Video Editor: Ashutosh Bhardwaj
January was the last we saw of Donald Trump.
After delivering a provocative speech at a rally urging his supporters to storm the Capitol, and the subsequent insurrection, the former US president was banned from Twitter and Facebook.
Ever since, Donald Trump, who is living in Mar-A-Lago after leaving office on 20 January, has been gearing up to get back in the race to 2024 elections.
Where Has He Been?
For six months now, Trump has been holed up in his Mar-A-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Florida, reportedly playing golf and hanging out with maskless people.
Far from having moved on and still upset over his loss to Joe Biden in the 2020 presidential elections, he continues to rake up his false grievance about voter fraud, and spew hate.
In a Republican donors’ retreat in Mar-A-Lago, Trump left no stone unturned to lash out at Kenutcky Senator Mitch McConnell, calling him “a dumb son of a bitch”. McConnell’s only “folly” was not defending Trump in the impeachment trial which followed the Capitol riot.
He has also been targeting Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and a key member of Trump’s coronavirus taskforce, for being realistic about the American’s COVID-19 situation under Trump, saying “Have you ever seen somebody who is so full of crap?”
Besides, lashing out at his former cohorts, Trump had ambitious plans to start his own blog, called ‘From the Desk of Donald J Trump’ – but barely a month after launching it in May, he had to shut it down for lack of readers.
Now, latest reports reveal the former US president is writing a book. “I’m writing like crazy,” he said in a statement released through his leadership PAC, “and when the time comes, you’ll see the book of all books,” reported Business Insider.
But what’s more, he’s gearing up to run for 2024, and already on the campaign trail for the midterms.
Is Trump Still Popular?
The days of ‘covfefe’ and angry rants on social media are past us.
Having provided the internet a lifetime inventory of memes, Trump is no longer offering fodder to the press to dutifully report his everyday diatribe. This lack of media and internet presence, however, is taking a toll on his popularity with the masses.
A recent report by The Washington Post’s showed that Google search interest and cable-news images of Trump have both gone back to what it was before he ran for office.
Even some registered Republicans no longer curry favour with Trump, with an NBC poll indicating that Republican support for the party is greater than the support for the former president, who is favoured by 44 percent of Republicans only.
However, a report by The Atlantic states the fact that he is longer president is by and large the main reason behind the decline in popularity.
That said, the staunch Trump supporters continue to support and further his agenda more than ever.
The Race to 2024
His ‘oxygen’ snuffed out since Big Tech banned him, reports suggest Trump has been plotting his return to the political arena.
At a recent rally in North Carolina, Trump claimed that his defeat by President Joe Biden last November was "the crime of the century" and likened the 2020 presidential contest to a "third-world" election, reported CNN.
This reiteration came as a disappointment to Republicans who hoped he would keep his focus on policy and Democratic shortcomings.
Gearing up for the 2022 midterm term election, which if won by Republicans could mean trouble for the Biden administration, Trump said this is the first step to his second run for president in 2024.
Meanwhile, in worrying developments, a Reuters reports suggests that election officials in Georgia are getting death threats ever since the state supported Biden in the polls.
Whether or not Trump returns to power remains to be seen, but the recent change in America’s image under Biden’s leadership may take a turn for the worse if the midterms are claimed by Republicans.
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