“I am not going to start a new party,” Trump said. (Archive)
Orlando:
Donald Trump was back in the limelight Sunday telling enthusiastic conservatives that he could run for president again in 2024, as he sought to reassert his dominance over a Republican Party that is out of power.
The 74-year-old addressed the Conservative Political Action Conference in Orlando in a highly anticipated keynote address.
But while teasing his future plans, he left the crowd wondering if he will challenge President Joe Biden in a rematch.
“You actually know they just lost the White House,” Trump said of the Democrats, again promoting the falsehood that Trump was denied a second term due to electoral fraud.
“But who knows, who knows?” shout. “I can even decide to beat them a third time, okay?”
Banned from Twitter and other social media, Trump has kept a low profile at his Mar-a-Lago Florida resort since leaving the White House on January 20.
At the CPAC event, he took the stage to delight in a long standing ovation from loyalists, the vast majority without a mask despite the coronavirus pandemic.
“The incredible journey we started together … is far from over,” Trump said of his populist movement. “And in the end, we will win.”
Trump also put an end to rumors that he could take over his support base to create a new political party.
“I am not going to start a new party,” Trump said. “We have the Republican Party. It will come together and be stronger than ever.”
Trump, as expected, attacked Biden, saying the Democrat just wrapped up “the most disastrous first month” of any modern president.
But he also painted America as a divided land.
“Our security, our prosperity and our own identity as Americans are at stake,” he said in an incoherent speech that attacked immigrants, criticized the “cancellation of culture” and criticized Biden’s policies on climate change, energy and electoral integrity. .
‘Warning note’
American political parties generally face a reckoning after a series of setbacks like the ones Republicans saw in four years of Trump: losing the White House, the Senate and the House of Representatives.
The party is also marked by Trump’s repeated lies about his electoral defeat, his impeachment for inciting riots in the United States Capitol on January 6, and the dividing line his actions have caused between establishment Republicans and the pro-Trump populists.
But instead of ditching its troubled leader and charting a new path to regain relevance, much of the party still sees Trump as a vice in their future.
It’s a perception that he has fostered, setting himself up as a vengeful Republican kingmaker. On Friday he backed a former aide against an Ohio congressman who voted to impeach him.
At least at CPAC, enthusiasm for Trump remained through the roof. Attendees posed next to a shiny gold statue of the former president, and listeners rose each time panelists praised him.
In a poll conducted at the conference and released just before Trump’s speech, nearly seven in 10 respondents said they wanted him to run again.
As for the future direction of the party, support for Trumpism was rock solid, with 95 percent of those surveyed wanting to continue Trump’s policies and agenda.
But when asked who they prefer as the party’s candidate in 2024, a moderate 55 percent chose Trump, and Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, the de facto host of the CPAC, came in a distant second at 21 percent. hundred.
Respected Republican strategist Karl Rove said he would have expected a stronger outcome for Trump, especially in a conspiracy that appears to support the former president.
“I would take that as a cautionary note,” Rove said on Fox News.
“You need to refresh your act.”
For some Republicans like Sen. Bill Cassidy, who voted to convict Trump at impeachment, going from the brash billionaire is critical.
“We have to win in two years, we have to win in four years,” Cassidy told CNN’s State of the Union.
“We will do this by talking about the issues that are important to the American people, and there are many issues that are important to them right now, not putting one person on a pedestal.”
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is posted from a syndicated feed.)
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