Trump teases 2024 run amid Jan. 6 hearings: ‘Would anybody like me to run for president’

Trump spoke Friday, making his first public appearance since the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection began to lay bare his desperate attempts to remain in power.

As religious conservatives gathered this week at a sprawling resort near the Grand Ole Opry House, Nikki Haley pressed the Faith and Freedom Coalition’s “Road to Majority” crowd to look to the future.

“It’s up to us to deliver a new birth of patriotism,” said Haley, the former South Carolina governor who was ambassador to the United Nations under President Donald Trump. “And together with you, and with trust in God, I pledge to answer that call and inspire our country once again,” she said, sounding like a White House candidate herself.

Such comments are typical for a party that’s out of power and in search of its next leader. What’s unusual: The party’s last leader is plotting his own comeback.

Trump spoke from the same stage Friday, making his first public appearance since the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection began to lay bare his desperate attempts to remain in power. It presented harrowing video footage and searing testimony, including accounts from Trump’s close associates and members of his family.

He spent much of his speech blasting the committee’s efforts as politically motivated and insisting he’d done nothing wrong.

In the face of the video and allies’ accounts, he still said, “What you’re seeing is a complete and total lie. It’s a complete and total fraud.” He claimed footage had been selectively edited and downplayed the insurrection as “a simple protest that got out hand.”

And he made sure to tease his own plans.

“One of the most urgent tasks facing the next Republican president — I wonder who that will be,” Trump said at one point, prompting a standing ovation and chants of “USA!”