Former US president Donald Trump has given his clearest indication yet that he intends to run for the presidency in 2024, saying he is “100 per cent thinking about running again” and promising: “We will be very successful.”
Mr Trump was speaking to Maria Bartiromo on the Fox Business news channel in response to President Biden’s address to Congress on Wednesday evening marking his first 100 days in the White House.
In a sweeping speech, Mr Biden had described the opening months of his tenure as ones of “crisis and opportunity”, declaring that “America is rising anew” and detailing his plans to revive the economy following the coronavirus pandemic and tackle the climate emergency.
The Republican Party’s official riposte to Mr Biden was delivered on Wednesday night by Tim Scott, senator for South Carolina, but Mr Trump wasted little time in calling in to his preferred network broadcaster to offer his version of events.
Asked by Ms Bartiromo whether he would consider Florida’s governor, Ron DeSantis, as his next running mate, after falling out with his vice-president, Mike Pence, in the final weeks of his first term, Mr Trump would only say that Mr DeSantis was a “great guy” whom he had a lot of admiration for.
He told his loyal supporters to “have faith” in his failed Make America Great Again movement and bemoaned “ridiculous” political fundraising rules when pressed for more details of his future campaigning activities.
The ex-president, now a private citizen in the Sunshine State, also proclaimed himself “the father of the vaccine” and said he deserved more credit for the US coronavirus response, argued that Mr Biden is “destroying our country” with his policy on immigration at the US-Mexico border – warning falsely that “murderers” are flooding in from Central America – and said that it was “unfair” that federal prosecutors had executed a search warrant at the apartment of his former personal attorney Rudy Giuliani, a grievance he returned to repeatedly.
But perhaps his most bizarre claim over the course of a characteristically long and rambling interview light on specifics was that Democratic lawmakers had appeared to be “choking” on their face masks during the presidential address to Congress, noting that the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, was wearing one of the biggest he had ever seen.
