Roving Periscope: Donald Trump to make “big announcement” on Nov. 15
Virendra Pandit
New Delhi: As the fast-aging US President Joe Biden, 79, flounders on all fronts, his younger predecessor Donald Trump, 76, is trying to make a comeback in 2024.
On Monday, Trump said he will make a “very big announcement” next week.
The maverick business owner-turned-politician, who never accepted the truth of his lost re-election bid in 2020, has hinted for months that he is ready to re-enter the fray.
He might jump into the race for the White House in 2024, the media reported on Tuesday.
“Not to detract from tomorrow’s very important, even critical, election… I’m going to be making a very big announcement on Tuesday, November 15, at Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Florida,” he told a cheering Republican crowd in Ohio on the eve of the mid-term US polls which will determine control of Congress as Democrats, led by Biden, struggle to keep their nose up.
The trail was the closest the Republican leader has got to confirming his intention to re-run, building on his message last week that he “will very, very, very probably do it again.”
So far, Trump waged two election campaigns for the President of the USA. In 2016, he defeated Democrat Hillary Clinton to become the 45th president. In 2020, he campaigned for re-election but lost to current US president Joe Biden.
In recent months, Trump has been increasingly explicit about his plans to launch a third presidential campaign. “I will probably have to do it again but stay tuned,” he said Sunday night in Miami.
Reacting to his predecessor’s challenges, President Joe Biden made a final appeal on Tuesday, hours ahead of the midterms, asking voters to protect democracy by backing Democrats, and defeating Trump’s Republicans in an election that polls show could upend power in Washington, the media reported.
“Our lifetimes are going to be shaped by what happens. We know in our bones that our democracy is at risk and we know that this is your moment to defend it,” Biden said. “The power is in your hands,” he told Democrats. “So vote, get out the vote.”
Biden’s Democrats currently control both the houses of US Parliament—the House of Representatives and the Senate. Losing any or both bodies to Republicans would significantly decrease Democrats’ power in the next two years of President Joe Biden’s remaining term.
