Photo: Scott Eisen/Getty Images
The ex-president donald trump He said on Saturday that he is “more committed” than ever to reclaiming the White House in a second presidential term, as he launches the campaign trail ahead of the 2024 election for the first time since announcing his third presidential run for the Republican Party in November.
When appearing in New Hampshire before making a second stop in South Carolina, Trump said he was “more angry” about the direction of the country and vowed to return to the nation’s first primary state “many, many more times” to repeat the top spot he achieved in that state in the 2016 election.
Trump lost New Hampshire in the 2016 election by one-third of a point and again in 2020 by 7 points, but he was victorious in the state’s primaries in those years.
“This is it,” Trump told members of the New Hampshire Republican Party at their annual gathering in Salem. “We are starting here as a candidate for president.”
Unlike the 2020 election, when Trump ran unopposed for president, Trump is expected to have a field of Republican rivals to contend with this time.
His campaign sent out a fundraising email Saturday declaring that “no other candidate is working this early to win every last vote,” and touting himself as “the first Republican presidential candidate to campaign in the first two states of the primaries.
At his first stop of the day, Trump announced that outgoing New Hampshire Republican Party Chairman Stephen Stepanek will join his campaign as a senior adviser.
Trump touted in New Hampshire his new proposal to eliminate federal funding for schools that they “promote critical race theory or left-wing gender ideology” and that parents elect school principals, a plan he referred to as “the last form of local control.”
He also boasted of the pressures to which he allegedly subjected the government of the president of Mexico, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, to accept the controversial “Stay in Mexico” program, created in 2019 and which forced migrants and refugees to remain in Mexico while their asylum requests were resolved.
Trump recalled that, then, he threatened Mexico with applying tariffs to all Mexican imports if he did not meet two conditions: accept the “Stay in Mexico” program and use members of the security forces to stop migrants on their way north.
Second election rally of the day
Former President Donald Trump is scheduled to hold his second campaign rally Saturday in Columbia, South Carolina.
Several of his campaign aides and allies were ready for the second stop of the Trump campaign, including senior advisers Brian Jack and Chris LaCivita and former White House social media director Dan Scavino.
With a podium stationed below the rotunda of the State Capitol and flanked by flags, the event will have all the makings of a presidential event.
A presidential candidate under criminal investigation
Donald Trump is under investigation by the Department of Justice and special counsel Jack Smith is overseeing the two criminal investigations about the retention of classified documents at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort and about parts of the January 6, 2021 insurrection at the US Capitol.
With information from Time, CNN and Politico
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