Donald Trump has launched his campaign to be US president again in 2024.
His third run for the White House comes despite the disappointing midterm election results that saw the majority of the candidates he endorsed defeated, and raised questions over his grip on the Republican Party.
“America’s comeback starts right now,” he said from his club in Palm Beach, Florida. “We were a great and glorious nation. Now we are a nation in decline. We are a failing nation.”
Trump’s sole term as president ended with his supporters violently storming the US Capitol in a deadly bid to halt the peaceful transition of power on January 6, 2021.
Trump, who was impeached twice, is facing a series of intensifying criminal investigations, including a Justice Department probe into the hundreds of documents with classified markings that were discovered in boxes and drawers at his Mar-a-Lago club.
After Republicans failed to take control of the Senate – and may only retake control of the House with the narrowest of majorities – senior figures in the party and Conservative commentators started to question whether it was time to place their faith in a fresh candidate.
Florida governor, Ron DeSantis, who cruised to re-election last week, is now being urged by many in his party to run for president as well. He has already been given a derogatory nickname by Trump – “Ron DeSanctimonious”.
DeSantis is likely to be one of many ambitious Republicans – perhaps including former vice president Mike Pence – who Trump would have to defeat in the state-by-state primary elections to secure the party’s presidential nomination. But polls suggest Trump could win the Republican nomination.
Trump remains deeply unpopular outside of the Republican Party, but has more supporters within it than any other single potential challenger, setting up circumstances that could be nearly identical to 2016. That year, Trump won the GOP nomination despite never having the support of more than about one-third of the party’s primary voters until he had secured the presidential nomination.
Trump has received the brunt of criticism for elevating candidates in states like Pennsylvania and Arizona who were unappealing to general election voters because they embraced his lies about 2020 election fraud or held hard-line views on issues such as abortion that were out of step with the mainstream.
Trump’s choices for governor in Michigan, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, Maryland and Arizona, for secretary of state in Arizona, Michigan and Nevada, and for US Senate in Arizona, Nevada, Pennsylvania and New Hampshire all were defeated.