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Former United States President Donald Trump hinted at a possible presidential bid again in 2024 and repeated his fraudulent claims that he won the 2020 election in his first major appearance since leaving the White House nearly six weeks ago.
“Our movement of proud, hardworking American patriots is just getting started, and in the end we will win. We will win,” Trump said in a speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Orlando, Florida.
By refusing to admit he lost the presidential election to Joe Biden on Nov. 3, Trump offered a withering critique of his Democratic successor’s first weeks in office and suggested he might run again.
“They just lost the White House,” the former Republican president said after criticizing Joe Biden’s handling of border security.
He said: “But who knows, who knows, I may even decide to beat them a third time.”
Trump’s tumultuous final weeks in office saw his supporters launch a deadly attack on the United States Capitol on January 6 in an attempt to prevent Congress from certifying Biden’s election victory, a victory that Trump falsely claimed was. it was tainted by widespread fraud.
A civil war has broken out within the Republican Party with establishment figures like Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell eager to put Donald Trump in the rearview mirror and others, like Trump ally Senator Lindsey Graham, believing that the future of the party depends on the energy of the pro-Trumps. conservative base.
Trump declared that the Republican Party is united and said he had no plans to try to launch a third, an idea he has discussed with advisers in recent months.
He said, “We are not starting new parties. We have the Republican Party. It is going to be united and stronger than ever. I am not going to start a new party.”
Donald Trump attacks the record of the new president of the United States. @Joe Biden: “In a month, we have gone from America First to America Last” @rtenews pic.twitter.com/BwvSRQvlLM
– Brian O’Donovan (@BrianOD_News) February 28, 2021
The results of an informal poll of CPAC conference participants gave Trump a strong show of support with 55% saying they would vote for him in the 2024 Republican presidential nomination race.
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis came in second with 21%.
Without Trump, Governor DeSantis led the field with 43%, and other potential Republican candidates were in single digits.
But not everyone supported Donald Trump. A separate question in the poll asked whether Trump should run again in 2024 and led to a mixed result, with 68% saying he should run and 32% opting or not.
“It’s hard to get seven out of 10 to agree on anything,” pollster Jim McLaughlin told CPAC when explaining the results.
Still, Donald Trump’s fervor at the four-day CPAC event has been so strong that his son’s eldest son, Donald Trump Jr, declared him “T-PAC” and participants displayed a golden statue of the former president.
In the short term, he is making plans to establish a super PAC political organization to support candidates who reflect his policies, an adviser said.
Starting his speech more than an hour late, Trump said he wanted to save America’s culture and identity.
He tried to position himself as the main critic of the new president, including on immigration and security along the United States border with Mexico, and the slow reopening of schools closed due to the pandemic.
He said: “Joe Biden has had the most disastrous first month of any president in modern history.”
Recent polls have given Joe Biden a job approval rating well above 50%, a good result for Americans.
The Biden White House has made clear that it plans to ignore Trump’s speech.
“Certainly our focus is not on what President Trump is saying” at CPAC, White House spokeswoman Jen Psaki told reporters last week.
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