US President Donald Trump formally launched his 2020 re-election campaign on Tuesday in front of a large crowd in Orlando, Florida.

"We are going to keep making America great again and then we will indeed keep America great," Trump said as he attacked his opponents and the media.

"We are going to keep it better than ever before and that is why I stand before you tonight to officially launch my campaign for a second term as president of the United States," Trump told the crowd at an arena in Orlando.

The announcement comes amid calls for impeachment, continuing congressional probes into his presidency and administration and deepening divisions over his hardline immigration policies. But Trump's speech also comes as the economy continues to grow and the Republican president maintains deep support among his base.

Although Tuesday's speech is being billed as the official beginning of Trump's 2020 bid, the businessman-turned-politician filed the paperwork officially announcing his bid within hours of his inauguration on January 20, 2017. He has since held campaign-style rallies throughout the United States.

On Tuesday, Trump's attacks against socialism and his doubling down on conservative stances on nationalism, abortion, family, the judiciary and guns were positively received by the loyalist crowd, who often erupted in "USA" and "Make America Great" chants throughout the event.

People sit in the stands with a flag before a rally for US President Donald Trump at the Amway Center in Orlando, Florida,[Carlo Allegri/Reuters]

Two-and-a-half years into his tenure, Trump sees plenty of positive factors, led by a growing economy with low unemployment.

"If the economy stays strong, he is very likely to get re-elected," said Trump confidant Newt Gingrich, a former Republican speaker of the US House of Representatives.

Trump touted the economy throughout Tuesday's speech, saying "it's soaring to incredible new heights".

The US president also received a large round of applause when he brought his tax cuts, saying, "we've done so much ... with the biggest tax cut in history."

But according to an Associated Press fact check, Trump's tax cuts are nowhere close to the biggest in US history.

It's a $1.5 trillion tax cut over 10 years. As a share of the total economy, a tax cut of that size ranks 12th, according to the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget. Former President Ronald Reagan's 1981 cut is the biggest, followed by the 1945 rollback of taxes that financed World War II.

Peek into this campaign

Despite the packed crowd at the Orlando arena on Tuesday, Special Counsel Robert Mueller's investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election, coupled with a presidential style marked by name-calling and eye-popping tweets, has undermined some Americans' confidence in Trump before the November 2020 election.

Trump also has stirred division with his hardline policies on immigration and unsettled business and farm groups with his use of tariffs in trade disputes with China and some allies.

As he left the White House on Tuesday for Florida, Trump said that a mass roundup of undocumented immigrants would start next week. He did not elaborate, and rights groups and Democrats have accused the president of sowing fear in the run-up to his re-election launch.

Demonstrators march on Brooklyn Bridge during 'Keep Families Together' march to protest Trump administration's immigration policy in New York [File: Shannon Stapleton/Reuters]

Speaker of the House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi, the top Democratic elected official, said in a statement on Tuesday, "the President’s new threat of a mass deportation dragnet is an act of utter malice and bigotry, designed solely to inject fear in our communities."

Analysts say Trump's rhetoric just before Tuesday's rally seemed to offer a peek into a campaign that will largely be fought along the same lines as his first bid, with very few new policy proposals for a second term.

During Tuesday's rally, Trump continued to rail against irregular immigration, repeatedly returning to the topic throughout his speech, including throwing out claims about undocumented immigrants without providing evidence.

Trump must defend presidential record

Those involved in the president's re-election effort believe Trump's mantra to "Drain the Swamp", still resonates, despite his administration's cosy ties with lobbyists and corporations and the Trump family's apparent efforts to profit off the presidency.

"He's still not viewed as a politician," said Jason Miller, Trump's 2016 senior communications adviser. "Voters don't define him by the party label, they define him by his policies and his message of shaking up the status quo in Washington. That's the biggest reason he was able to win blue states in 2016."



But Democrats cite a string of broken promises in Trump's first term, from lowering medicine prices to closing corporate tax loopholes and stopping plant closures, as well as his crackdowns on women's rights and immigrants.



