His party members have sworn to give up (at least for a while), but Donald Trump announced his candidacy for president on Tuesday evening. At his Mar-a-Lago golf club in Florida, two years before the election, he said he will run for the highest office for the third time. In doing so, he jeopardizes the last Senate race for the Republicans in the short term. In the longer term, his candidacy guarantees fierce internal battles in his party as it tries to retake the White House in 2024.
Trump’s announcement, that one too released the forms with which he has applied as a candidate to the Federal Election Commission comes at an unfortunate time for his party. Republicans are licking the wounds of last Tuesday’s disappointing election. Instead of taking full advantage of the economic uncertainties and low confidence in President Biden, the Republican Party is likely to narrowly win a majority in the House of Representatives, the Democrats have retained their majority in the Senate, captured additional governorship seats and strengthened their position. not see the various states weaken.
Republicans blame each other for blame. Their leaders in the House and Senate are blamed. The senator this year a party plan (respect for the flag, respect for the police, men are men and women are women) is blamed. But more than anyone else, Donald Trump is blamed by his fellow party members. He is blamed for the meager quality of Republican candidates this year. Those he supported in the Republican primary, nearly all of whom won there, lost by a large margin in last week’s general election.
In many states and districts where the Republicans went neck and neck with the Democrats, Trump’s candidates have lost. Candidates who propagated Trump’s baseless allegations of voter fraud in the 2020 presidential election have lost surprisingly often. In his more than one-hour speech, which was full of criticism of the current government and especially of praise for his own presidency, the former president himself did not say a word about electoral fraud on Tuesday evening.
Trump’s critical party members fear his loyal supporters, who seem to be able to make and break Republican politicians. At the same time, they know that they are a minority of the American electorate, and that their favorites scare off the rest of the electorate. After 2016, all three elections made that clear once again. Trump always said we would get tired of winning so often. Honestly, I’m tired of losing,” said Republican Utah state senator Todd Weiler.
Lawsuits
One of the reasons Trump has rushed to launch his campaign – he is the very first candidate to formally introduce himself – would be that he is currently embroiled in several lawsuits. On the day of his announcement, Georgia Governor Brian Kemp testified in a case about how Trump pressured Kemp and his secretary of state in 2020 in the hopes that they would ignore the result and give Trump victory. On this same day in New York, the financial director of the Trump Organization testified in a tax fraud case that Trump himself was aware of the financial arrangements that the Justice Department is now investigating. And those are not the only cases where Trump is under suspicion.
His participation in the presidential election could, according to lawyers and commentators in various American media, save him from prosecution. The Justice Department could be embarrassed by even the suggestion that as a branch of government it interferes in the democratic electoral process.
At the time Trump announced his candidacy, Joe Biden tweeted a video from his personal account under the motto “Donald Trump has let America down.” Incidentally, Biden was in Indonesia at the time for the meeting with the G20. When a journalist asked him and French President Macron if they had any reaction to Trump’s announcement, they looked at each other with “the slightest condescending smile,” the reporter said, and Biden said, “Not really, no.”