Former US President Donald Trump hints at plans for 2024 elections as he returns to the rally stage in Ohio and urges supporters to help Republicans take back Congress in next year's mid-term elections.
The former president held his first campaign-style rally since leaving the White House repeating his election grievances and fraud claims.
Trump's rally on Saturday in Ohio is a sign of his return to the kind of freewheeling mass gatherings that have been critical to retaining the support of Trump’s base.
The rally was held to support former White House Aide Max Miller who is challenging Republican Representative Anthony Gonzalez for his congressional seat.
Gonzalez was one of the 10 Republicans who voted to impeach Trump for the Second Time in accusation of inciting the violence at the Capitol.
“We will take back the House, we will take back the Senate, and we will take back America, and we will do it soon,” Trump told thousands of cheering supporters at Ohio’s Lorain County Fairgrounds.
Trump has also endorsed a challenger to Senator Lisa Murkowski, the only one of the seven Senate Republicans who voted to convict him in his January impeachment trial who is up for re-election in 2022.
While Trump praised Miller as an “incredible patriot” and a “great guy” who “loves the people of Ohio,” he spent much of his 90-minute address fixating on the 2020 election, which he insists he won, even though top state and local election officials, his own attorney general and numerous judges, including some he appointed, have said there is no evidence of the mass voter fraud he alleges took place.
“This was the scam of the century and this was the crime of the century,” Trump said. “The 2020 presidential election was rigged. We won that election in a landslide.”
The crowd chanted “Trump won” and “four more years! four more years!”. But the former president made no clear mention of his political future.
He did however tease the crowd at one point by alluding to the possibility of another stab at the White House.
“We may have to win it a third time. It is possible,” he said
