WASHINGTON (AP) — Former President Donald Trump will return to Washington Tuesday for the first time since leaving office, delivering a policy speech to an allied think tank that has been crafting an agenda for a possible second term.
Trump will address the America First Policy Institute’s two-day America First Agenda Summit as some advisers urge him to spend more time talking about his vision for the future and less time reconfirming 2020 election as he prepares to announce a planned campaign for the White House in 2024.
“I think it’s going to be a very policy-focused and forward-looking address, very much like a State of the Union 5.0,” said AFPI President Brooke Rollins. Comprised of former Trump administration officials and allies, the nonprofit is widely seen as an “administration in waiting” that could quickly move into the West Wing if Trump were to run again and win .
Trump’s appearance in Washington, his first trip since President Joe Biden was sworn into office on Jan. 20, 2021, comes as his potential 2024 rivals have made increasingly open moves to challenge his status as the standard-bearer of the party. It includes former Vice President Mike Pence, who has been promoting his own “Freedom Agenda” in speeches that serve as an implicit contrast to Trump.
“Some people may choose to focus on the past, but I think conservatives need to focus on the future. If we do, we will not only win the next election, but change the course of American history by generations,” Pence predicted in a speech at the Heritage Foundation in Washington on the eve of Trump’s visit. Pence’s appearance was postponed due to inclement weather, but he will deliver his own speech Tuesday morning before the Young America’s Foundation not far from the AFPI meeting.
Trump has spent much of his time since leaving office fixated on the 2020 election and spreading lies about his loss to cast doubt on Biden’s victory. Indeed, although the January 6 committee exposed his desperate and potentially illegal attempts to stay in power and his refusal to call a violent mob of his supporters as they tried to stop the peaceful transition of power, Trump continued to try to pressure officials to overturn Biden’s victory, even though there is no legal means to decertify past elections.
On Tuesday, he plans to focus on public safety.
“President Trump sees a nation in decline driven in part by rising crime and increasingly unsafe communities under Democratic policies,” said his spokesman, Taylor Budowich. “His remarks will highlight the policy failures of Democrats, while laying out an America First vision for public safety that is sure to be a defining issue in the midterms and beyond.”
Beyond the summit, staff at the America First Policy Institute have been laying their own groundwork for the future, “making sure we have the policies, staff and process nailed down for every key agency as we take back the House White,” Rollins. said
The nonprofit was developed, he said, out of efforts to avoid the chaotic early days of Trump’s first term, when he arrived at the White House unprepared, with no clear plans ready to put in place. As Trump ran for re-election, Rollins, then the head of Trump’s Domestic Policy Council, began outlining a second-term agenda with other administration officials, including top economic policy adviser Larry Kudlow and national security adviser Robert O’Brien.
When it became clear that Trump would leave the White House, he said, AFPI was created to continue that work “organized around this second-term agenda that we never released.”
The organization, once dismissed as a landing zone for former Trump administration officials, has grown into a behemoth, with an operating budget of about $25 million and 150 employees, including 17 former senior White House officials and nine former. Cabinet members.
The group also has more than 20 policy centers and has sought to extend its reach beyond Washington with efforts to influence local legislatures and school boards. An “American Leadership Initiative,” led by former Office of Personnel Management chief Michael Rigas, was launched several weeks ago to identify future staff loyal to Trump and his “America First” approach. which could be contracted as part of a larger effort. to replace large swaths of the civil service, as Axios recently reported.
The group is one of several Trump-allied organizations that have continued to push his policies in his absence, including America First Legal, which is dedicated to fighting Biden’s agenda through the court system, the Center for Renewing America and the Conservative Partnership Institute.
The summit aims to highlight AFPI’s “America First Agenda,” centered around 10 key policy areas, including the economy, health and election security. It includes many of Trump’s signature issues, including continuing to build a wall along the southern border and a plan to “dismantle the administrative state.”
In a speech Monday, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, whose “Contract with America” has been credited with helping Republicans sweep the 1994 midterm elections, praised the effort as key to to the future victory of the GOP.
“The American people want solutions,” he said