Washington: Former US President Donald Trump returned to center stage on Sunday, using a conservative jamboree to quash speculation that he would form a new political outfit while reasserting his stranglehold on the Republican Party and implicitly declaring he would run for the White House in 2024.
“Do you miss me yet?” Trump asked an adoring crowd at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Orlando, Florida, at the start of his first political speech since leaving the White House. He then went on to demonstrate his hold on the party by publicly naming 17 Republican lawmakers - seven senators and 10 representatives - who voted to impeach him, and demanding they be purged from the party. “With your help we will take back the House, we will win the Senate, and then a Republican president will make a triumphant return to the White House. And I wonder who that will be...who, who, who will that be? I wonder,” Trump said in the strongest indication that he will run again in 2024. In a 90-minute speech, Trump continued to ply lies about having won the 2020 election that he lost decisively, telling his supporters, “Actually, as you know, they (the Democratic Party) just lost the White House. But who knows, I might even decide to beat them for a third time.”
As expected, he lit into his successor, alleging Joe Biden had “the most disastrous first month of any president in modern history.” He also attacked the US Supreme Court, blaming it for not overturning the election in his favour, and lamenting, “they didn’t have the courage, the Supreme Court...they should be ashamed of themselves for what they’ve done to our country.”
The former president, who has been kicked off from social media platforms, lashed out at the Big Tech, accusing it of suppressing free speech and demanding action to rein them in. “All of the election integrity measures in the world will mean nothing if we don’t have free speech. If Republicans can be censored for speaking the truth and calling out corruption, we will not have democracy and we will only have left-wing tyranny,” he said, calling for breaking up big tech monopolies.
Trump's plea rejected
The US Supreme Court rejected a challenge from Trump to keep his tax returns secret. The ruling cleared the way for Manhattan prosecutors - who have been pursuing them for years - to finally get their hands on financial documents belonging to the former president and his companies. Trump's tax returns have become the subject of mystique over the past five years, as he became the first major-party nominee since Gerald Ford to not voluntarily release them. The Manhattan District Attorney's office, led by Cyrus Vance Jr., first sought Trump's tax documents since it opened an investigation into his finances in 2017.
The precise scope of the investigation is unclear, but court filings suggest that Vance's office is looking into whether the former president's tax filings amounted to criminal tax fraud. If Trump were to be indicted for financial crimes, the tax returns would no doubt be a centerpiece for the charges.
