by As South Carolina voters head to the polls in what is only the fifth nomination contest in the Republican presidential race, former President Donald J. Trump will give a speech Saturday afternoon near Washington, where he is expected to focus primarily on his anticipated general election. -Electoral race against President Biden.
According to senior campaign officials, Trump will use his comments at the Conservative Political Action Conference, known as CPAC, to amplify a vision he has evoked since 2020: that the United States is destined for a bleak future under President Biden and other Democrats.
But while Trump has largely couched his vision for America in dark terms during his third bid for the presidency, his CPAC speech will present a brighter vision for the country generated by a second Trump term, the officials said. who requested anonymity. freely discuss campaign strategy.
“If we can get out of this Biden nightmare, we have it within our power to make America richer, safer, stronger, prouder and more beautiful than ever,” Trump is expected to say, according to prepared remarks shared with The New York Times. “To lift millions out of poverty. To give young people hope for the future. Forging peace from conflict, strength from hardship, and new industries on the ruins of empty cities.”
That language is considerably more optimistic than Trump’s recent rhetoric during the election campaign, where he has argued that his political opponents are a pernicious “domestic threat” determined to destroy America’s founding values.
Throughout his 2024 bid, Trump has portrayed the United States under the Biden administration as a nation in steep decline. Much of his speech focuses on denouncing Biden’s policies and insisting that he will stop them completely if he wins re-election.
Underpinning this appeal has been a sense of nostalgia: Trump has made it explicit that he wants to restore the policies of his four years in office and build on them, particularly when it comes to immigration.
But Trump campaign officials said Trump’s CPAC speech was intended to be forward-looking. First, he will conjure up a dark vision of what he sees as the future under Biden. Then he will lay out a roadmap for a second term.
As part of his speech, Trump will promise to “scrap Bidenomics” and “restore MAGAnomy,” an effort to redefine the terms Biden has used to promote his economic policies and denigrate Trump’s.
Biden has frequently argued that he has been a better steward of the economy than Trump, whom he portrays as someone who undercut working-class Americans. Under the Biden administration, the economy grew 3.1 percent from the end of 2022 to the end of 2023.
Trump will also criticize Biden’s efforts to fight climate change, saying that “our economy will run out of power” and that “millions of manufacturing jobs will be choked to extinction,” adding: “There will be constant blackouts and rampant inflation.”
Trump’s focus on Biden will be a stark contrast to the day’s main political event: his effort to defeat Nikki Haley, his only remaining primary rival, in South Carolina and deal her a humiliating blow that could push her out. . the race.
But the CPAC speech will be one of several recent signs that Trump has turned his sights toward the November general election, shifting his message from one aimed at rallying his conservative base to one that can win over swing voters in battleground states.
Last year at CPAC, Trump promised his supporters that he would be their “retribution.” During the election campaign, he has promised to use the Justice Department to investigate, if not prosecute, his political opponents.
But Trump has walked back those promises in the face of polls showing that non-Republican voters worry that he poses a threat to democracy.
That’s why during this year’s CPAC speech, Trump is expected to say that President Biden will be “tried at the ballot box this November and will be tried and convicted by the American people.”
And he will repeat a more recent claim about revenge designed to reassure key voters in November: that his “ultimate and absolute revenge” will be America’s success under a second Trump administration.
