As announcements go it was somewhat more muted than the last. In June 2015 Donald Trump, then host of The Apprentice, descended on a golden escalator in New York skyscraper that bears his name to proclaim his intention to run for President – for real this time.

The businessman had previously floated the idea of running for the White House but never actually followed through, and back then his candidacy was seen as something of a joke. The rest, as they say, is history.

Mr Trump served one tumultuous term as commander-in-chief before being resoundingly ousted in the 2020 election, a plebiscite which the billionaire continues to claim, without evidence, was rigged against him.

This time the setting was a conference room at his Mar-a-Lago resort – which was raided by the FBI earlier this year - the 76-year-old stepping up to the podium to chants of “U-S-A! U-S-A!”. He began by speaking directly to his base, praising the MAGA (Make America Great Again) crowd as “the heart and soul of this incredible movement and greatest country in the history of the world” and saying there had “never been anything like it and perhaps there will never be anything like it again”.

Hitting familiar notes, Mr Trump told the crowd “America’s comeback starts right now”, insted the country had “stood ready for its golden age” when he left office in 2020 and made references to “vanquishing all enemies”.

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There were, of course, copious references to the former president’s bete noire on the international stage, China, which he claimed played a “big role” in the 2020 election before saying, with apparent sarcasm, “I’m sure that didn’t happen”. Mr Trump claimed to have been the first president to impose tariffs on the Far Eastern country. The U.S has had tariffs on China for more than two centuries.

The 76-year-old went on to claim he had “kept his promises” from his first election campaign. That included building a wall on the southern border and making Mexico pay for it – according a report written by US Customs and Border Protection two days after Mr Trump left office, about 458 miles of wall had been completed along the 2,000 mile border. Mexico did not pay for construction. Nevertheless the former president claimed “we built the wall – we completed the wall – and then we said let’s do more, and we did a lot more”.

The Herald: Donald TrumpDonald Trump (Image: AP)

His penchant for hyperbole undimmed, Mr Trump described the withdrawal from Afghanistan as “perhaps the most embarrassing moment in the history of our country”, falsely claiming $85bn of equipment was left behind. He further claimed the war in Ukraine “would never have happened if I were your president”.

While he hit on familiar points – election fraud, “radical left lunatics”, making America great again – Mr Trump’s speech was notably more polished than his 2015 announcement. On that occasion he branded Mexican immigrants rapists, branded a soldier captured in Afghanistan “a no-good traitor”, plugged his golf courses and compared China’s leadership to Tom Brady and the New England Patriots playing against, in the Obama administration, a high school football team.

On Tuesday the former commander-in-chief read from a prompter, rather than the freewheeling style of 2015 and which is so often seen at his rallies. Even his customary mention of the ‘fake news media’ was couched as a joke, Mr Trump stating that he would keep things ‘elegant’.

Was this an attempt to out-flank ‘Trump with a brain’ Ron DeSantis, the governor of Florida widely tipped to run for 2024? It was a full 18 minutes before the defeated 2020 candidate officially announced his intention to run again, to wild cheers from the floor.

How the speech will play outside of Mr Trump’s base remains to be seen – this was a message for MAGA. Appearing to make a veiled reference to the events of January 6 2020 he told attendees “this is our country, our government, and the corridors of power are our corridors… we’re coming to take those corridors back”. There was plenty of talk about the border, about the death penalty for drug dealers, about Joe Biden's mental state - just in less of a free-flowing, off-kilter way than we've become used to.

The former president remains hugely popular with Republican voters – a recent poll put his approval at 80 per cent – and remains favourite to be the party’s nominee for 2024. Playing the hits for the converted is one thing though, will his message play with a general electorate which already rejected Mr Trump in 2020? Tuesday lacked the fire and fury of 2015 – but Mr Trump was almost entirely written off then too.