Former US President, Donald Trump has officially announced he is running for president for the third time in 2024 in a speech attacking President Biden, the ‘radical left’ Democrats and their record on the economy and the world stage in the two years since he left office.

The former president ignored Republican critics and those who blamed him for the GOP’s disappointing midterms to go full steam on stating his intent to be back in the Oval Office to ‘drain the swamp’ with the country ‘being destroyed before our very lives’.

‘In order to make America great and glorious again, I am today announcing my candidacy for president of the United States,’ he confirmed to huge cheers before laying into the FBI raid, the ‘fake’ dossier’, the ‘deep state’ and lobbyists.

Despite not formally making his announcement until later in the speech, Trump made his intentions clear from the outset by telling his audience: ‘America’s comeback starts right now.’

‘Three years ago when I left office, the United States stood ready for its golden age. Our nation was at the pinnacle of power, prosperity and prestige – towering above all rivals vanquishing all enemies and striding into the future confident, resourceful,’ Trump said.

He vowed to make his run about working people, restoring American energy independence, reforming elections to make sure there are ‘only paper ballots’ and restoring an ‘agenda of greatness’ with top Republicans and the media saying he should stay out of the race.

Trump peppered his speech with various campaign promises, some of which are similar to statements he’s made in campaign-style rallies this year. He said he would hand the death penalty to drug dealers, ban transgender women from playing female sports, plant an American flag on Mars, build a nuclear ‘missile shield’, and rehire service members who were fired for being unvaccinated.

‘This will not be my campaign. This will be our campaign all together. Because the only force strong enough to defeat the massive corruption we are up against is you, the American people,’ he said while celebrating the last six years of the MAGA movement, his midterm endorsements and his battle against Washington.

After months of speculation and with mounting legal battles, he filed paperwork with the Federal Election Commission just moments before he began his speech to fired-up supporters at Mar-a-Lago where he said America ‘can’t take’ four more years of Biden.

‘The decline of America is being forced upon us by Biden and the radical left lunatics running our government right into the ground,’ Trump said.

In his stately ballroom with opulent gold trimmings and chandeliers, he was introduced as the ‘next president’ to chants of ‘USA’.

Speaking for just over an hour, Trump made defiant and sometimes somber remarks about the state of the country, hours after Mitch McConnell said independent voters had the ‘impression of many of the people in our party and leadership roles is that they are involved in chaos’.

The former president went on to attack Biden for record inflation, ‘falling asleep at global conferences’ and making the U.S. ‘detestable’ with the rest of the world. He celebrated Nancy Pelosi getting ‘fired’ with Republicans on the cusp of taking the House majority.

But taking a page out of his White House successor’s 2020 playbook, Trump vowed to ‘unify people’ and claimed he did so during his last term.

‘It happened in the previous administration,’ Trump said. ‘And what was bringing them together was success.’

The crowd roared when he and Melania Trump arrived to the tune of his signature theme, Lee Greenwood’s God Bless The USA.

Before that, applause rang out for the arrival of his family members – Eric Trump, his wife Lara, Trump’s youngest child Barron, 16, and his son-in-law, Jared Kushner.

Kushner, who served as a White House advisor during Trump’s last term, raised eyebrows by arriving without his wife Ivanka – who released a statement after the speech that she loved her father but was ‘choosing to prioritize my young children and the private life we are creating as a family’ and would stay ‘out of the political arena.’

Tiffany Trump, who just got married at Mar-a-Lago on Saturday, was also not present. Nor was Donald Trump Jr., who was on a hunting trip and could not catch a flight in time to attend the event due to bad weather, according to RealClearPolitics.