Trump announces his 2024 presidential campaign

by Staff Writer 16-11-2022 | 8:44 AM

Former US President Donald Trump has announced he will run for US president again in 2024 despite facing multiple criminal investigations, and the poor performance of the candidates he backed in last week’s midterm elections.

Trump launched the bid – his third for the presidency – on Tuesday evening at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida, a week after elections in which Republicans failed to win as many seats in Congress as they had hoped.

He also filed papers with the Federal Election Commission Tuesday night in which he declared himself a candidate for the presidency and established a new campaign committee.

Before last Tuesday, Trump, 76, was the undisputed frontrunner in his party’s nominating contest, with polls showing the former president’s support among Republican voters averaging more than 20 percentage points over his closest rival, Florida Republican Governor Ron DeSantis.

Now that Trump is officially Biden’s political opponent in the 2024 election, Attorney General Merrick Garland will need to decide whether to appoint a special counsel to take over the daily management of the Trump investigations.

This could help to create even more distance between Biden appointees like Garland in the upper echelons of the Justice Department and any potential decisions about whether to charge Trump with a crime.

On Tuesday, Trump accused Biden of mishandling the economy. “In two years, the Biden administration has destroyed the U.S. economy. Destroyed,” he said.

Trump is still the undisputed leader of the Republican party, however. 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 operation that his failed 2020 reelection bid grew into.

Trump enters the race with more than $60 million in cash held by his leadership PAC, Save America, and a prodigious fundraising operation that vacuums up small-dollar donations at an unprecedented rate.

Federal Election Commission rules prohibit Trump from using the leadership PAC money to directly finance his presidential campaign.