Anyone who believed Donald Trump would do what his supporters so desperately want was disappointed on Saturday night.
Neither the FBI raid on his Florida home nor the recent frontal attack by Joe Biden tempted him to be unequivocal about his intentions for 2024.
"I might have to do it again," Trump said simply, using exactly the words he had chosen several times over the summer.
Majid Sattar
Political correspondent for North America based in Washington.
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It's about more than just dramaturgy.
The word has probably reached the former president that the Democrats can't wait: if he officially announces his candidacy again before November 8, the congressional elections will become all the more of a referendum on him.
A risk that he apparently does not want to take for the time being.
The rally in Wilkes-Barre nevertheless made it clear: Pennsylvania, the mother of all "swing states", is the venue of the proxy conflict between Biden and Trump.
In a speech in Philadelphia, the President recently accused Trump and the “MAGA Republicans” of representing “extremism that threatens the very foundations of our republic”.
Biden's next appearance in the state will follow on Monday, Labor Day in America.
Then he talks in Pittsburgh,
It was not by chance that Trump chose Luzerne County as the seat of the county government.
The county was firmly in the hands of the Democrats from 1992 to 2012.
In 2016 Trump overturned it and therefore won in Pennsylvania.
In 2020 he won again in the constituency – but he lost the state, which he still denies to this day.
Formally, it was an election campaign event for the candidates he supported for the "Midterms".
Since it was his first rally since investigators examined his Mar-a-Lago premises and Biden called MAGA Republicans' ideology "semi-fascist," there was also the question of how Trump would counter.
Broadside against Biden
For two hours he whipped up his people.
Right from the start, Trump called Biden's speech in Philadelphia the "most vicious, hateful and divisive speech" that an American president has ever given.
And: "The danger to democracy comes from the radical left, not from the right".
He then turned his attention to the raid, without mentioning that the objective of the investigation was to secure classified information, some of the highest classification level, that he had taken from the White House.
The Biden government is searching the home of the political opponent – it is the “most shocking abuse of power in American history”.
Like a third world country, he remarked.
It is a shameful "judicial farce".
They not only searched his rooms,
but also his wife's closets and his 16-year-old son's belongings.
They try to silence him, Trump.
And what is even more important: "They are trying to silence you." But they will not succeed, he said.
It will provoke a backlash the likes of which have never been seen.
approval in the audience.
As is well known, this is not the first time that Trump has played with inciting his movement.
There are basically two speeches that Trump will give on Saturday.
His people wrote one down for him in an effort to cover up the split in the Republicans into “America First” Trumpists and traditionalists.
In this speech, the former president talks about how the country is going to the dogs with inflation, illegal migration and excesses in gender politics.
With these keywords, the GOP actually wanted to go into the election campaign to make the election in the fall a vote on whether the country under Biden is moving in the right direction.