Former U.S. President Donald Trump told an Indian news channel that he's considering running for president once again and that his eventual decision would make a lot of people happy.
He remarked on NDTV on Thursday that he is ahead in a majority of the polls and will make a concrete decision in the near future.
“Everyone wants me to run, I'm leading in the polls, and every poll — Republican polls and Democrat polls, and I'll make a decision in the very near future, I suspect. And I think that a lot of people are going to be very happy,” he claimed.
PBS.org recently reported that more than 60 percent of Americans do not want him to run in 2024, according to a new PBS NewsHour/NPR/Marist poll. Quinnipiac College had a recent poll that showed that 56 percent of Americans have an unfavorable opinion of Trump, while 34 percent have a favorable opinion of him; it went down since July.
Besides polls and people, Trump’s reason for considering the second Presidential bid seems to emerge from his belief that he is the sole and unanimous Republican choice. During the interview, on being asked if Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is a threat, Trump said that he is ahead of DeSantis by 40 points or more. While weighing on the presence of any other bids from the GOP apart from him, his aide and the founder of Republican Hindu Coalition, Shalabh Shalli Kumar said, “[Trump] is the Republican Party.”
In the interview, Trump agreed that, in a democracy, losing parties concede defeat, but he went on to reason why he maintains that the 2020 election was stolen, despite no evidence.
“We didn’t lose,” he said. “You know what I feel strongly about? Our country, and our country is going to hell.”
In July, eight prominent conservatives released a 72-page report refuting Trump's claims of election fraud in the 2020 presidential election.
Deliberating on his plans for the White house in 2024, Trump said that his priorities for the second term would be to make America energy-independent and to have a “roaring economy.” However, he clearly denied wanting to have his daughter, Ivanka Trump, as his running mate.
Speaking about the current state of his country, he blamed President Joe Biden for his failures at home and beyond, notably in the matters of inflation, the economy, Afghanistan and Ukraine.
“He has done very badly for our country. Our country has never been in a position like this. We're weak in many ways. And we've lost our voice and our respect worldwide. So very bad things have happened to this country in two years. Things that are absolutely unthinkable,” he said, while simultaneously claiming that the Russian President Putin would have never “gotten in” (to attack Ukraine) if the latter knew that Trump was U.S. president.
Trump, in the interview, fiercely defended himself against the recent raid at Mar-a-Lago and stated that such acts have become “standard American politics” and a “disgrace.”
“Raiding my home was a terrible thing. And frankly, that's had a big impact on the population. And I think it's, it's boomeranged and very negatively on them,” he said. He added that the news of the raid was “very strange” to the American people. “You can see that they were not happy. They're very angry about it.”
Finally, lauding the current condition of India, Trump said that the country is doing “just fine” with Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
“I've had a great relationship to India and to Prime Minister Modi. We've been friends. And I think he's a great guy and doing a terrific job. It's not an easy job he's got,” he remarked.
He also claimed that India has never had “a better friend as president” than him. “Ask Prime Minister Modi, but I don't think you've never had a better relationship than you had with President Trump,” he said.
