Trump announces 2024 presidential campaign after GOP's weak midterm election performance

Former President Donald Trump announced his 2024 presidential campaign at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Florida, on Tuesday evening.

“In order to make America great and glorious again, I am tonight announcing my candidacy for president of the United States,” Trump said.

Trump spoke for one hour and four minutes and made reference to a host of issues including the United States’ withdrawal from Afghanistan, the ongoing investigation into his mishandling of classified material, gas prices, and his failed attempt to build a wall on the southern border.

A fact check from CNN noted that Trump’s speech “was filled with false and misleading claims about a variety of topics.”

Trump’s announcement came one week after many of the Republican candidates he endorsed in the 2022 midterm elections lost their races to their Democratic opponents.

Trump lost to President Joe Biden in the 2020 presidential election. Biden defeated Trump in both the popular vote and the Electoral College vote. Trump previously lost the popular vote in the 2016 presidential election to former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

During his presidency, Trump was involved in frequent controversies and never had an aggregate approval rating above 50%.

He was criticized for his administration’s harsh immigration policies, which separated migrant children from their families. During his single term in office, Trump lied about an array of issues, repeatedly made racist statements, used the presidency to enrich himself, and bungled the U.S. government’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic, which has led to the deaths of more than 1 million Americans.

Under Trump, U.S. unemployment reached as high as 14.7% (the highest since 1948), during the height of the pandemic in April 2020. When he left office in Jan. 2021, the unemployment rate was 6.3%. In the most recent unemployment report under Biden, for October, the unemployment rate was 3.7%.

Trump’s announcement comes nearly two years after he became the only president in American history to be impeached twice. There have been four impeachments in U.S. history.

The House of Representatives found Trump guilty of inciting an insurrection against the United States, following his promotion of conspiracy theories falsely alleging that he won the 2020 presidential election. Trump gave a speech at Washington, D.C. rally on Jan. 6, 2021, immediately preceding a deadly attack on the U.S. Capitol by hundreds of his supporters.

In the Senate, 57 members voted to find Trump guilty of the accusation, but 67 votes are required for conviction.

Trump was also impeached in Dec. 2019 on the charges of abuse of office and obstruction of justice, after he attempted to pressure the nation of Ukraine to release information that would be used to attack his political rivals. A majority of the Senate voted against convicting Trump.

Trump endorsed a number of candidates who lost their races in this year’s midterm elections.

Despite Republicans’ prediction of a “red wave” election, Democrats retained control of the U.S. Senate, held onto every state legislature in which they were already in power, and are on track to flip state legislative chambers in Michigan, Arizona, Minnesota and Pennsylvania.

While Democrats are projected to lose control of the U.S. House of Representatives, the party lost fewer seats than predicted.

Trump-aligned candidates lost at the state and national levels. Candidates that supported his debunked conspiracy theory that he won the 2020 election lost in multiple secretary of state races. At the same time, candidates that Trump supported for Senate races, like Mehmet Oz in Pennsylvania and Blake Masters in Arizona, lost their contests.

Trump’s picks for governor in states like Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin were among those who lost.

Published with permission from The American Independent Foundation.