Donald Trump is back in Washington Tuesday for the first time since leaving in disgrace 18 months ago and his speech to a right-wing think tank will shed light on whether the Republican is serious about trying to return — as president.
Since taking his last Air Force One flight from Washington to Florida on January 20 last year, Trump has remained the country’s most polarizing figure, continuing his unprecedented campaign to sow doubts about his 2020 election loss to Joe Biden.
For weeks, Washington has been riveted by hearings in Congress on the January 6, 2021, riot by a Trump mob and the defeated president’s attempts to overturn the election.
Now, a short distance away across the same city, Trump will get his say.
With Biden’s approval rating currently below 40 percent and Democrats forecasted to lose control of Congress in November midterm elections, Trump is apparently bullish that he could ride the Republican wave all the way to the White House in 2024.
An announcement is not expected during his speech to the America First Policy Institute, a think tank run by allies.
But the timing of the Washington appearance and the symbolism of the setting reflect Trump’s growing confidence that he has survived the fallout from his supporters’ assault on Congress, emerging with his standing as the biggest name in Republican politics intact.
A spokesman, Taylor Budowich, said Trump, 76, would look forward.
“President Trump sees a nation in decline that is driven, in part, by rising crime and communities becoming less safe under Democrat policies,” Budowich said in a statement.
“His remarks will highlight the policy failures of Democrats, while laying out an America First vision for public safety that will surely be a defining issue during the midterms and beyond.”
– Attack on democracy –
That Trump is headlining a high-profile Republican event in the US capital, let alone mulling an attempt to recapture the White House in two years, is remarkable.
In the hours after the January 6 riot, even some of his most senior boosters in Congress publicly disowned him.
But a year and a half later, despite an ever-darkening picture of his attempts to undermine the election, just a handful of Republican lawmakers dare oppose Trump, while the party’s most active fringe embraces his election conspiracy theories.
On the Democratic side, fury at Trump is also providing energy in the run-up to the difficult midterms.
Hearings on a Democratic-run House of Representatives committee have laid out evidence that Trump oversaw nothing less than an attempt to break US democracy, first through trying to rig complex electoral procedures behind the scenes and finally in encouraging a mob to attack legislators certifying his loss.
Facing chatter that at 79 he is too old to be thinking about seeking a second term in 2024, Biden says the specter of another Trump candidacy is one of his main motivations for running again.
On the eve of Trump’s Washington return, Biden lashed out in unusually strong language, describing how police at the Capitol on January 6 “were subject to the medieval hell for three hours, dripping in blood, surrounded by carnage, face to face with the crazed mob that believed the lies of the defeated president.”
Trump, meanwhile, “watched it all happen as he sat in the comfort of the private dining room next to the Oval Office,” Biden said.
– Trump in pole position –
Potential Republican rivals are gaining ground as the negative publicity piles up around Trump.
All eyes are on the progress of Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, who has not declared a bid for the presidency, but has growing stature on the right.
And a recent New York Times/Siena College poll showed that nearly half of Republican primary voters would vote for any Republican other than Trump.
Last week, the right-leaning editorial boards of two newspapers owned by the Murdoch family, the Wall Street Journal and the New York Post, issued harsh critiques of Trump’s behavior during the January 6 calamity.
Trump showed he is “unworthy” of becoming president again, the usually friendly Post wrote.
However, Trump’s agenda portraying America as under attack by illegal immigrants, extreme leftists and the “woke” liberal culture, is unchallenged in the Republican party, while enormously popular commentators on Murdoch-owned Fox News continue to cheer for Trump himself.
Even Trump’s former vice president Mike Pence, whose life was threatened during the Capitol assault and is now touted as a more moderate alternative in 2024, was notably mild about his old boss during a speech at a separate event in Washington on Tuesday.
“I don’t know that the president and I differ on issues. But we may differ on focus,” Pence said of Trump.
