Donald Trump “failed America” during his four years in the White House, President Joe Biden said after his predecessor announced he would run again in 2024.
“Donald Trump failed America,” Mr Biden wrote on Twitter from Bali, where he was attending the last day of the G20 summit.
Mr Biden has become quick to attack Mr Trump in recent months, in contrast to last year when he would only grudgingly discuss the man he called “the former guy”.
His tweet included a video compilation saying Mr Trump presided over “rigging economy for rich”, “attacking health care”, “coddling extremists”, “attacking women's rights”, and “inciting a violent mob” to try to overturn his 2020 election loss to Mr Biden.
It came as a point-by-point rebuttal to Mr Trump's bleak speech on Tuesday night in which he depicted America as a “failing” and “weakened and humiliated” state under Mr Biden.
Later, while participating in a ceremonial mangrove planting with other G20 leaders, reporters asked Mr Biden and French President Emmanuel Macron if they had reactions to Mr Trump's announcement.
The two looked at each other briefly before Mr Biden said “not really”, while Mr Macron remained silent.
While Mr Trump remains enormously popular among the far right, the “Make America Great Again” — or Maga — faction of conservative voters, senior Republican Party figures and conservative media outlets have publicly turned on the former president after an expected “red wave” of conservative victories largely faded.
Mr Trump is being investigated for fomenting the January 6, 2021 insurrection after he claimed the 2020 election he lost by seven million votes was “stolen”.
Many Republicans backed his false claims, but last week's midterms appear to have marked a turning point. Under his leadership, the Republicans lost the House of Representatives in 2018, the presidency in 2020 and had a poor showing in the midterms.
Anthony Scaramucci, who briefly served as Mr Trump's spokesman and is now in finance, likened his former boss to a “zombie”.
“You know how you have a zombie that you can’t kill, like in the Night of the Walking Dead? That’s Trump. He’s the orange zombie that the Republicans are desperate to make extinct, but because of his personality — which is driven by money and attention — there would be absolutely no reason for him not to run for president.
“This is distressing the Republicans because they want to move past Trump. They clearly have lost momentum from an election point of view.”
Mr Trump became the first US president to be impeached twice, though congressional Democrats failed to remove him from office.
Mr Trump said he would “make America great and glorious again” while launching his run for a second presidency on Tuesday night.
He made his plans official after teasing the potential of a comeback before he left the White House in 2021.
One of his sons, Donald Trump Jr, tweeted that his father would “put America first” but daughter Ivanka Trump notably was not at Tuesday's launch event and in a statement said she did not plan to be involved in politics.
“While I will always love and support my father, going forward I will do so outside the political arena,” she said.
No one else has declared their intention to run for president this early, but Mr Trump's former vice president Mike Pence is expected to do so, as is Florida Governor Ron DeSantis.
The Republican establishment appears to be coalescing around Mr DeSantis, who easily won re-election, while Trump-anointed candidates elsewhere floundered.
In his announcement at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Florida, Mr Trump promised to bring inflation from its recent high levels down to 1 per cent and made several false claims, including saying he had gone “decades without a war, the first president to do it for that long a period.”
He promised to return to his administration’s immigration policies, saying the Biden administration has allowed open borders, and that millions of people are entering the US.
“They’re pouring into our country. We have no idea who they are and where they come from. We have no idea what’s happening to our country. We’re being poisoned,” he said.
Mr Trump also pledged a “no-holds-barred national campaign to dismantle the gangs and clean out the nests of organised street crime”.
