Former US President Donald Trump has said that he may run for president a third time in 2024
He also said the Supreme Court “should be ashamed of themselves” for refusing to overturn President Biden’s victory.
Trump spoke for well over an hour, after arriving more than an hour late, at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Orlando, Fla. He said that Republicans should join together to make sure that the Democrats lose the presidency “decisively.”
“Actually they just lost the White House,” he said, recycling the lie that spurred an armed mob to storm the Capitol on Jan. 6, leading to five deaths and Trump’s second impeachment.
“Who knows, I may even decide to beat them for a third time.”
“This election was rigged,” he said. “And the Supreme Court and other courts didn’t want to do anything about it.”
The crowd at the Hyatt Regency Orlando then chanted “You won.” Trump said the Supreme Court “should be ashamed of themselves for what they’ve done to our country… They didn’t have the guts or the courage to make the right decision.”
Whether he runs for president again or not, he said he would campaign for “strong” Republican candidates in the midterms. He also listed off the names of all 17 Republican House and Senate members who voted for his impeachment and conviction on a charge of inciting an insurrection.
“Get rid of ’em all,” he said.
He said he had no intention of launching a new political party, saying that would split the conservative vote. “We have the Republican Party,” he said.
Trump has been keeping a low profile at his resort in Mar-a-Lago, having no access to his Twitter account. Much of the speech consisted of old campaign riffs, including complaints about wind power.
He also launched an attack on trans athletes. “We must protect the integrity of women’s sports,” he said, in one of the biggest applause lines of the speech. The Biden administration last week withdrew a Trump-era legal opinion arguing that student athletes must be “biologically female” to participate in women’s sports.
Before the speech, Trump won an unscientific straw poll of the attendees, with 55% saying they would vote for him in the 2024 primary. Only 68% of the attendees said he should run again, with 32% saying he should not.
