Hes back (officially) but did he ever truly go away?
Donald Trump made it official on Tuesday night by announcing he would once again be seeking the Oval Office in 2024.
Yes, the former president who incited an attempted insurrection at the US Capitol with lies about his 2020 election loss lies he continues to spread to this day, having escaped conviction in impeachment proceedings thanks to his Republican allies and who has spent much of the last few years either vowing revenge against political enemies or battling a suite of criminal investigations now wants American voters to let him once again lead the democratic system of government he has worked so tirelessly to undermine.
In order to make America great and glorious again, I am tonight announcing my candidacy for president of the United States, Trump told the crowd at the Mar-a-Lago Club in Palm Beach, Florida.
“America’s comeback starts right now,” he said. “Two years ago, we were a great nation, and soon we will be a great nation again.”
A few minutes before his scheduled 9 p.m. ET announcement on Tuesday, paperwork for his 2024 run was filed with the Federal Election Commission.
His announcement comes as Republicans largely underperformed nationally in last weeks midterm elections. Many in the GOP have blamed Trump for the outcome since many of his endorsed candidates, such as Mehmet Oz in Pennsylvania and Blake Masters and Kari Lake in Arizona, lost to Democrats.
Since the election, Trump has been on the defensive, using his social media platform, Truth Social, to lash out at possible GOP presidential rivals, such as Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who coasted to an easy reelection victory.
Trumps announcement also comes as he finds himself in a sea of legal troubles related to the cacophony of investigations into him by both federal and state agencies.
The most imminent and urgent of these for Trump appears to be the investigation into his handling of classified documents since leaving the White House, which culminated in an extraordinary search on his Florida compound Mar-a-Lago over the summer. Attorney General Merrick Garland is under immense pressure as he decides whether to indict the former president for violations of the Espionage Act, mishandling government documents, and obstruction of justice.
But Trump also faces the possibility of charges connected to his sprawling efforts to overturn his loss in the 2020 election. He has been subpoenaed by the congressional committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, which said he personally orchestrated and oversaw a multi-part effort to overturn the 2020 presidential election and to obstruct the peaceful transition of power. A federal judge has also already said Trump signed court documents he knew were false as part of this scheme.
Thats not to mention the numerous state investigations into his postelection conduct and his business, or the defamation lawsuit from E. Jean Carroll, the woman who said Trump raped her in the mid-1990s.
Trump reportedly ended his first term by wondering whether he could pardon himself; in a possible second one, he will have that opportunity.
After functionally giving up on being chief executive late in his first term while presiding over an unchecked pandemic and hundreds of thousands of American deaths, Trump would be asking for another shot at a job hes only ever been fleetingly interested in carrying out. And hed be reengaging with an electoral system and basic democratic principles that he has spent the last few years single-mindedly fixed on eroding. He would be asking his supporters to once again come out and vote for him in a system he swears is corrupt.
There is still time to see if Trump will actually follow through with a campaign.
Trumps third campaign would be substantially different from the first two, and something unseen in mainstream American political history. He would be an explicitly anti-democratic candidate after pressuring state officials for years to overturn the 2020 election results in his favor.
