The ink wasn’t dried on the midterm elections when former President Donald Trump announced his intention to run for president again in 2024, setting himself up as the first major announced candidate for a presidential election that will take place in two years.
Trump officially launched his 2024 presidential campaign at his Mar-a-Lago resort. He highlighted accomplishments of his first term, talked about inflation, the problem at the border, and the soaring cost of gas prices.
“I am officially running for president of the United States, and we are going to make our country great again,” Trump said.
“Our country needs a truly great leader, and we need a truly great leader now. We need a leader that wrote ‘The Art of the Deal.’ We need a leader that can bring back our jobs, can bring back our manufacturing, can bring back our military, take care of our vets. Our vets have been abandoned!” he said. “Your country is being destroyed before your eyes. America’s comeback starts right now.”
His announcement came as no surprise, as it had been scheduled for days. He also filed his candidacy with the Federal Elections Commission.
NPR reported it with a slant against the former president, signaling its intentions to report it from a certain angle: “Donald Trump, who tried to overthrow the results of the 2020 presidential election and inspired a deadly riot at the Capitol in a desperate attempt to keep himself in power, has filed to run for president again in 2024,” the news organization wrote, inaccurately.
NBC reported in its headline, “Trump, whose lies about the 2020 election inspired an insurrection, announces third White House bid. Trump has continued to falsely assert that he won the 2020 election but that he was denied office by rampant fraud.”
NBC continued, “Donald Trump, the only president impeached twice, launched a campaign to reclaim the Oval Office on Tuesday, two years after voters ousted him and a week after they rejected his hand-picked candidates in several pivotal Senate races.” NBC neglected to point out that four of Trump’s endorsed gubernatorial candidates won, out of nine he endorsed. Nine out of 17 of his endorsed House candidates won, and six out of 11 of his endorsed Senate candidates won.
The Washington Post reported, “Trump, who as president fomented an insurrection, says he is running again. Donald Trump, 76, refused to admit defeat in the 2020 election, was impeached twice and is the subject of multiple criminal investigations. His entry shifts the dynamics of the GOP field while increasing the likelihood that President Biden runs for reelection.”
The New York Times wrote, “Trump Announces 2024 Run, Repeating Lies and Exaggerating Record. In a rambling speech, former President Donald J. Trump said he would seek another term, ignoring Republicans’ concerns that he was to blame for the party’s weak midterm showing.”
MSNBC wrote, “Trump’s secret 2024 weapon? He’s ready to burn it all down. Republicans say they’re done with Trump. But Trump is running for president again — and he definitely isn’t done with them.”
In the Los Angeles Times, editorial writers opined, “Don’t misunderstand what Donald Trump means when he says he’s running for president again, as he did Tuesday evening. He doesn’t mean that he will present his case to the American people in 2024 in the expectation that a majority of them will choose him, as they have never done before — not in 2016, when he lost the popular vote but won the electoral college, nor in 2020, when he lost both.
“He doesn’t mean that he puts his faith in American democracy, election integrity, the laws of presidential succession or any other institution that is coterminous with the nation itself. He doesn’t mean he plans to abide by any of those things.
“The ex-president has demonstrated unmistakably that he intends to take the office by hook or by crook, by denying the validity of any vote against him, by lying to his armed and angry rabble, by pressuring state election officials, state legislatures and federal courts to lie, cheat and otherwise betray the American people and their democracy.”
President Joe Biden agreed with the mainstream media and said Trump had the worst record of any president as his campaign account took to Twitter to bash his predecessor:
