Donald Trump , the only U.S. president to have attempted a coup to remain in power and who is now under multiple criminal investigations for it, nevertheless announced Tuesday night that he is running to regain his old job in 2024 with polls suggesting he could win the Republican Party nomination again.

In order to make America great again, I am tonight announcing my candidacy for president of the United States, he said 19 minutes into his remarks.

Americas comeback starts right now, Trump said as he kicked off his remarks. We were a great and glorious nation. Now we are a nation in decline. We are a failing nation.

We are here tonight to declare that it does not have to be this way, he said.

Minutes before he started to speak at his Mar-a-Lago resort, Trump filed a statement of candidacy with the FEC.

In a 64-minute meandering speech reminiscent of his dark 2017 inaugural address, Trump claimed that the United States under his successor had become a crime-ridden hellscape that only he could restore to the greatness he had achieved during his presidency.

Our country is a laughingstock right now, he said. The blood-soaked streets of our once great cities are cesspools of violent crime.

Trump, as he did during his 2016 campaign, his presidency and the two years afterward, frequently spouted lies about his accomplishments, falsely claiming, among many other things, that he had collected billions from China through tariffs, had completed the wall along the southern border and started NASAs program to send a crewed mission to Mars.

In fact, American importers pay tariffs, not the exporting country; he built only small sections of his promised border wall after raiding the U.S. military budget to pay for it; and NASAs Mars program had started under President George W. Bush.

Trump, inexplicably, also managed a shout-out to a notorious, murderous gangster from a century ago. You heard of the great gangster Al Capone? he asked, while discussing his children in attendance.

The 9 p.m. EST announcement, for which Trumps aides were trying to rustle up as many supporters as possible to attend, remained on schedule, despite some Republicans advising him to postpone because of the dismal performance of his anointed candidates in last weeks midterm elections as well as the Dec. 6 runoff between Republican Herschel Walker and Democratic incumbent Sen. Raphael Warnock in Georgia.

Trump required candidates who wanted his support to spread his lies that the 2020 election had been stolen from him, and dozens of candidates across the country were happy to make that trade. But, in the highest-profile of those races, Trumps candidates lost to Democrats .

Trumps choices for governor in Michigan, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, Maryland and Arizona, for secretary of state in Arizona, Michigan and Nevada, and for U.S. Senate in Arizona, Nevada, Pennsylvania and New Hampshire all were defeated.

The Senate losses ensured that Democrats will retain control of that chamber for the next two years, while Republicans appear likely to have only a razor-thin majority in the House after previously expecting to win as many as 60 seats.

He got his ass kicked, said one top Trump adviser on condition of anonymity. And he knows it.

If Walker whom Trump personally recruited based on their friendship from his professional football days loses next month, Democrats would have a 51-49 clear majority in the Senate and not need Vice President Kamala Harris to break tie votes. They would also have a much easier time moving judicial nominations through committee and onto the floor.

Many Republicans worry that with Trumps announcement, Democrats will be able to make him the face of Republicans in that runoff and drive up Democratic turnout.

Trump, though, was so certain that Republicans would win in a massive red wave that he proclaimed a day before the midterms that he would make his announcement the following Tuesday, and now reportedly feels he cannot alter that date.

I think hes afraid of looking stupid, the adviser said.

Trump remains deeply unpopular outside of the Republican Party, but has more supporters within it than any other single potential challenger, setting up circumstances that could be nearly identical to 2016. That year, Trump won the GOP nomination despite never having the support of more than about one-third of the partys primary voters until he had secured the presidential nomination.

Whether he can pull off a victory this time remains to be seen. In 2016, he was a celebrity game show host who had successfully sold himself as a brash but savvy billionaire businessman. In 2024, he would be a former president potentially facing criminal charges both for his coup attempt as well as for removing top-secret documents from the White House on his way out the door.

Indeed, the possibility of those criminal charges makes a successful campaign all the more valuable to him.

For the past 10 months, Trump has been calling for civil unrest if prosecutors wind up charging him in any of the investigations. Hes labeled the FBI and the Department of Justice corrupt and has told his followers to engage in the biggest demonstrations ever should he be charged, warning that the country would not take it.

Not only can he now claim even more forcefully that prosecutors are only going after him to keep him out of the White House, but they would almost certainly have to put any criminal charges on hold for the duration of his presidency should he manage to win a second term.

Official Justice Department policy since the end of Richard Nixons tenure was not to pursue investigations into sitting presidents which could likely mean federal prosecutors would suspend any ongoing actions against Trump should he retake office.

And while state prosecutors are not covered by that federal policy, during oral arguments in May 2020, Supreme Court justices and a New York State prosecutor agreed that the presidency is a uniquely important office and that any attempts to pursue criminal charges against a sitting president must be cognizant of that.