Donald Trump Announces 2024 Presidential Campaign

Former President Donald Trump launched his third presidential campaign with a speech at Mar-a-Lago Tuesday night.

Summary

Former President Donald Trump launched his third presidential campaign with a speech at Mar-a-Lago Tuesday night. The former president is seeking a rematch with President Joe Biden to avenge his 2020 defeat.

• His announcement comes unusually early and “signals his interest in discouraging other possible contenders” like Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and Mike Pence, his former vice president.
• Trump’s announcement comes just one week after a disappointing 2022 midterm performance for the Republican Party that many in the party attribute to Trump’s endorsements of candidates who lost in swing states across the country.
• “We are a nation in decline,” Trump declared during his hour-long speech. He continued, “In order to make America great and glorious again, I am tonight announcing my candidacy for president of the United States.”
• President Joe Biden’s campaign released a video attacking Trump shortly after his announcement. The video argues “Trump failed America,” citing his policies on abortion and the economy and the Jan. 6 Capitol riot.
• Trump’s 2024 launch did not receive nearly the same media coverage as his 2015 ride down Trump Tower’s golden escalator. Fox News and CNN both cut away from his address at times, while MSNBC didn’t even air his speech.

• The New York Times thought Trump’s speech was an effort to “make his own reality… in the heads-I-win-tails-you-lose world of Mr. Trump, all successes accrue to him, and any failings are someone else’s fault.“ The Times listed GOP losses in 2018, 2020, and 2022 as examples of his “failings.”
• “America’s comeback starts right now,” said Trump according to NBC News. The former President vowed to change Biden’s climate change and immigration policies and took credit for building a strong economy during his term in office.
• The Washington Post’s coverage of Trump’s announcement emphasized his lowest moments: “Donald Trump, the twice-impeached former president who refused to concede defeat and inspired a failed attempt to overturn the 2020 election culminating in a deadly attack on the U.S. Capitol, officially declared on Tuesday night that he is running to retake the White House in 2024.”

• Trump’s speech “punched hard at Democrats but skipped over his GOP rivals,” according to Fox News. The on-message speech marked a sharp contrast with his more free-wheeling rallies. Trump instead made his pitch as “the person to fix problems plaguing the U.S. under Biden.”
• National Review came out hard against a Trump 2024 bid, publishing an editorial simply entitled “No.” The editorial begins, “To paraphrase Voltaire after he attended an orgy, once was an experiment, twice would be perverse… Republicans should reject [a Trump bid] without hesitation or doubt.”
• The Washington Examiner interviewed a number of former Trump officials who criticized his announcement as “low energy.” “This is a f***ing embarrassment,” a former senior Trump official told the Examiner. “No wonder Madison Cawthorn was the only Republican to show up. We need candidates who can look to the future and not just repeat the same rambling sob story about being a victim we’ve heard a thousand times.”

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© Dominic Moore, 2022