Donald Trump has announced he will run for the United States presidency 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.
In a speech broadcast live on US television, Trump spoke to hundreds of supporters in a ballroom decorated with several chandeliers and lined with dozens of American flags.
“In order to make America great again, I am tonight announcing my candidacy for president of the United States,” the 76-year-old told the cheering crowd of donors and longtime supporters.
“I am running because I believe the world has not yet seen the true glory of what this nation can be,” he said.
“We will again put America first,” he added.
Earlier in the day, aides filed paperwork with the US Federal Election Commission setting up a committee called “Donald J Trump for President 2024”.
There is a long road ahead before the Republican presidential nominee is formally selected in the US summer of 2024, with the first state-level contests more than a year away. Analysts believe Trump’s unusually early launch may well be aimed at fending off potential challengers for the party’s nomination in 2024, including rising star Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, 44, and Trump’s former vice president, Mike Pence, 63.
“He’s getting ahead of other Republicans,” said Adolfo Franco, a Republican Party strategist. “Being Donald Trump, he would frame any other candidate who were to launch a presidential bid henceforth as disloyal to him as being the former president and in a sense the titular head of the party.”
But Trump, who was twice impeached during his last term as president, enters the race at a moment of political vulnerability.