In a media call on Tuesday, Democratic Party officials focused on his moves to weaken the signature healthcare law of his Democratic predecessor, Barack Obama, without providing an alternative.



"The thing that is working to our advantage is that this president now has a record to run on," said Democratic National Committee Chairman Tom Perez.

Unlike in 2016, Trump must now defend his presidential record, which includes a number of controversial policies, from his trade war with China to his handling of the US relationship with Saudi Arabia following the murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi and the mounting death toll in the Saudi-UAE war in Yemen.

There have also been increased calls from some Democrats, who control the House of Representatives, to begin impeachment proceedings over potential obstruction of justice during Mueller's investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election.

Trump, who has repeatedly called the investigation a witch-hunt, again accused Democrats of wanting a "re-do" because they didn't like the results of the probe.



In parts of an ABC interview published last week, Trump said he would see nothing wrong in accepting damaging information on a political opponent in the coming 2020 presidential elections if it were offered by a foreign government.



He later attempted walked back on those comments a bit, saying "of course" he'd look at damaging information offered, but he would alert the FBI if the information was "bad".



So far, Democratic leadership has urged caution over impeachment talk, instead, focusing on a myriad of congressional probes into the president, his administration and his businesses.

Uphill battle?

But Trump is eager to use the power of his office to further his case for re-election. Last month in Louisiana, he promised voters a new bridge if he won, and in the pivotal Florida Panhandle, he pledged new disaster relief money would flow in a second Trump term.

Trump advisers also point to his popularity among white working-class voters, who consider themselves "forgotten Americans" left behind and mocked by elite insiders. For those voters, many of whom in 2016 cast their first ballots in decades, Trump remains the embodiment of their outsider grievances, their anger stoked by his clashes with political foes and the rest of government - even when his party controls it.

Advisers believe that, in an age of extreme polarisation, many Trump backers view their support for the president as part of their identity, one not easily shaken. They point to his seemingly unmovable support with his base supporters as evidence that, despite more than two years in office, he is still viewed the same way he was as a candidate in 2016.

Supporters turn out hours before US President Donald Trump is to appear at a rally to officially announce his 2020 re-election bid at the Amway Center [Joe Raedle/Getty Images/AFP]

In Florida on Tuesday, Trump supporters began lining up for the president's rally a full day in advance, local media reported.

"It was like a big Trump party," Maureen Bailey, who slept in a tent with her twin sister, told Reuters news agency.

Local Democratic Party officials planned a "Win With Love" rally a few blocks from the Trump rally.

Trump will so far face one Republican challenger, former Massachusetts governor Bill Weld, who has little name-recognition among Americans.

Rival Democrats have more than 20 presidential contenders vying for the nomination.

A Quinnipiac University poll, released on Tuesday, showed Trump trailing the early Democratic frontrunner, former Vice President Joe Biden, by nine percentage points in Florida, which has been a key state for presidential candidates for decades.

Senator Bernie Sanders and Senator Elizabeth Warren, the more progressive candidates, are also ahead of Trump in Florida.

Trump has blasted the poll numbers, pointing to his 2016 election victory, which was not predicted by the majority of polling data. </s> Fans of US President Donald Trump camped out since Monday in hopes of getting a good seat as he officially launched his 2020 "Keep America Great" re-election campaign with Vice President Mike Pence in Orlando, Florida on Tuesday evening.

In fact, Trump filed his campaign with the Federal Election Commission (FEC) on January 20, 2017 — the day he took the oath of office — and began campaigning shortly thereafter. Tuesday, however, is being billed as the official start of his 2020 re-election bid.

Read more: The Donald Trump effect: Core supporters hungry for more

The site of the announcement is key, as Florida is a must-win state for anyone looking to win the race. It is also a key battleground state, and votes in the past have often been to close to call - as was famously the case in the year 2000, when an inability to find a winner in Florida let to the Supreme Court handing the presidency to George W. Bush.

Trump has spent more than 100 days in Florida since he became president, holding rallies, fundraisers, and visiting his properties in the "Sunshine State," requiring public money to beef up security at places like Mar-A-Lago, which was equipped as the White House.

On the ground in Orlando

DW's Alexandra von Nahmen was on the ground in Orlando and spoke with a number of the president's supporters. All voiced their support for him and spoke about the issues that were important to them.

"We support President Trump because he has fulfilled everything he promised to do. He is a man of his word. And that's a wonderful thing to see," Gustavo Ortega told DW.

Ortega says the president has delivered on the economy and jobs. But he adds: "What we love about him is that he is not a politician. That's basically what sets him apart from everybody else."

Trump's claims over what he has done about the economy remain controversial, not only because he inherited a strong economy from his predecessor Barack Obama, but because his policies such as increased tariffs have hurt most the Americans he promised to champion, such as farmers and factory workers. Tariffs have also seen foreign and domestic companies alike nix plans to expand and provide more jobs in the US.

Read more: Opinion: Trump hasn't been all bad for the EU

Recent media reports on leaked internal poll numbers showing Trump trailing Democratic challengers in several key states led the president to fire three pollsters on Monday. Trump responded to the unfavorable facts by claiming that such polls don't exist, calling the news "fake" and then denying the importance of voter surveys.

Those assertions are reminiscent of Richard Nixon's famous claims that a "great silent majority" of Americans supported him despite broad and vocal opposition to his policies in the late 1960s.

That sentiment was echoed by Orlando resident and Trump supporter Eduard Whelan Portilla:"Trump voters don't identify themselves in polls and they don't put out yard signs. They are afraid of Democrats breaking them and throwing stones at their houses. So there is a tremendous amount of secret support for Trump."

Asked about the chances of Trump being re-elected, Portilla said, "It is going to happen again, because the news media and the Democrats are a bunch of fools."

Trump fans are fervent in their support, even in the face of the president's contradictory statements and actions. One rally-goer, Blake Marnell from San Diego, embodies that devotion. Sporting a "Make America Great Again" cap and a brick-patterned suit, Marnell arrived in Orlando at midnight and slept just two hours to be in a front row.

Speaking of his suit, Marnell says: "I support barriers at America's southern border to keep illegal narcotics and human trafficking out. As a whole, America needs to take care of itself before it worries about taking care of some of the other things we have been involved with over the last 20 years in term of wars in the Middle East and things like that. We definitely have to deal with some issues here in America first."

He, too, is confident that Trump will be re-elected, "I believe that the American people, when they examine the issues, will actually decide to vote for him because he has been the most effective president we've ever had."

However, sheriffs at the US-Mexico border, including Republicans, have consistently maintained that a border-length wall is neither helpful in curbing illegal immigration nor a realistic project.

Laureen Vartanian and her sister Maureen Bailey drove an hour from their hometown of Port Orange to arrive in Orlando at 6:30 a.m. on Monday morning in hopes of scoring a front-row seat, "We wanted to see our president up close," says Vartanian. "We went to other rallies. But this is a historical event. It is an honor and we love him and what he has done for our country."

Bailey echoed a claim that Trump has often made, saying, "He has done more for his country than any president in the last 50 years."

Each evening at 1830 UTC, DW's editors send out a selection of the day's hard news and quality feature journalism. You can sign up to receive it directly here. </s> United States President Donald Trump launched his 2020 re-election campaign on Tuesday amid chants of “USA, USA” at a rally in Orlando in Florida, AFP reported.

“We did it once and we’re going to do it again – and this time we’re going to finish the job,” he said, while promising over 20,000 supporters an “earthquake at the ballot box”. “Our economy is the envy of the world.”

Trump told the crowd he will “keep America great again”. “Oh we will keep it so great,” he said. “Better than ever before. And that is why tonight I stand before you to officially launch my campaign for a second term as president of the United States.”

The president also encouraged the crowd to boo journalists covering the event, calling them “fake news.” He then accused the Democrats of seeking to “rip your country apart.”

“Just think what this angry left-wing mob would do if they were in charge of this country,” Reuters quoted him as saying. “Imagine if we had a Democrat president and a Democrat Congress in 2020. They would shut down your free speech, use the power of the law to punish their opponents.”

Trump said his Democratic opponents would radically change the US and that they would seek to legalise migrants coming across the southern border so they could vote and boost the Democratic political base. Trump had warned of the threat of illegal immigration and promised a crackdown during his 2016 presidential campaign as well.

Trump, who has been accused by opponents of wide-ranging corruption, told the crowd that together they had formed “a great political movement” that had “stared down a broken and corrupt political establishment.”

Early poll numbers show that Trump faces a difficult race, but his re-election fight is marked by soaring growth, low unemployment, and confidence in the loyalty of his right-wing base. A wide range of polls show Trump lagging far behind Democratic frontrunner Joe Biden, who is campaigning on a promise to return the country to what he portrays as the calmer days of former President Barack Obama, under whom he served as vice president. </s> WASHINGTON — U.S. President Donald Trump is naming former digital adviser Brad Parscale as campaign manager of his 2020 re-election campaign.

A person familiar with the announcement confirms Parscale’s selection on the condition of anonymity because the person was unauthorized to publicly discuss the news. The conservative Drudge Report website first reported his selection.

Trump has left little doubt about his intentions to seek re-election. He filed the paperwork to organize his re-election committee on the same day as his inauguration, held his first campaign rally on Feb. 18, 2017, in Florida, and has mused publicly about would-be Democratic challengers.

Parscale, an Austin-based digital consultant and ally of Trump son-in-law and senior adviser Jared Kushner, ran the Trump campaign’s sophisticated digital operations in 2016. He previously worked for the Trump Organization.
• Ivanka Trump says question about her father’s alleged sexual misconduct ‘inappropriate’
• Donald Trump’s ‘I hear you’ cue card at gun violence meeting fuels perception he is ‘insensitive’ </s> US president Donald Trump has named political strategist Brad Parscale as manager of his 2020 presidential re-election campaign.

In a statement, the Trump campaign said it planned to use Parscale’s talent to help Republicans in the 2018 congressional elections in November as they try to hold on to control of the US Congress.

The campaign statement included supportive comments from Trump’s son, Eric Trump, and son-in-law and senior adviser Jared Kushner.

“Brad is an amazing talent and was pivotal to our success in 2016. He has our family’s complete trust and is the perfect person to be at the helm of the campaign,” said Eric Trump.

Trump (71) had already signalled plans to run for re-election, filing a letter of intent with the Federal Election Commission on January 20th, 2017, the day he took office. He frequently relives his victory in 2016 in speeches and interviews.

Parscale, based in San Antonio, Texas, was the Trump campaign’s digital director in the 2016 election. – Reuters </s> MOSCOW (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 19th June, 2019) US President Donald Trump officially launched his 2020 White House re-election campaign at a rally in Orlando, Florida on Tuesday.

"Tonight I stand before you to officially launch my campaign for a second term as president of the United States," Trump said. </s> Washington: President Donald Trump has named former digital adviser Brad Parscale as campaign manager of his 2020 re-election campaign.

In a statement, the Trump campaign said Parscale will lead "advanced planning" for the 2020 effort, and that the campaign will also be engaged in the 2018 midterm elections - which are shaping up to be a challenging environment for Republicans.

Trump has left little doubt about his intentions to seek re-election.

He filed the paperwork to organize his re-election committee on the same day as his inauguration, held his first campaign rally on February 18, 2017, in Florida, and has mused publicly about would-be Democratic challengers.

Parscale, an Austin-based digital consultant and ally of Trump son-in-law and senior adviser Jared Kushner, ran the Trump campaign's digital operations in 2016, which included sophisticated social media targeting.

He previously worked for the Trump Organization.

In an interview with CBS's "60 Minutes" last year, Parscale described how a team that grew to 100 people created 50,000 to 60,000 ads on Facebook daily to reach different swaths of Trump supporters to maximize support and online donations.

In a statement, Eric Trump, the president's middle son who has taken on a large role in the campaign, said, Parscale "has our family's complete trust and is the perfect person to be at the helm of the campaign."

Kushner also praised Parscale in a statement. "Brad was essential in bringing a disciplined technology and data-driven approach to how the 2016 campaign was run," he said. </s> Midway through the speech officially launching his 2020 reelection campaign Tuesday night, President Donald Trump joked about his campaign staff. "They cost a fortune, and they never give me any ideas," he said, adding that he was "kidding."

Judging by his speech, it might be truer than he let on.

Trump in his speech in Orlando, Florida, broke little new ground -- not just relative to the dozens of political rallies he's already held since his inauguration, but also relative to his 2016 campaign. It was very much a Greatest Hits rally, replete with grievances against the media and Democrats. It referenced Hillary Clinton more than Trump's would-be 2020 opponents.

That said, there were a few interesting and newish lines that stuck out. Below are the ones I've isolated.

For much of his presidency, Trump has been allergic to blaming Vladimir Putin for Russia's 2016 election interference or even talking about said interference. But someone has apparently prevailed upon Trump to at least allude to the sanctions that were imposed on that country in response.

While hailing his achievements, Trump noted that he "built up the military, imposed sanctions on Russia," and that he supported countries that compete with Russia.

It was a brief, fleeting mention that he didn't expound upon -- nor did he reference how much he resisted those sanctions, both when Congress passed them in 2017 and in response to the poisoning of Sergei Skripal in Britain. Trump also offered similar lines a couple times last month.

If nothing else, though, it suggested that he and his campaign feel the need for him to argue he hasn't given Russia a complete pass. Until recently, Trump basically relied upon everyone else around him to make that case.

Perhaps one of the most long-lasting changes brought on by the Trump presidency is the remaking of the judiciary, both at the Supreme Court and in the lower courts.

And Trump made that a key element of his speech, both alluding to the large number of judges confirmed and speaking at some length about Brett Kavanaugh's confirmation to the Supreme Court.

Trump, of course, seized upon the grievance-related aspects of the Kavanaugh fight, accusing the justice's opponents of trying to destroy his family. So even where Trump has a legitimate and extensive victory, it all comes back to how nefarious his opponents are.

3. 'People who refuse to concede an election'

One conspicuous line that Trump didn't dwell upon but seems likely to make a return is when Trump alluded to Democrats "who refuse to concede an election" and suggested they were sore losers.

Trump appeared to be referring to Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams, D, who has not conceded her loss to Gov. Brian Kemp, R, and has argued that minority votes were suppressed. Abrams has also said she still might run for president in 2020.

Left unsaid: Trump's repeated threats during the 2016 election to not concede if he lost because of potential rampant voter fraud that hadn't yet taken place. That's not hugely different from the case Abrams has made.

Even as he was launching his 2020 campaign, Trump suggested he still hadn't landed on a slogan. He called 2016's "Make America Great Again" the "greatest theme in the history of politics," but he also said it might be "Keep America Great."

At one point, he invited the crowd to applaud for which slogan they thought he should run on. It wasn't clear which one they preferred.

During his 2016 campaign, Trump appealed to would-be black supporters by arguing, "What the hell do you have to lose?" It didn't earn him an unusual level of support for a GOP candidate.

Since then, he has pointed to a historically low black unemployment rate, and yet his approval rating among African Americans remains extremely low.

On Tuesday, though, Trump offered something somewhat new, pointing to the criminal justice reform bill that was passed through Congress with bipartisan support. He alluded to "crime policies that so unfairly affected the African-American community -- so unfair."

The true target of the line, though, may not have been elusive black Republican voters. It seemed more likely it was the leading 2020 Democratic candidate, former Vice President Joe Biden, whose support for Bill Clinton's crime bill has become a hot-button issue in the Democratic primary. </s> WASHINGTON/NEW YORK (Reuters) - U.S. Senator Kirsten Gillibrand told CBS’ “The Late Show With Stephen Colbert” that she would file paperwork on Tuesday night to explore a run for the Democratic presidential nomination in the 2020 election.

Colbert, during the taping of an episode that will air on Tuesday night, asked Gillibrand, who has been taking the steps to begin a presidential campaign, if she had anything she would like to announce.

“Yes,” the lawmaker from New York said. “I’m filing an exploratory committee for president of the United States tonight.”

The formation of an exploratory committee will allow Gillibrand, 52, who is known for spearheading efforts to change how Congress handles allegations of sexual harassment and became a prominent voice in the #MeToo movement, to begin fundraising and organizing her campaign.

“I’m going to run for president of the United States because as a young mom I’m going to fight for other people’s kids as hard as I would fight for my own,” Gillibrand said to applause.

She has hired several top political aides in recent weeks, fueling speculation her jump into the 2020 fray was imminent.

There is no dominant early front-runner in what is expected to be a crowded Democratic nominating race to take on President Donald Trump, the likely Republican nominee.

Texas Democrat Julian Castro, a former San Antonio mayor and top U.S. housing official, formally launched his White House bid on Saturday. Former U.S. Representative John Delaney has been running for more than a year. U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts formed an exploratory committee last month and Representative Tulsi Gabbard said Friday that she will run for president.

Some in the party believe an establishment figure who can appeal to centrist voters is the way to victory. Others argue a fresh face, and particularly a diverse one, is needed to energize the party’s increasingly left-leaning base.

Gillibrand was a member of the centrist and fiscally conservative Blue Dog Coalition while in the House of Representatives. Her positions became more liberal after she was appointed to fill the Senate seat vacated by Hillary Clinton in New York when Clinton became former President Barack Obama’s secretary of state.

Gillibrand then won the seat in a special election and was re-elected to six-year terms in 2012 and 2018. She has attributed the ideology shift to representing a liberal state versus a more conservative district.

As a senator, Gillibrand was outspoken about rape in the military and campus sexual assault years before the #MeToo movement against sexual harassment and assault first arose in 2017.

In late 2017, as she pushed for a bill changing how Congress processes and settles sexual harassment allegations made by staffers, some prominent party leaders criticized her for being the first Democratic senator to urge the resignation of Senator Al Franken, who was accused of groping and kissing women without their consent.

During the same period, Gillibrand said Hillary Clinton’s husband, former President Bill Clinton, should have resigned from the White House after his affair with intern Monica Lewinsky, which led to his impeachment by the House. Some criticized the senator for attacking the Clintons, who had supported her political career.

Gillibrand backs a Medicare-for-all bill championed by Democratic Party liberals. She was the first senator to call in June 2018 for the abolishment of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) amid controversy over Trump’s separation of families entering the country at the U.S.-Mexico border.

“I believe healthcare should be a right and not a privilege,” Gillibrand told Colbert.

In a dig at Trump, Gillibrand said the first thing she would do if elected to the White House is “restore what’s been lost” like the “integrity and compassion of this country.”

“You have to start by restoring what’s been lost, restoring our leadership in the world, addressing things like global climate change and being that beacon of light and hope in the world,” Gillibrand said.

Trump and Gillibrand have sparred publicly in the past. In December 2017, the president targeted her with a sexually tinged tweet, calling her a “total flunky” who had “come to my office ‘begging’ for campaign contributions not so long ago (and would do anything for them).”

“You cannot silence me or the millions of women who have gotten off the sidelines to speak out about the unfitness and shame you have brought to the Oval Office,” she wrote.
U.S. President Donald Trump's speech at a rally in Orlando, Florida is billed as the official launch of his re-election campaign for the 2020 United States presidential election. He previously filed on January 20, 2017 paperwork with the Federal Election Commission (FEC) officially announcing his bid for the 2020 presidential election.