donald trump had not returned to Washington since his departure from the White House. He returned this Tuesday, where in the evening he gave a speech loaded with the same exaggerations and falsehoods as always, and new ones, in a springboard for his return to the campaign trail, and an eventual return to the presidency. But the waters in the Republican Party they are divided.
Trump attended an event America First Policy Institutea panel of experts administered by his allies, former advisers and officials of his administration.
In a more radical speech, Trump made clear his intention to return to the presidential race in 2024 and repeated to his acolytes that a fraud removed him from the presidency.
Trump made clear his intention to return to the presidential race in 2024. Photo: Mandel Ngan / AFP
Under the argument that the survival of the country is at stake, the former president flirted with appearing again to resolve a present, according to him, apocalyptic.
“The next Congress and president should put an end to this madness and move very quickly and determinedly to defend people’s civil liberties. The safety of law-abiding Americans cannot be violated by weak mayors and cowardly governors,” Trump said to standing applause.
“The story is far from over and we prepare to an amazing comebackWe have no other choice,” he added.
Death penalty
The former president suggested very strong arguments to deal with what he sees as a declining nation in the grip of crime.
“If you execute a drug dealer you save 500 lives. It’s terrible to say but if you look at every country in this world that doesn’t have a drug problem, it’s because they have a solid death penalty for people who sell drugs,” he argued.
Trump further added that the homeless should be sent to camps in the suburbs Y extend the border wall on the southern border.
Donald Trump arrives at the America First Policy Institute in Washington. Photo: Mandel Ngan / AFP
a divided party
In the other corner of the ring, while Trump fulfilled his role as Trump, his former vice president Mike Pence was also addressing another audience in Washington, with the same intentions of getting on the 2024 campaign ship.
The growing rivalry between former President Trump and his once-loyal vice was clearly on display in his speeches about the future of the Republican Party
Unlike Trump, Pence asked the Republican Party turn the page of defeat of the former president.
Former allies. Rivals today. Trump and Pence. Photo: AP
Federal and state election officials from both parties, and Trump’s own attorney general, have said there is no credible evidence that the 2020 election was rigged. The former president’s fraud allegations were also roundly rejected by the courts, including by Trump-appointed judges.
“That election was a catastrophe,” Trump declared to an audience of cheering supporters a mile from the White House, the place he once called home.
Hours earlier, in a speech to a conservative group of students, Pence said that “some people might choose to focus on the past, but lElections are about the future.”
Pence speaks to a group of young people in Washington. Photo: Nathan Howard/Getty Images/AFP
Both speeches highlighted divisions within the Republican Party among people loyal to Trump who refuses to accept 2020 results and those who believe the party should focus on the future heading into the year-end elections and beyond.
And those differences come amid efforts by Trump and Pence to pave the way for their likely presidential bids.
Trump makes no secret of his intentions. “Maybe we have to do it again,” he said Tuesday in his speech to a group of former White House officials and former Cabinet members who have been crafting an agenda with a view to a possible second term.
Demonstrators protest outside the hotel where Trump spoke on Tuesday. Photo: EFE
Pence outlined his own “Freedom Agenda” in which he laid out a different vision for the party at a conference a short distance from Trump’s.
“I believe that conservatives must focus on the future to take America back. We must not take our eyes off the road in front of us because what is at stake is the very survival of our way of life,” Pence told the Young Foundation. America’s.
For Trump, the survival of the United States is also at stake, in his speech that turned on public security.
Joe Biden was quick to reply.
Biden refuted Trump’s claim that he was a president who put public safety first.
“I do not think that inciting a mob that attacks a police officer is `respect the law’. You cannot be a pro-insurgency and pro-police person, nor pro-democracy nor pro-American,” the president tweeted, referring to the January 6 assault on Capitol Hill, which according to a parliamentary commission was encouraged by Trump himself.
In his remarks, Trump could not hold back his usual grievances even though some advisers have recommended that he put them behind him and move forward.
“If I gave up my beliefs, if I agreed to stay quiet, if I stayed home and took it easy, the persecution of Donald Trump would stop immediately,” he said. “But that’s not what I’m going to do.”
Despite Trump’s reputation for mercilessly criticizing his rivals, Pence and other potential Republican contenders they dare more and more to face the man which remains a dominant force in the Republican Party.
PA and RFI
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