Trump kicks off his 2024 presidential campaign with bluster and lies

Former President Donald Trump kicked off his new 2024 campaign in New Hampshire over the weekend. But to some onlookers, it may have felt more like a greatest-hits tour. 

Trump rehashed old lies about stolen elections and spent most of his hour-plus keynote speech fawning himself with praise or poo-pooing the not-very-good, yes very very bad Crazy Joe Biden. 

It wasn’t all old material, though. Trump did test out a “new idea” according to Time Magazine’s Philip Elliot—namely, that every day was April Fool’s in Sleepy Joe’s America.

“I think of the United States. Every day is April Fools Day,” Trump told a roaring crowd. “We have open borders when they should be closed. It’s April Fools Day.” 

“We have prisons—people from mental institutions and terrorists—being dumped into our country when they should not be accepted,” Trump added with a smirk. "April Fools Day, right? Who would do that?” 

While Trump’s particular brand of political rhetoric may go over well with his Make America Great Again base, it’s likely to again alienate political moderates and independents who can’t stand the former president’s drama. 

In Philiot Elliot’s post-speech analysis, he noted that Trump's first campaign appearance had set the tone for what we can expect to see over the next two years.

“The event’s tone and substance suggested the looming two-year campaign is going to match—if not surpass—the toxic tone of his past attempts,” Elliot wrote. 

Throughout most of Trump’s keynote, the former president showed his penchant for mixing fact with fiction. Take for example his statement that he won New Hampshire’s presidential primary twice—which did do—but followed it up by saying that he also took the state in both general elections—which he did not. 

“As someone who has won the New Hampshire presidential primary not once but twice—and, by the way, I believe we also won two general elections,” Trump said. 

Fortunately, it doesn’t take a genius to crack open a history book and see that Trump lost New Hampshire’s general election in both 2016 and 2020, granted expecting the average Trump voter to be able to read might be giving them a little too much credit. 

Things also turned a bit weird according to Elliot when Trump went off on a tangent about world leaders being slow to congratulate Biden after his 2020 win. 

“They just didn’t believe it,” Trump told the assembled crowd. “They didn’t believe the results.” A weird thing to obsess about but hey, it’s Donald Trump…

Unlike the former president’s previous primary events, Trump’s New Hampshire kickoff seemed relatively tame at just 400 individuals packed into a Salem high school auditorium, a situation that could mean his popularity in the state is waning.

According to Axios ' Josh Kraushaar, Trump’s biggest round of applause came at the 45-minute mark when he vowed to crack down on critical race theory in public schools, which showed that maybe the New Hampshire Republican electorate still had some gas in its tank for ol’ Donny. 

“I’m more angry now and I’m more committed now than I ever was,” Trump said, and it just might be enough to win the Oval Office in 2024. But god let's hope not…