his enormous loss of support from the vast majority of suburban and independent voters nationwide, he still has substantial support from Republican voters.
On the other side, Biden has had trouble retaining the support of his supporters. In today's very divisive political climate, winning over the small number of swing voters still in the country and retaining support within the president's own party are the keys to victory.
As president, Trump often inflamed cultural grievance
One of the most astounding results in American history was Trump's triumph in 2016. He was impeached twice, lost the popular vote, made more than 30,000 false or misleading claims while in office, and was blamed by Americans for how he handled the coronavirus outbreak.
That contributed to Trump losing to Biden in the race for reelection. But now that Biden's support is dwindling and the economy is in a precarious position, Trump sees a chance to regain the presidency.
Trump weaponized right-wing nationalism, white cultural grievances, and paradoxically, given his standing as an Ivy League-educated billionaire, anti-elitist economic populism during his tenure as president.
The foundation of Trump's 2016 presidential campaign and the subsequent presidency was nativism. He ran on a platform of building a wall to keep Spanish-speaking immigrants out of the country; in his early years in office, he banned people from entering some mostly Muslim countries; he stoked racial tensions by saying there were "very fine people" on both sides of a white nationalist protest in Charlottesville, Va., where a counter-protester was killed; and he rental
Despite the nation's overall decline in violent crime, Trump lamented "the crime, the gangs, and the drugs that have claimed too many lives and robbed our country of so much unrealized potential" in his 2017 inaugural speech.
In the resounding phrase from his inaugural address as president, Trump remarked, "This American carnage stops right now and stops right now."
Republicans have used the topic of an increase in violent crime in large cities to energize their people in these midterm elections, and Trump will likely use it again.
Trump pushed policies conservatives favored
Even though they did not like Trump personally, many Republicans publicly supported him despite the frequent upheaval he presided over, notably on Capitol Hill.
Trump removes his mask upon his return to the White House from Walter Reed National Military Medical Center on Oct. 05, 2020. Trump spent three days hospitalized for COVID-19.
Many on the left found this to be confusing, but the reason was that Trump was promoting many things that conservatives supported.
Prior to the coronavirus outbreak, he supervised an era of economic development, implemented tax cuts that primarily benefited the wealthy and companies, and appointed three conservative-leaning justices to the Supreme Court.
For conservatives, the 50-year-old fruit of the appointment of those justices has now ripened. Millions of women in this country are no longer able to access abortions because the court completely reversed Roe v. Wade, returning control of abortion laws to the states. Additionally, the court has defended the rights of gun owners and now seems prepared to further solidify conservative societal institutions in future rulings that would have an impact for many years.
Continuing lies about losing the election
Trump refused to accept after losing the race for reelection and left for his home country hours before Vice President Biden's inauguration, breaking with American custom. He remained steadfast and made up fraud allegations in a bid to minimize the deadly Capitol attack on January 6 that was partly motivated by his own statements at a rally hours earlier. He claimed that the "true uprising" occurred on Election Day.
He attempted to persuade state and federal officials to use unusual, possibly illegal measures to reverse his decision, but in vain.
It provided him with a way out without ever having to concede defeat. There has been no proof of widespread fraud despite audits and reviews in many states.
Trump nevertheless keeps telling lies.
The numerous committee hearings on January 6 featured testimony from numerous witnesses who served in Trump's White House, worked on his campaign to elect him, and top DOJ and state election officials. These witnesses provided a detailed account of the breadth of Trump's efforts.
Trump's lies about fraud in the last election have helped erode faith in the electoral system among many in the GOP base.
Even taking into account his role in the uprising of January 6, most Republican officials chose not to continue criticizing the 45th president out of concern for his grip on the GOP base and possible retaliation. Those who did, such as Wyoming Representative Liz Cheney, came under fire from primary opponents supported by Trump. In addition to other Republicans who supported his impeachment, Cheney lost her attempt for reelection. Only two of the ten Republican House impeachment candidates for President Trump were still on the ballot.
Ironically, a Democrat won the seat for Washington's 3rd congressional district after Jaime Herrera Beutler, who backed Trump's impeachment, lost in a GOP primary.
With his political activities having generated hundreds of millions of dollars, Trump has the resources to run for office again.
Since the former reality TV star and real estate developer has officially declared his candidacy for president, the Republican Party will concentrate its resources behind him. He will once again play the outsider casting aspersions rather than the insider president in charge of the nation's security and prosperity.
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