Trump slammed his now-official 2024 rival Biden while repeating warnings about immigration, crime and the economy.
Former President Donald Trump lashed out at Joe Biden on Tuesday just hours after the current president announced his reelection campaign, calling Biden’s time at the helm a “calamitous and failed presidency” that has “humiliated” the nation.
Trump’s statement marks the first official volley in a fight between the two that could very well end in a general election re-match.
Trump, who has already announced his candidacy for the Republican nomination, repeated the lie that the 2020 election was fraudulent while slamming Biden for a litany of policy issues and painting a picture of a nation seriously in crisis.
“You could take the five worst presidents in American history, and put them together, and they would not have done the damage Joe Biden has done to our Nation in just a few short years. Not even close,” Trump said in the statement.
The former president attacked Biden on the economy, noting high inflation rates that have materialized in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.
“Thanks to Joe Biden’s socialist spending calamity, American families are being decimated by the worst inflation in half a century. Banks are failing. Our currency is crashing and the dollar will soon no longer be the world standard, which will be our greatest defeat in over 200 years. Real wages have been falling 24 months in a row – in other words, under Biden, workers have gotten a PAY CUT each and every month for two straight years,” Trump said.
Trump also focused on immigration in comments about migrants that echoed his controversial statements in his now-famous 2015 “golden elevator” speech announcing his first bid for the presidency.
“Under Biden, the Southern Border has been abolished – and millions of illegal aliens have been released into our communities. What’s happening now is beyond belief,” Trump said in the sentence. “They’re coming in from mental institutions and prisons. They are all being emptied. They are being dumped into the United States of America. Many of these people are very dangerous, they are being dumped. We are like a dumping ground.”
The former president hit on a grab bag of culture and policy issues central to the Republican platform, including gender issues, crime and a military that he described as “woke.”
The statement was issued hours after Biden released a three-minute video early Tuesday announcing his reelection campaign.
The announcement comes four years to the day after Biden began his campaign for the 2020 election, in which he eventually prevailed over Trump in a contentious battle that ended in Trump declaring the election rigged – a lie that inspired the violent insurrection at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
Trump is currently topping the field of GOP candidates both official and expected, leading many polls by double digits.
In a survey conducted over the weekend by Morning Consult, Trump nabs 58% percent support from potential GOP primary voters – a startling 37-point lead over the next highest polling candidate, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who has not yet announced his campaign but is widely expected to seek the nomination.
Though Trump appeared to face headwinds after Republicans’ disappointing results during the 2022 midterm elections, he has gradually widened the gap between him and DeSantis, shoring up a growing list of congressional endorsements along the way.
Biden has hinted for months that he planned to run for reelection. He is facing primary challengers in spiritual guru and author Marianne Williamson and anti-vaccine activist Robert F. Kennedy Jr. – though neither is expected to amount to a serious threat to his securing the Democratic nomination.
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