Just hours after his Mar-a-Lago estate was raided by the FBI on Monday night, Donald Trump posted a campaign-style video that left many wondering if he had made a final decision to run for the Oval Office again.
The three-minute-and-50-second video posted on the president’s Truth Social account opens with the sounds of thunder heard in the background.
“We are a nation in decline. We are a failing nation,” Trump opens the video with a somber voice.
The president goes on to call out the numerous crises facing America, including inflation, loss of energy independence, rising energy costs, rampant crime, Covid deaths, the chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan, media censorship, and the weaponization of law enforcement.
President Trump implicitly puts the blame for these and myriad other problems on President Biden’s departure from Trump’s America First agenda.
“We are a nation that is allowing Iran to build a massive nuclear weapon and China to use the trillions and trillions of dollars it’s taken from the United States to build a military to rival our own,” Trump says. In addition to that, Russia was allowed to “devastate a country, Ukraine, killing hundreds of thousands of people, and it will only get worse.”
“We are a nation that over the past two years is no longer respected or listened to all around the world,” and a nation that has become a “joke,” the president laments.
Just then, the clip takes on a more uplifting tune as it goes from black and white to color, and the music changes.
“But soon, we will have greatness again,” says Trump.
Echoing his inaugural speech in 2017, Trump said, “It is hard-working patriots like you who built this country, and it is hard-working patriots like you who are going to save our country,” as the camera shows people of all backgrounds wearing red “MAGA” and “Trump” hats and smiling.
Unlike Joe Biden, who does not like mentioning God in his speeches, Trump concludes,
The tyrants we are fighting do not stand even a little chance because we are Americans and Americans kneel to God and God alone. And it is time to start talking about greatness for our country again.
The video ends with the quote, “…the best is yet to come.”
The Tuesday video is just the latest of many hints at a 2024 presidential run that Trump has teased in recent months.
Recently, speaking during the America First Agenda summit at the end of July, the president lamented, among other things, the election fraud that occurred during the 2020 presidential election. He said, “I won, and I won a second time. Did much better the second time…. We may just have to do it again. We have to straighten out our country.”
Later in the speech he added that “this corrupt establishment” wants to “damage you in any form, but they really want to damage me, so I can no longer go back to work for you. And I don’t think that’s going to happen.”
After the FBI raided the former president’s home, family members went on air to speak about the D.C. establishment trying to keep Donald Trump from running again.
“They do it all for one reason: they don’t want Trump to run and win again in 2024. And, Sean, this is what it is about today,” said Eric Trump to Sean Hannity Monday night.
“I hope — and I’m saying this for the first time — I hope he goes out and beats these guys again. Because honestly, this country can’t survive this nonsense. It can’t,” he said.
Lara Trump, Eric’s wife and former campaign advisor to Donald Trump, said on Tucker Carlson Tonight that the “general establishment” — not just the Democrats — “is terrified” at the prospect of Donald Trump announcing “any day that he’s running for president in 2024” because “he’s not one of them, because he doesn’t play their game.”
The younger Trumps may have a point.
Marc Elias, a top lawyer for Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign and John Kerry’s 2004 presidential campaign, wrote that the FBI raid could have buried Trump’s plans for a possible return to the White House.
“The media is missing the really, really big reason why the raid today is a potential blockbuster in American politics,” Elias tweeted.
He referred to the passage of U.S. Code Title 18, Section 2071 that states, “Whoever, having the custody of any such record, proceeding, map, book, document, paper, or other thing, willfully and unlawfully conceals, removes, mutilates, obliterates, falsifies, or destroys the same, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than three years, or both; and shall forfeit his office and be disqualified from holding any office under the United States.”
The Washington, D.C., establishment has grounds to fear Trump’s return.
A Monday op-ed at Townhall reads,
If Trump wins a second election, what he did from 2017-2021 will be child’s play. It will be unlike what Washington has seen, striking fear into establishment Washington politicians and bureaucrats. In his first term, Trump trusted too many people from the Beltway; his second term would likely be even more destructive to D.C. politics.
A recent op-ed posted at The New American echoes the sentiment,
Should Trump return to the White House for another term, there’s no doubt that this time he will fully clean house and fill the government with officials who have proven themselves to be loyal to the America First movement.
The political climate in America is rapidly reaching a boiling point never before seen. The fact that Trump released the teasing video of him stopping close to announcing his bid might be viewed as his sending a message to the desperate Deep Staters tearing off their masks and revealing their tyrannical faces.
In Trump’s own words, “We will not bend. We will not break. We will not yield. Ever, ever, ever.”
