AMAC Exclusive – By Seamus Brennan

In an hour-long speech from the ballroom of his stately Mar-a-Lago residence, Donald Trump invoked the optics of his 2016 campaign launch and formally announced his comeback candidacy for the White House in 2024.

“In order to make America great and glorious again, I am tonight announcing my candidacy for President of the United States,” Trump said in the long-anticipated remarks. “This will not be my campaign. This will be our campaign. This is a task for a great movement. This is not for any one individual. This is a job for tens of thousands of people working together.”

After months of publicly teasing another run for the presidency, Trump’s announcement comes at a time when the GOP establishment and mainstream media apparatus—not unlike the early days of his 2016 campaign—are again actively working to tarnish his political profile and force him to exit the political stage. Yet, with his Tuesday night announcement, Trump has once again outwitted his media foes, shifted the momentum in his favor, and revealed the extraordinary extent to which the American media has lost its credibility as a prime mover in American politics.

In his remarks, Trump revisited the litany of successes of his first term—including a historically strong economy, strong border security measures, energy independence, and a renewed position of strength in international affairs—nearly all of which have been reversed by the Biden administration in its first two years. “We are a nation in decline. We are a failing nation for millions of Americans,” Trump said.

In addition to laying out the accomplishments of his first four years in office, Trump presented a clear and compelling vision for a second term—including novel policy ideas like imposing congressional term limits, banning the taxpayer funding of campaigns, returning to only paper ballots in elections, instituting the death penalty for drug dealers, rehiring servicemembers who were fired for refusing to take the COVID vaccine, and clamping down on the teaching of Critical Race Theory in schools.

“This campaign will be about issues, vision and success, and we will not stop, we will not quit, until we’ve achieved the highest goals and made our country greater than it has ever been before,” he continued. “I am running because I believe the world has not yet seen the true glory of what this nation can be. We have not reached that pinnacle, believe it or not.”

Trump’s announcement notably came just days after the 2022 midterm elections, after which many establishment figures on the right—in conjunction with many members of the media—baselessly blamed Trump for the Republican Party’s worse-than-expected performances. But the GOP consulting class’s opposition to a Trump 2024 run thus far appears overwhelmingly similar to their hostility toward Trump’s 2016 campaign—and reiterates that Washington, D.C. Republican elites still largely fail to understand the conditions that led to Trump’s rise and the reasons for his enduring political strength.

In reality, by hysterically insisting that Trump is “finally finished” and that Republicans are “done” with him, these media and establishment figures are creating precisely the same conditions that allowed Trump to dominate the 2016 GOP primary field and win the White House as an underdog. Trump is—and always has been—the anti-establishment candidate, and ironically, few entities are now doing more to bolster his campaign than the same establishment figures, organizations, and movements ostensibly committed to ensuring his political demise.

“As I promised in 2016, I am your voice,” Trump said on Tuesday in his engaging and thoughtful remarks. “The Washington establishment wants to silence us, but we will not let them do that. What we have built together over the past six years is the greatest movement in history, because it is not about politics—it’s about our love for this great country.”

Just as he did when he came down the golden escalator in Trump Tower in June of 2015, Trump is all but guaranteed to face a relentless wave of opposition and vitriol from forces that will do everything in their power to preserve the political status quo and prevent Trump from returning to office. But unlike the first time he ran for office, Trump has now succeeded in shattering the globalist political paradigm and in fundamentally shifting the American political landscape in ways that will be difficult to reverse. And as the past six years have shown, no matter how desperately the media wants to take him down, Donald Trump is not going anywhere.

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