The record of this “very stable genius” speaks for itself.
Well, it finally happened. We knew it was coming — he told us all along — but on Tuesday night, Donald Trump made things official: In remarks from his Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, the nation’s 45th president declared himself a candidate for reelection in the 2024 presidential race. One notable absence from the speech was his daughter Ivanka, who said she plans to take a break from politics.
“I love my father very much. This time around, I am choosing to prioritize my young children and the private life we are creating as a family. I do not plan to be involved in politics,” she said in a statement. (Her husband, Jared, did attend the announcement.)
We’ve got just under two years before Nov. 5, 2024, when our next commander-in-chief will be decided, and a whole lot could change between now and then. At this moment, things don’t look great for Trump: He’s being blamed for Republicans’ weaker-than-expected showing in the midterms, his former vice president is saying publicly that the party has “better choices” in the future, and his most formidable challenger for the GOP’s 2024 nomination, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, is already making a case for himself after his home state reelected him by a landslide.
But if there’s one thing we know about Donald Trump, it’s to expect the unexpected. In 2015, his first campaign began as such a longshot that The Huffington Post declared it would relegate coverage of it to the site’s entertainment section; today, he remains the heir apparent to a party that he’s shifted even further to the right through not only his divisive rhetoric, but also the conservative supermajority on the Supreme Court, to which Trump appointed three justices during his administration.
All that said, it’s chaotically unclear what’s in store for us in the next couple of years. But here’s another thing we know about Trump: He’s no longer the political question mark he was back in 2015. There’s no more speculating about how his actions as an elected leader might differ from his actions as a candidate. His approach to governing is now definitively on the record — and to that end, here’s a quick rundown of what we’ve learned about the man who hopes to be our once and future President of the United States.
743: Days since the 2020 election
7,059,526: Number of votes Joe Biden defeated Donald Trump by in that race
11,780: Votes Trump asked Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to “find” as he fell behind Joe Biden in the state
679: Days since rioters stormed the U.S. Capitol in an attempt to prevent the certification of Trump’s legitimate loss — shortly after a rally where he whipped up supporters who he knew were armed
291: Number of Republican candidates on 2022 midterm ballots who denied or questioned the outcome of the 2020 election
174: Number of those candidates who have so far come out victorious in their races
40: Percentage of Americans who have a favorable view of Trump
53: Percentage of Americans who say Trump should “definitely not” run again in 2024
2: Times Trump was impeached in four years as president
26: Number of women (at least) who have accused Trump of sexual misconduct
33: Boxes of material the FBI seized from Mar-a-Lago during a court-approved search in August as they searched for files Trump wasn’t authorized to take from the White House
103: Classified documents found during that search — of them, 31 were marked as “confidential,” 54 as “secret,” and 18 as “top secret”
200: Examples found by New York’s Attorney General of Trump and his children misstating the values of their real estate holdings to get better loans and tax benefits
23: Assets that the New York AG specifically called out as “grossly and fraudulently inflated”
1.4 million: Dollars paid to the Trump Organization by the Secret Service over four years while agents stayed at the president’s own hotels in order to protect him
750,000: Dollars paid to the Trump Organization by the governments of China, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Malaysia, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates to stay at the president’s hotels while seeking to influence his administration
1: Number of presidents who’ve successfully been re-elected after being voted out of office (that would be Grover Cleveland in 1892)
3: Percentage points by which Joe Biden leads Trump in current polling for a 2024 rematch
720: Days until the 2024 election
