COLUMBIA, SC ( Associated Press) – Former President Donald Trump launched his campaign to win the White House in 2024 on Saturday with events in New Hampshire and South Carolina, two early voting events in the states, more than twice his candidacy. Months ago for the first time after announcing
“Together we will finish the unfinished business of making America great again,” Trump said at an event in Columbia to introduce his South Carolina leadership team.
Trump and his allies are hoping the event will be a show of force for the former president after a slow start to the campaign that left many doubting his conviction to run again.
“He said: ‘He’s not doing rallies, he’s not campaigning. Maybe I missed that step,'” Trump said at his first event, the New Hampshire Republican Party annual meeting in Salem.
But, he told an audience of party leaders, “I am now angrier and more determined than ever.” In South Carolina, he dismissed speculation by saying that “we have plans for big demonstrations, bigger than ever.”
While Trump has spent the months since making the announcement largely at his Florida club and nearby golf course, his aides insist they have been keeping busy behind the scenes. His campaign has opened a branch in Palm Beach, Florida and is recruiting. And in recent weeks, his supporters have turned to political operatives and elected officials for their support at a critical time when other Republicans are preparing their own campaigns.
In New Hampshire, Trump touted his campaign agenda, which included immigration and crime, and said his policies would run against President Joe Biden. He cited the Democrats’ decision to change the election calendar, which gave New Hampshire its first place in the primary, and accused Biden, who finished fifth in New Hampshire in 2020, of “shamefully breaking this cherished tradition”. have destroyed.” Politics.
“I hope they remember during the general election,” Trump told party members. Trump himself won the primary twice, but both times he lost to the Democrats in the state.
Later in South Carolina, Trump said he planned to face the state’s presidential primary as a “first in the state” and called it “a very important state”.
In his speech, he ranged from criticizing Biden and the Democrats to derogatory comments about transgender people, mocking people promoting electric stoves and electric cars, and increasing oil production, attacking trade deals and unauthorized immigration. Recalled efforts to work as president to curb. US-Mexico border.
Although Trump is the only person to have announced his presidential candidacy for 2024, other candidates are expected to do so in the coming months, among them Florida Governor Ron DeSantis; Former Vice President Mike Pence and Nikki Haley, former South Carolina governor and Trump’s ambassador to the United Nations.
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Kinnard reported from Columbia, South Carolina, and Colvin from New York. Associated Press writer Michelle L. Price contributed to this report.
