Trump says making 'very big announcement' on Nov 15

DAYTON: Donald Trump said Monday he would be making a "very big announcement" next week, with the former president expected to jump into the race for the White House in 2024.

Trump, who has never accepted the truth of his lost re-election bid in 2020, has hinted for months that he is ready to re-enter the fray.

"Not to detract from tomorrow's very important, even critical election... I´m going to be making a very big announcement on Tuesday, November 15 at Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Florida," he told a cheering crowd in Ohio on the eve of US polls which will determine control of Congress.

The trail was the closest the Republican has got to confirming his intention to run, building on his message last week that he "will very, very, very probably do it again."

Lame duck?

More than 40 million ballots had been cast through early voting, meaning the outcome was already taking shape before polls opened nationwide Tuesday.

Biden tried to remain upbeat during his closing address in Baltimore, but in a call with party allies earlier Monday he conceded that his dreams of keeping Congress, which Democrats currently control by a thin margin, amounted to a "very high expectation."

Trump Republicans are "some of the darkest forces we´ve ever seen in our history," he said.

Biden's speech laid out what he said was "a choice between two very different visions of America," arguing that his administration has successfully steered the world's largest economy out of the Covid pandemic, with unemployment at 3.75% and manufacturing industries on the rise.

Republicans, he said, would return to "trickle-down economics" that favour the rich.

Polls show that Republican messaging emphasizing four-decades-high inflation, crime and illegal immigration has left voters in an angry mood. As the party controlling the White House and — albeit barely — Congress, the Democrats are likely to get punished.

Returning to the White House on Monday night, Biden told reporters he believed Democrats would win the Senate — though he conceded "it´s going to be tough" to keep control of the House.

If Democrats can't even hold the Senate, then Biden would find himself in a state of constant political warfare in Washington. There would also be immediate, harsh questions over whether the president, who turns 80 this month, should seek a second term or give way to a younger party member.

Biden's entire agenda would go into a deep freeze. That would raise questions over everything from climate crisis policies, which the president will be laying out at the COP27 conference in Egypt this week, to Ukraine, where Republicans are reluctant to maintain the current rate of US financial and military support.

While insisting he supports Ukraine´s struggle, Republican Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy told CNN there could be no "blank check" — a nod to the isolationist Trump wing of his party and a signal likely sending shivers through Kyiv.

Adding to tensions — and a reminder of Moscow's murky role throughout Trump-era US politics — Kremlin-connected oligarch Yevgeny Prigozhin boasted that Russia was trying to tilt the outcome.