Former President Donald Trump on Saturday alluded to launching a 2024 campaign, telling a crowd gathered at a rally in Texas that he “will probably have to do it again.”
“I ran twice. I won twice. I did much better the second time than I did before,” he said at an event in Robstown, just outside of Corpus Christi, while appearing to repeat false claims that he won his 2020 reelection bid against Joe Biden.
“Getting millions more votes in 2020 than 2016 and likewise, getting more votes than any sitting president in the history of our country by far. And now in order to make our country successful, safe and glorious again, I will probably have to do it again,” he continued.
His comments follow reports that he could announce a White House run in the coming weeks.
His former adviser, Kellyanne Conway, told CBS News a few weeks ago that Trump “wants his old job back” and “would like to” announce his run after the November midterms, likely by Thanksgiving.
House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) said in July that he personally advised Trump not to announce another run until after the midterms, saying it could take attention away from other GOP candidates’ campaigns.
“My point to him has always [been], ‘Let’s go win ’22,’” McCarthy told reporters, according to CNN.
Thus far, no other major Republican has formally announced a 2024 run, and Trump has worked to keep it that way. In a recent interview, he suggested anyone who runs against him would find themselves in hot water.
“Many of them have said they would never run if I run, so we’ll see whether or not that turns out to be true,” he said. “I think it would be very disloyal if they did.”
White House run aside, Trump appears to have plenty of other important matters to tend to in the coming weeks.
His suggested campaign run in Texas came one day after he was subpoenaed by the House committee investigating last year’s deadly riot at the U.S. Capitol by Trump supporters. He’s been asked to submit evidence by Nov. 4 and sit for a deposition on Nov. 14 to discuss his actions during the violence.
“We have assembled overwhelming evidence, including from dozens of your former appointees and staff, that you personally orchestrated and oversaw a multi-part effort to overturn the 2020 presidential election and obstruct the peaceful transfer of power,” the committee told him in a letter accompanying the subpoena.