Donald Trump Announce 2024 Presidential Bid

By The Evangelist
November 16, 2022

Former U.S. President Donald Trump is anticipated to announce another run for the White House in the wake of his Republican Party’s disappointing performance in the midterm elections.

Trump will deliver a speech on Tuesday evening that will likely confirm his candidacy for the presidential election of 2024. For the past week, the former president has attacked potential rivals for the Republican nomination, including Florida Governor Ron DeSantis and Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin.

“Hopefully, TODAY will turn out to be one of the most important days in the history of our Country!” Trump wrote early Tuesday morning on his Truth Social platform.

The tenure of the former president between 2017 and 2021 was one of the most turbulent in modern American history. His harsh rhetoric, which, according to critics, frequently veered into explicit bigotry, profoundly polarized the nation.

Nevertheless, despite losing to President Joe Biden in 2020 and subsequent false allegations of election fraud that culminated in his supporters’ attack on the U.S. Capitol, the former president continued to wield significant influence over the Republican Party.

Trump’s relatively brief career in national U.S. politics has been defined by his ability to overcome scandals and setbacks that, in previous eras, would have been career-ending. However, many observers, including some Republicans, have questioned whether the former president can maintain his hold on the Republican base in the wake of the party’s disappointing performance in the midterm elections last week.

Senator Mitt Romney, one of the few vocal Republican critics of Trump, compared the ex-president to a famous athlete in the twilight of his career on Tuesday, citing the GOP’s losses in the 2018 midterms, 2020 presidential election, and last week’s election under the former president’s watch.

“I know, there’s some fans that love him. Just like, you know, an aging pitcher, they’re always fans that want to keep them there forever. But if you keep losing games, try to put some new players on the field,” Romney told the Associated Press.

Before running for president, Trump, a real estate mogul and former television personality had no political experience.

In 2015, he announced his first run for president in an incendiary speech in which he called Mexican immigrants “rapists”; these remarks set the tone for the remainder of that campaign, in which he later called for a “total” ban on Muslims entering the United States.

In a crowded field of candidates, he used his fame, unscripted style, and populist rhetoric to win the Republican nomination from many dissatisfied voters. In one of the largest electoral upsets in U.S. history, he went on to defeat former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton for the presidency.

In the White House, his controversial tweets and remarks frequently made headlines. However, he pursued a largely conventional Republican domestic tax cuts and deregulation policy. In foreign policy, he adopted a more aggressive stance toward competition with China, a position that his successor, Joe Biden, has maintained.

In addition, he moved the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. He acknowledged Israeli sovereignty over Syria’s occupied Golan Heights, both violating international law and were rejected mainly by the international community.

Nonetheless, Trump was able to broker normalization agreements between Israel and some Arab states that shared a common enemy in Iran and supported his “maximum pressure” strategy towards Tehran.

Despite his disorderly administration and unceremonious departure from the White House, Trump never disappeared from the political scene. He continued to hold rallies and play a significant role in his party for a former president. In the Republican primary preceding the midterm elections of 2022, his endorsement was crucial for winning office nominations.

However, Trump’s detractors assert that the country has changed drastically since he first descended a golden escalator at Trump Tower in New York City in 2015 to announce his candidacy.

They argue that after years of political instability and the life-altering effects of the coronavirus pandemic, voters desire normalcy and fear for the future of U.S. democracy in light of the former president’s continued rejection of the 2020 election result.

In battleground states, midterm voters rejected dozens of Trump-backed election deniers.

David Cohen, a political science professor at The University of Akron in Ohio, told Al Jazeera, “Perhaps the biggest factor in terms of democracy being on the ballots and just Republicans’ lack of success, in general, is the fact that there’s a Republican ex-president named Donald Trump, who has refused to leave the stage.”

After his loss in 2020 and the Republican setback in the 2022 midterm elections, some Democrats eagerly anticipate a rematch between Biden and Trump in 2024.

“Run Trump run!” Democratic Representative Steve Cohen tweeted late last week.

However, the former president’s supporters argue that he is the best candidate to rally Republicans during a presidential election year. They also discount Trump’s role in the midterm election results, pointing out that Republicans suffered from low turnout and were outraised by Democrats and that GOP candidates who the former president did not back also struggled in the midterm elections on November 8, 2022.

JD Vance, a Trump-backed Ohio senator-elect, wrote on Monday in the American Conservative, “Any effort to pin blame on Trump, and not on money and turnout, isn’t just wrong. It distracts from the actual issues we need to solve as a party over the long term.”

Trump has already secured endorsements for the 2024 election, including that of Elise Stefanik, a senior House Republican.

As other candidates, such as DeSantis of Florida, emerge as viable alternatives to Trump, more Republican officials and operatives are distancing themselves from the former president.

Republican Senator Cynthia Lummis told reporters this week, when asked if she would support Trump for president, “I don’t think that’s the right question. I think the question is, who is the current leader of the Republican Party. Oh, I know who it is – Ron DeSantis.”

Trump’s former Vice President, Mike Pence, who fell out with the ex-president over the U.S. Capitol riot on January 6, 2021, has indicated that he may run for president himself.

In an interview with ABC News, Pence was asked if Trump should be elected president again. He responded that Americans seek leaders with “compassion and generosity of spirit.”

“I think that’s up to the American people. However, I believe we will have better options in the future,” he said.

Nonetheless, according to some analysts, Trump’s hold on the Republican base is so strong that it will be difficult to remove him from the proverbial spotlight.

Cohen, a professor of political science, stated, “There’s not a snowball’s chance in hell that Republicans will be successful in sidelining Donald Trump unless Donald Trump decides to sideline himself.”

As he prepares to run for president, Trump continues to face a mountain of legal issues. A congressional committee is engaged in a fierce battle to obtain his tax records.

The Department of Justice is investigating whether the former president mishandled classified government documents.

A congressional committee investigating the deadly attack by Trump supporters on the U.S. Capitol has recently issued a subpoena for Trump to testify under oath before the committee. Monday, he disobeyed the summons by failing to appear for testimony. Friday, his attorneys filed a lawsuit to avoid having to testify or provide documentation to the committee.

Trump has denied wrongdoing in every case, claiming that his Democratic opponents are conducting political attacks.

The United States Constitution limits presidents to two four-year terms. The only U.S. president to serve nonconsecutive terms was Grover Cleveland, who was re-elected to the White House in 1892.