Optics
Downbeat and defensive, the former president’s announcement he would run again was glitzy but lusterless.
Supporters of former president Donald Trump enter the Mar-a-Lago ballroom in anticipation of his presidential run announcement. | Mark Peterson/Redux Pictures for Politico
By Michael Kruse and PHOTOGRAPHS BY MARK PETERSON FOR POLITICO
Link Copied
Michael Kruse is a senior staff writer at POLITICO and POLITICO Magazine.
Donald Trump, the defeated, twice-impeached former president facing mounting legal and political peril, on Tuesday night at his private club in Florida announced that he’s running yet again. The campy-but-iconic escalator ride in Trump Tower this was not.
The more-than-hour-long speech was a low-tone version of what Trump’s been saying for years: His failures are not failures — they’re successes. His losses are not losses — they are wins. “I am a victim,” he said. “I am a victim.” Everything is good when he’s in charge, and everything is awful when he is not. “America’s comeback starts right now,” he said in maybe his most energetic line of the night, but he couldn’t avoid the reckoning of the midterms — that voters across the country aren’t necessarily looking to him to lead it. At one point he unwittingly admitted his apocalyptic depiction of “a failing nation” beset by “hardship, anxiety and despair” is not the United States that most people seem to see. “The citizens of our country have not yet realized the full extent and gravity of the pain our nation is going through,” he said. “But they will.”
What was most striking, though, about this event in the gilded, garish ballroom at Mar-a-Lago was not what he said or how he said it. The Trump aesthetic has always been a mask, a glitzy, gaudy cover for his angry, brawling approach, and these images by the inimitable photographer Mark Peterson capture the ways in which his most obdurate supporters have adopted that paradoxical style as their own: biker vests and brick-wall-patterned suits, bedazzled brooches and purses, a “Let’s Go Brandon” tattoo. On vivid display in this chapter of Trump’s life and political rise and (perhaps) fall was a crowd that was thick with ride-or-die conspiracists and conspicuously light on more prominent and powerful figures from the party he once totally held in his thrall.
An air sign trolls trump above Mar-a-Lago as staff prepares for the announcement.
Former Trump aide Jason Miller talks to the press.
Trump supporters socialize before the 45th president speaks in the Grand Ballroom of Mar-a-Lago.
Former Trump Adviser Roger Stone (left) talks to the media. Alex Stein (right), a conservative media figure, speaks in front of cameras.
Sebastian Gorka, who previously served as a national security aide to Trump, takes a selfie of the ballroom.
Supporters hang out before Trump makes his speech in the grand ballroom.
Top: My Pillow CEO Mike Lindell speaks. Bottom Left: Eric Trump gives a fist bump to the crowd. Bottom Right: Members of Bikers For Trump pose for a picture.
A Newsmax correspondent reports from Mar-a-Lago.
Trump supporters bring out their bling in support of Trump.
Trump announces his presidential campaign for 2024 in the grand ballroom at Mar-a-Lago.
Melania Trump joins her husband on stage after he announces he's running in 2024.
Link Copied
© 2022 POLITICO LLC