America ‘On Its Knees’: Trump Touts Elections Lies, Hints At 2024 White House Run

By Staff, Agencies

Donald Trump returned to Washington on Tuesday for the first time since leaving the White House 18 months ago, delivering a fiery speech sprinkled with strong hints he may run for the US presidency again in 2024.

The 76-year-old Trump stopped short of declaring his candidacy, but laid out what he believed should be the priorities for the “next Republican president.”

“I always say I ran the first time and I won, then I ran a second time and I did much better,” Trump said. “We may just have to do it again. We have to straighten out our country.”

“I look forward to laying out many more details in the weeks and months to come.”

Federal and state election officials from both parties and Trump’s own attorney general have said there is no credible evidence the 2020 election was tainted. The former president’s allegations of fraud were also roundly rejected by courts, including by judges he appointed.

But Trump continued to deny his loss as he made his first appearance in the nation’s capital since January 20, 2021, when President Joe Biden was sworn into office despite Trump’s frantic efforts to remain in power.

“It was a catastrophe that election,” Trump declared about a mile from the White House he once called home.

Trump has spent much of his time since leaving office spreading lies about his loss to sow doubt about Biden’s victory. Indeed, even as the House Jan. 6 committee has been laying bare his attempts to remain in power and his refusal to call off a violent mob of his supporters as they tried to halt the peaceful transition of power, Trump has continued to try to pressure officials to overturn Biden’s win, despite there being no legal means to decertify it.

Trump, in his remarks, spent plenty of time airing his usual grievances. His 90-minute address to the conservative America First Policy Institute echoed many of the themes of his 2016 campaign, including illegal immigration and crime.

Trump repeated his false claims that he won the 2020 election and denounced the House committee investigation into the January 6 attack on the US Capitol by his supporters as the work of “political hacks and thugs.”

“If I renounced my beliefs, if I agreed to stay silent, if I stayed at home and just took it easy, the persecution of Donald Trump would stop immediately,” he said. “But that’s not what I will do. I can’t do that.

Trump lashed out repeatedly at Biden, blaming him for the country’s ills.

“We are a nation in decline,” he said. “We are a failing nation.”

“Inflation is the highest in 49 years,” Trump said “Gas prices have reached the highest in the history of our country.”

He also accused Biden of allowing an “invasion” by millions of migrants crossing the southern border.”

“Other countries very happily send all of their criminals now through our open border into the United States,” he said.

“The next Republican president must immediately implement every aspect of the Trump agenda that achieved the most secure border in history,” he said.

Trump said the United States “is now a cesspool of crime.”

“We have blood, death and suffering on a scale once unthinkable,” he said. “Democrat-run cities are setting all-time murder records.”

The former president said the US is now “a beggar nation” that has been “literally brought to its knees.”

He accused Biden of having “surrendered in Afghanistan,” and allowing Russia to invade Ukraine.

“It would never ever, ever have happened if I was your commander-in-chief,” he claimed.