Beatriz Pascual Macias |
Washington (EFE).- Former US President Donald Trump (2017-2021), who has spent the last two months missing in his Mar-a-Lago mansion, relaunched his electoral campaign this Saturday to compete in the Republican primaries and opt for the White House in the 2024 elections.
Trump gave two rallies: one in New Hampshire and another in South Carolina, two of the first states to vote in the primary process, and in which he tried to downplay the voices calling for a generational renewal within the party or ensuring that voters are already tired of his figure.
“Now I’m angrier and more committed to this than ever before!” Trump shouted in New Hampshire, automatically drawing applause from the crowd.
The former president took the stage with the intention of making it clear that he is committed to his campaign for the Presidency, especially after various media outlets, such as The New York Magazine, will question his motivation to reach the White House.
Specifically, The New York Magazine published a report in December entitled “The Final Campaign”, in which several Trump advisers and former advisers assured that time had taken its toll on the former president and that the “magic had gone”.
Trump officially launched his campaign two months ago in a speech at his club in Mar-a-Lago, Florida, but until now he had not held any other electoral act.
This time, the former president gave shorter speeches than on other occasions. He did not appear before large crowds, but before a small audience.
Specifically, in the city of Salem, in New Hampshire, he gave a speech in the auditorium of a secondary school; while, in the state of South Carolina, he appeared accompanied by legislators from that state and local leaders in the state house in the city of Columbia.
Although the setting was different, the tone of his speech was the same and, as on other occasions, he began sentences that he lost track of to immediately link up with a different topic.
One of the central issues, however, was immigration: he again made proposals to strengthen the border and, similar to when he launched his campaign in 2016, he assured that migrants and refugees who arrive irregularly in the US are ” murderers” and “rapists”.
At the two rallies, he mocked the government of Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, and assured that when he was president of the United States, he pressured Mexico to accept the controversial “Stay in Mexico” program, which forced migrants and refugees to remain in that country while their asylum requests were resolved.
In addition, he boasted of the pressures to which he allegedly subjected the presidents of El Salvador, Guatemala and Nicaragua to prevent their citizens from migrating to the US.
Trump also had time to lash out at China and Germany, although he got the biggest applause when he got into the cultural issues that divide the United States.
He stated, for example, that if he returns to the White House, he will not allow transgender people to compete in sports that do not correspond to their biological sex.
Trump is the only figure from the Republican Party who has declared his intention to run in the primaries, despite the fact that he is involved in various legal troubles.
The former president is facing numerous investigations, including one by a special prosecutor appointed by the Justice Department to investigate his role in the 2021 assault on the Capitol and possession of classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago mansion.
The name that most sounds like a possible rival to Trump is that of the governor of Florida, Ron DeSantis, who has achieved the support of part of the Republican base with the approval of several conservative laws such as the one popularly known as “don’t say gay”, which prohibits talking about gender identity at school.