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Former US president announces bid to seek the White House amid an underwhelming showing for Republicans in midterm elections.
Former US President Donald Trump has announced his intention to seek the White House again in 2024.
Trump launched the bid – his third for the presidency – on Tuesday at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida, a week after midterm elections in which Republicans failed to win as many seats in Congress as they had hoped.
In a speech broadcast live on US television, Trump spoke to hundreds of supporters in a ballroom decorated with several chandeliers and lined with dozens of American flags.
“In order to make America great again, I am tonight announcing my candidacy for president of the United States,” Trump said to a cheering phone-waving crowd of donors and longtime supporters.
“I am running because I believe the world has not yet seen the true glory of what this nation can be,” he said.
“We will again put America first,” he added.
Earlier in the day, aides filed paperwork with the US Federal Election Commission setting up a committee called “Donald J Trump for President 2024.”
There is a long road ahead before the Republican presidential nominee is formally selected in the summer of 2024, with the first state-level contests more than a year away. Analysts believe Trump’s unusually early launch may well be aimed at fending off potential challengers for the party’s nomination in 2024, including rising star Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, 44, and Trump’s own former vice president, Mike Pence, 63.
But Trump enters the race in a moment of political vulnerability.
He had hoped to launch his campaign in the wake of resounding Republican midterm victories, fuelled by candidates he elevated during this year’s primaries. Instead, many of those candidates lost, allowing Democrats to keep the Senate and leaving the Republicans with a path to only a bare majority in the House of Representatives.
The losses have prompted some prominent Republicans to openly blame Trump for promoting weak candidates who derailed the party’s hopes of taking control of Congress.
The 76-year-old’s bid to seek his party’s nomination also amid a series of escalating criminal investigations, including several that could lead to indictments.
They include the probe into dozens of documents with classified markings that were seized by the FBI from Mar-a-Lago and ongoing state and federal inquiries into his efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election.
He is also facing a congressional subpoena related to his role in the January 6, 2021, US Capitol attack by his supporters.
Trump has called the various investigations he faces politically motivated and has denied wrongdoing.
He is seeking to become only the second U.S. president in history to serve non-consecutive terms, after Grover Cleveland, whose second stint ended in 1897.
President Joe Biden, 79, said last week he intends to run for re-election and will likely make a final decision by early next year.
In an Edison Research exit poll, seven out of 10 midterm voters expressed the view that Biden, who remains deeply unpopular, should not run again. In the same poll, six of 10 respondents said they had an unfavorable opinion of Trump.
