“We are a nation in decline. We are a failed nation for millions of Americans,” Trump said in a speech at his private Florida club, referring to the first two years of President Joe Biden’s administration. “I’m going to make sure Joe Biden doesn’t get another four years.”
He also filed documents with the Federal Election Commission on Tuesday night declaring he is running for president and establishing a new campaign committee.
“This campaign will be about issues, vision and success, and we will not stop, we will not quit, until we achieve our highest goals and make our country greater than ever before,” Trump said.
Now launching his campaign just a week after Republicans lost key midterm races, Trump has been rejecting the advice of current and former advisers who had warned him not to declare himself a presidential candidate so soon after his party’s defeat.
Trump’s FEC filing created Donald J. Trump for President in 2024 and officially kicked off the 2024 Republican primary, a contest where the dynamic has shifted dramatically in the past week.
Before last Tuesday, Trump, 76, was the undisputed front-runner in his party’s race, with polls showing the former president’s support among Republican voters averaging more than 20 percentage points over the nearest his opponent, Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSandis.
But that was before DeSantis won re-election by a stunning 19-point margin, electrifying Republicans nationally and offering the party a bright spot on a day when Democrats won most of the major Senate and gubernatorial races.
Now, some of the early, post-election YouGov polls show DeSantis leading Trump.
The Florida governor has reportedly met with donors and begun assembling his own presidential campaign to challenge Trump for the GOP nomination.
“I just started fighting,” DeSantis promised supporters in his re-election victory speech.
Now that Trump is officially Biden’s political opponent in the 2024 election, Attorney General Merrick Garland will have to decide whether to appoint a special counsel to handle the day-to-day management of the Trump investigations. That could help create even more distance between Biden appointees like Garland in the upper echelons of the Justice Department and any potential decisions on whether to charge Trump with a crime.
The appointment of a special prosecutor has reportedly already been discussed at the DOJ, but no decisions have been made.
The White House is keen to avoid any suggestion that the investigation and potential prosecution of the president’s main rival is politically motivated or designed in any way to harm Trump’s 2024 election prospects.
The New York and Georgia state investigations of Trump will likely continue unabated, however, regardless of Trump’s candidacy status.
If Trump wins the Republican nomination, he will likely face President Joe Biden in a rematch of the 2020 presidential contest. Biden has yet to officially launch his re-election campaign, but plans for a campaign have reportedly solidified in recent weeks .
On Tuesday, Trump accused Biden of mismanaging the economy. “In two years, the Biden administration destroyed the US economy. It was destroyed,” he said.
The prospect of a long primary between Trump and DeSandis would be great news for Democratic campaign strategists, who see DeSandis as a formidable opponent.
Biden also likes the idea. When a reporter asked him Nov. 9 about Trump and DeSandis, the president said, “It’s going to be fun to see them go head-to-head.”
However, Trump is still the undisputed leader of the Republican party. This week, the Washington Post reported that Trump plans to build a campaign team that looks and feels more like the skeleton crew of loyal aides who ran his successful 2016 run and less like the massive enterprise that his failed re-election bid has turned into. in 2020.
Trump enters the race with more than $60 million in cash held by his leadership PAC, Save America, and a formidable fundraising operation that is collecting small-dollar donations at an unprecedented rate.
Federal Election Commission rules prohibit Trump from using PAC money to directly finance his presidential campaign.
CNBC Politics
Read more about CNBC’s political coverage: But in mid-October, Trump transferred $20 million from his leadership PAC to a newly formed Super PAC called Make America Great Again Inc. Trump. But campaign finance watchdogs warned that the lion’s share of the money could eventually find its way from MAGA Inc to Trump’s presidential bid, effectively bypassing rules that barred Save America, but not MAGA Inc, from to spend money to elect Trump for president. As for the campaign message, Trump previewed his 2024 stump speech during a series of rallies this summer and fall, and in some ways it mirrors his 2016 campaign. Trump’s staunch insistence that he won the 2020 presidential election, which he lost, is also central to his 2024 political persona, and his frequent arena rallies are full of rants against what he falsely claims was voter fraud in recent years. presidential elections. Another question is how Trump’s mounting legal troubles will affect him personally and politically. His family’s real estate and hotel empire is facing a sweeping fraud trial in New York state that could permanently cripple its operations and reduce his personal fortune. Trump is also facing an investigation in Georgia over his efforts to overturn the state’s 2020 election results. Federally, Trump is the subject of an FBI investigation into whether he mishandled state secrets by removing thousands of government documents from the White House in the final days of his presidency, more than 100 of which were classified. The Justice Department is also investigating Trump’s role in a massive effort to sway the 2020 election and prevent Congress from certifying Joe Biden’s victory. After his loss in November, Trump spent weeks desperately trying to devise ways to retain power. His efforts culminated in the January 6, 2021 attack on the US Capitol, a deadly mob attack for which more than 900 people have so far faced federal charges.
