The 2024 presidential campaign is only beginning, but former President Donald Trump made clear that his third bid for the White House will feel very much like the first two.
Could he stop lying about the 2020 election?
Did he regret his role in the US Capitol riot on January 6, 2021?
Would he attempt to walk the line in a bid to win over moderate voters?
No and no. Emphatically no.
Trump might be trying a new tack in this campaign, running what is, to date, a more conventional race with less internal drama. But when pressed by CNN’s Kaitlan Collins, the 76-year-old showed on Wednesday night that he is very much the same person Americans came to know in 2016, throughout his four years in office, and in the aftermath of his 2020 election defeat.
During the town hall, the former president talked up a potential debt default as a minor inconvenience, wouldn’t say if he’d back Ukraine over Russia in the war and spoke glowingly of his family separation policy at the US border.
Notably, Trump refused to plant a flag in the sand on a potential federal abortion ban. He did, however, make a number of false claims about abortion being conducted at “nine months.”
He repeated much of what he’s said previously. Trump blamed others for the January 6, 2021, riot at the US Capitol. He lied about the timeline of that day, suggesting he had called for his supporters to stand down earlier than he actually did. And he again criticized former Vice President Mike Pence for not trying to overturn the election results.
He smeared former magazine columnist E. Jean Carroll, the day after a Manhattan federal jury found that Trump sexually abused her in 1996, and Trump repeated his infamous comments from the “Access Hollywood” tape that emerged in 2016.
When he wasn’t calling women names, airing old…
Read the full article here