Chris Lange, FISM News
Donald Trump appeared to signal a possible 2024 campaign for the presidency during his first rally of 2022 Saturday.
Addressing a large crowd gathered at the Country Thunder festival grounds in Florence, Arizona, the former president declared that “we are going to take back the White House” in 2024. Trump also predicted “a great red wave” in this year’s midterm elections that will see Republicans take back the House and Senate.
Arizona is considered a key battleground in the 2022 midterms and is one of six states where Biden narrowly edged Trump in 2020 to take control of the White House.
Throughout his speech, Trump repeatedly took aim at President Biden, calling his successor “incompetent” and blasting him for his handling of the pandemic, the economy, foreign policy, and crime.
Trump also took the opportunity to repeat his assertion that the 2020 election was “rigged,” stating, “I ran twice and we won twice.” A GOP–driven audit of votes conducted in Maricopa County last year found that Biden won Arizona’s most populous county by a slightly-larger margin than certified election results indicated.
“Voter integrity is a huge issue within the Republican grassroots and there are a lot of Republicans that are sort of out of touch with how a lot of Republicans feel about the 2020 election,” GOP strategist Ford O’Connell told The Hill. “Republicans by and large feel that the 2020 election was riddled with problems and that those problems are not being addressed by Republicans in elected office, not just in Arizona but across the country,” he continued.
Critics of the former president are predicting that he will continue doubling down on his stolen election claims in future rallies, which sources close to Trump say will be held roughly twice a month going forward. “If there’s one thing we know about Trump, the only thing he likes more than winning is being a victim,” said Republican strategist Keith Naughton.
Meanwhile, the Biden administration and Democratic lawmakers remain laser-focused on the Jan. 6 Capitol riot and their partisan push for massive voting reforms.
Trump’s next rally is set to take place Jan. 29 in Conroe, Texas, near Houston.