Former President Donald Trump filed paperwork with the Federal Election Commission saying he was running for president in 2024 and plans to announce he will seek the presidency again, even as a growing number of Republicans are blaming him for their 2022 midterm debacle.
Trump, 76, refused to admit defeat in the 2020 election, was impeached twice and is the subject of multiple criminal investigations.
His website is already hawking merchandise and allocating receipts to Trump Save America JFC, a joint fundraising committee on behalf of Donald J. Trump for President 2024 and Save America.
“I am tonight announcing my candidacy for president of the United States,” Trump said in a speech at his Florida private club, just one week after Republicans lost key midterm races, prompting most GOP leaders to blame the 2020 election loser, who still falsely claims he won.
Trump initially hoped to stage a ceremony at his Mar-a-Lago home to take credit for Republicans winning in the November election but those victories did not materialize.
“We are a nation in decline. We are a failing nation for millions of Americans,” said Trump, speaking about President Joe Biden’s first two years running the nation. “I will ensure Joe Biden does not receive four more years.”
The GOP’s failure to take the Senate and struggles in House races forced Trump into a defensive posture as political rivals such as Florida Governor Ron DeSantis scored big wins without help from the 2020 election loser.
“This campaign will be about issues, vision and success, and we will not stop, we will not quit, until we’ve achieved the highest goals and made our country greater than it has ever been before,” Trump said.
Tom Kean Jr., who prevailed in the 7th District by defeating incumbent U.S. Rep. Tom Malinowski, is in a bind as he seeks to distance himself from the 2020 election loser after promising Republicans in his contested primary that he would support the Trump agenda, that he would have Trump’s back no matter what Trump does.
“I don’t think we’re going to be hearing much about Tom Kean Jr. in Washington, D.C. He’ll fade into the woodwork just like he did in Trenton for 20 years,” said Malinowski during the one debate between the two congressional candidates.
Former Gov. Tom Kean Sr. said that Trump is not fit to serve again as president following the testimony of former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson at the Jan. 6 Select Committee hearing in June.
“The facts are very, very disturbing because it looks like he was unhinged at times. And that’s scary in an American president,” said the elder Kean. “Look, a lot of the things Donald Trump did as president I supported. But this presents a human being that is not in fully control of himself, let alone the country. If this is all accurate, then it’s very, very disturbing.”
Kean’s team sent voters a mailing that said, “No matter what Trump does, Kean has his back.” The sentence came from a derisive Star-Ledger editorial but the liberal Republican took it as a compliment.
Now that his father is repudiating the former president and the 2020 election loser has announced that he is running anyway, the representative-elect has a touch choice to make.
A trio of longtime Republican operatives will lead Trump’s 2024 campaign, which the former president launched in the ballroom of his private Mar-a-Lago Club in Palm Beach.
Compared with 2020, the 2024 bid is expected to have a smaller staff and budget, advisers say, as Trump has complained that his failed 2020 campaign had too many people and spent too much money. He often told people that he did not even know what some of the people on his last campaign did.
Mounting legal threats to Trump appeared ominous before the 2022 congressional elections but compared to what comes next, as those congressional investigations and grand jury probes are going to turn into petit jury deliberations, it may be impossible for the demagoguery to outpace reality.
Most of the political protections that the former president was enjoying are effectively gone. A firewall of Republican insulation he expected from the House and Senate has some holes in it now that Democrats have held the Senate and Republicans appear headed for a very slim House majority.
With the midterm elections in the rearview, federal prosecutors are no longer abiding by an unwritten code to avoid politically sensitive investigative steps before voters go to the polls.
A prosecutor in Georgia is probing Trump’s effort to subvert the 2020 election, revealed in the explosive phone conversation in which the election loser pleaded with Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to “find 11,780 votes. “
Republicans most loyal to Trump suffered some of the overwhelming defeats in races for Congress and offices involved in counting the ballots in 2024.
The newly reelected New York attorney general is working to dismantle his business empire and the House’s Jan. 6 select committee is about to unload a massive trove of evidence that may advance the criminal cases against him.
Trump’s presidential announcement should accelerate the labors of federal and local investigators who are closing in on the 2020 election loser and his top allies in at least three criminal probes.
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