Donald Trump pledged on Tuesday night that Joe Biden «will not stay in the White House for another four years», making it clear, as he had indicated a week ago, that he would run for president in the 2024 presidential election.
«Joe Biden embodies the failures of the left and the corruption of Washington,» the Republican former president - facing several investigations by the judiciary - threw out in front of the assembled crowd of his devoted supporters and relatives with cell phones in hand in a room of his luxury residence in Mar-a-Lago, Florida.
«To restore America to its greatness and glory, I am announcing my candidacy for president,» the real estate mogul said. «This will not be my campaign, it will be our campaign,» he assured.
He described his tenure in idyllic terms, speaking of a country that enjoyed peace, prosperity and respect on the international stage, contrasting it with the suffering brought by the presidency of Joe Biden, who ’has brought us to the brink of nuclear war«.
«Two years ago we were a great country and soon we will be again,» America is «coming back,» he continued. He returned to his favorite topics, immigration («they're poisoning us»), crime, («lakes of blood»), promised to push for the death penalty for drug traffickers, to bring back to active duty members and military personnel who were discharged for not getting the COVID-19 vaccine...
Although he criticized -a bit- the electoral procedures in the US, a week after the Republicans« expectations that there would be a »giant wave" in the midterm elections were denied, he avoided repeating his unsubstantiated claims of electoral fraud in 2020 that deprived him of victory, or mentioning the bloody assault of his supporters on the federal capitol on January 6, 2021.
He claimed that his campaign would be fought by organisations «of the left», the «establishment» in Washington and «the media», and hastened to add «we will not be afraid. We will persevere. We will move forward against the current.».
With this move - in defiance of the spectacular failures of candidates he publicly endorsed in the midterms - Mr. Trump is attempting to gain an edge over his potential rivals in the Republican party's internal race before it has even begun, at a time when at least part of the conservative audience seems to be pinning its hopes for 2024 on Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, a rising star of the American hard right.
