(Washington Examiner) After stoking speculation Monday that he would use an Ohio campaign rally to launch his 2024 presidential bid, former President Donald Trump did not unveil his political plans — but he did set a date for a likely campaign launch next week.
“I’m going to be making a very big announcement on Tuesday, November 15th, at Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Florida,” Trump said at an election eve event in Dayton.
Trump said he did not want to take away from the midterm elections on Tuesday by specifying what the announcement would entail.
“We want nothing to detract from the importance of tomorrow,” he said.
Trump spent much of the more than an hour he spoke onstage relitigating controversies and airing grievances from his presidency, including the fruitless FBI investigation of Russian collusion allegations and the 2020 election results. He withheld mention of his announcement date until near the end of his lengthy speech.
The former president did, however, earlier in the night allude to the prospect of Republicans winning back the White House in the next cycle — the closest he came to confirming that he intends to run again.
“In 2024, most importantly, we are going to take back our magnificent White House,” Trump said after also using the word “we” to describe GOP efforts to retake the House and Senate this year.
Trump had arrived in Dayton primarily to campaign for Senate candidate J.D. Vance, whom he endorsed in the state’s crowded primary.
Alluding at one point to Vance’s dominant position in the polls — the GOP candidate leads Democratic Rep. Tim Ryan by 8 percentage points in the RealClearPolitics average of polls — Trump joked that he wasn’t even needed in the state.
