In Washington return, Trump hints at 2024 run
Donald Trump returned to Washington on Tuesday for the first time since leaving the White House 18 months ago, delivering a fiery speech sprinkled with strong hints that he may run for president again in 2024. The 76-year-old Trump stopped short of declaring his candidacy, but laid out what he believed should be the priorities for the "next Republican president." "I always say I ran the first time and I won, then I ran a second time and I did much better," Trump said in a 90-minute speech at the right-wing America First Policy Institute. "We may just have to do it again. We have to straighten out our country. "I look forward to laying out many more details in the weeks and months to come." Trump repeated his false claims that he won the 2020 election and denounced the House committee investigation into the January 6 attack on the US Capitol by his supporters as the work of "political hacks and thugs." "If I renounced my beliefs, if I agreed to stay silent, if I stayed at home and just took it easy, the persecution of Donald Trump would stop immediately," he said. "But that's not what I will do. I can't do that. "They really want to damage me so I can no longer go back to work for you," he said. He also lashed out repeatedly at Democratic President Joe Biden, blaming him for the country's ills, from inflation to crime.  Trump said the United States "is now a cesspool of crime." "We have blood, death and suffering on a scale once unthinkable," he said. "Democrat-run cities are setting all-time murder records." He accused Biden of having "surrendered in Afghanistan," and allowing Russia to invade Ukraine. "It would never ever, ever have happened if I was your commander-in-chief," he said. Since taking his last Air Force One flight from Washington to Florida on January 20 last year, Trump has remained the country's most polarising figure, continuing his unprecedented campaign to sow doubts about his 2020 election loss to Biden. For weeks, Washington has been riveted by hearings in Congress about the January 6 storming of the Capitol by a Trump mob and his attempts to overturn the election. (AFP)