On Tuesday, Nov. 15, Donald Trump announced he will be running for President for the third time. This announcement came a week after numerous Trump-endorsed Republican candidates lost their respective races in the midterm elections.
Flanked by American flags in his Mar-a-Lago estate, the 45th President of the United States made his intentions clear.
“America’s comeback starts right now,” Trump declared to the crowd of supporters. “Your country is being destroyed before your eyes.”
Trump made other blunt claims in his speech, including repeating his “Make America Great Again” campaign slogan he has used since his 2016 Presidential run. Trump also asserted that the country is “worse off without [him]” at the helm, claiming “everybody was thriving, like never before” during his term.
The former President also took aim at Democrats Nancy Pelosi and President Joe Biden, expressing his grievances on President Biden’s approach to tackling rising inflation and energy prices. Trump also denounced migrants that have “invaded” the U.S. for “sinister and evil reasons,” blaming them for rising drug and crime rates. He went on to downplay climate change, arguing that the threat of nuclear war is more of an issue.
Trump notably made no mention of his belief that the 2020 election was a massive fraud, nor did he acknowledge the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol by his supporters.
Since his 2020 election defeat, Trump has launched a series of relentless attacks on the integrity of U.S. voting, claiming that the results were rigged. Trump’s Jan. 6 “Stop the Steal” rally against the 2020 election results led to an insurrection on The Capitol. The violent attempt to disrupt Congress’ certification of President Joe Biden’s 2020 victory led to five deaths, hundreds of arrests and Trump’s second impeachment.
Trump’s announcement raises questions about the multiple investigations Trump is embroiled in. The Department of Justice (DOJ) has launched a criminal investigation into whether Trump concealed classified materials at his Mar-a-Lago home after he left office. Georgia’s Fulton County District Attorney Fani Wills has a criminal probe on Trump’s alleged efforts to overturn election results. New York’s Attorney General Letitia James has filed a $250 million lawsuit against the Trump Administration, alleging that Trump and his kids were involved in efforts to falsely inflate the former President’s assets by billions of dollars.
Four days after Trump’s reelection announcement, Elon Musk, who recently purchased Twitter, revealed that Trump’s Twitter account would be reinstated. This announcement came nearly two years after the former President’s account on the platform was banned after pro-Trump supporters stormed the Capitol
The decision arrived after Musk held a poll on the platform where users could vote “yes” or “no” on whether the former President’s account should be reinstated. A slim majority of 51.8% of participants voted affirmatively on the matter.
Musk noted his disapproval of Trump being banned on the platform in May, months prior to his $44 billion acquisition of the company on Oct. 28. In a speech at a Tesla conference earlier this year, the Tesla CEO asserted that Twitter’s ban of Trump was a “morally bad decision” and “foolish in the extreme,” indicating his intent to bring the former President back onto the platform if he purchased the company.
Despite Musk’s support of Trump’s return to the dove-emblazoned company, the two have a less than amicable history. Days before the 2016 election, Musk asserted that Trump “doesn’t seem to have the sort of character that reflects well on the United States;” meanwhile, Musk informed CNBC of his generally favorable stance on Hillary Clinton’s economic and environmental plans.
On Jan. 28, 2017, days after Trump’s inauguration, Musk addressed his dislike for Trump’s call to temporarily ban those from predominantly Muslim countries from entering the United States. A few months later, on June 1, Musk would criticize Trump yet again, this time on his decision to have the United States depart from the Paris Agreement.
Despite these previous altercations, Trump would praise the tech billionaire in January 2020, comparing Musk to a modern-day Thomas Edison in a CNBC interview. In the final months of his presidency, Trump defended Musk’s calls to reopen Tesla’s plant in Fremont, California, which had been shut down amid growing COVID-19 restrictions. Trump and Musk would possess several similar views on pandemic precautions, and both questioned mainstream scientific input on COVID-19 and asserted that policies intended to protect Americans at the start of the pandemic “violated their constitutional rights.”
Trump has yet to return to Twitter since his reinstatement on the platform, electing to instead use his Twitter alternative, Truth Social. Musk has said he is “fine with Trump not tweeting.” He continued by writing, “The important thing is that Twitter corrected a grave mistake in banning his account, despite no violation of the law or terms of service.”
