Washington: Former US President Donald Trump plans to make an announcement on Tuesday that, he said, would be the “most historic day in the country’s history”.
Though he has been coy about the nature of the announcement, he has been teasing a third run for the White House.
Undeterred by electoral reverses suffered by Republican candidates fielded, funded and endorsed by him in the 2022 midterm elections, Trump has been toying a run and, according to reports, he is planning to announce it on Tuesday, ignoring advisers who want him to delay till after the Senate run-off race Georgia between sitting Democratic Senator Raphael Warnock and the Republican challenger Herschel Walker.
“Hopefully, tomorrow will turn out to be one of the most important days in the history of our country,” Trump wrote on Truth Social, a social media platform he founded to counter the Twitter, which had shut down his account for peddling lies about his election defeat in 2020, which had eventually led to the shocking attack on US congress to prevent a joint session of lawmakers from certifying Joe Biden’s election as president.
Trump and his aides have been signaling for a while that he will run again, but the numbers of other Republicans also considering a run has been growing and some of them are outshining him already, such as Ron DeSantis, the Florida governor who has emerged as a frontrunner after a thumping re-election victory in the just concluded midterms.
The conservative leading New York Post has already crowned him in a headline on his re-election – DeFUTURE. New polls show him beating Trump in early polling states.
Analysts say Trump is in a hurry to announce a run for two reasons chiefly. One, to freeze out the likes of DeSantis; and others who could primary him and that list is already quite crowded, with former Vice-President Mike Pence, former Secretary of State Mike Pence, former US ambassador to UN Nikky Haley and Senator Josh Hawley.
Two, and possibly more urgent, could be the number of investigations and cases against him – from taking confidential presidential papers home in violation of laws to trying to overturn the outcome of the 2020 presidential election to tax evasion by the Trump Organization. As a candidate for the White House, Trump could try to dismiss these cases as political.
But there are those, such as Trump’s former lawyer Michael Cohen, who believe the former president does not have it in him to mount another White House run. Cohen, who has had a very bitter breakup with Trump, says his former boss’s brittle ego will prevent him from risking another election defeat, specially as he has still not accepted the 2020 loss.
Others have pointed to the complete repudiation of his brand of politics as reflected in the defeat of candidates backed by him. They had won their primaries echoing Trump’s lies, which won them the approval of the party’s base, but lost the independents and others who could have helped them in the general election.
Will Trump run again?
(IANS)
