After serving as the 45th president of the United States, Donald Trump has confirmed what many have long suspected: he'd also like to be the 47th.
In the final weeks leading up to the 2022 midterm elections, the former president teased supporters with clues about his plans for the next two years.
"‘I will probably have to do it again," he told supporters in Texas.
"[I'll] very, very, very probably do it again," he hinted in Iowa.
"I really want to do it," he declared in Pennsylvania.
On the eve of the midterms, he told an Ohio crowd to stay tuned for a "very big announcement".
Then on November 15, surrounded by hundreds of supporters at his Mar-A-Lago lodge in Palm Beach, Florida, came the news they'd all been waiting to hear.
"In order to make America great and glorious again, I am tonight announcing my candidacy for president of the United States," he said.
"This will not be my campaign, this will be our campaign, together."
"Because the only force strong enough to defeat the massive corruption we are up against is you, the American people."
Trump wants to be only the second person in US history to win two non-consecutive terms in the White House, after Grover Cleveland (the 22nd and 24th president).
If successful, he will return to the Oval Office in 2025 a different man from the novice politician he was when he first became president.
In 2016, his bid for the presidency was dismissed by some commentators as a publicity stunt that inadvertently landed a reality star in the highest office in the land.
He entered the White House with a hastily assembled transition team, thousands of vacant jobs to fill, and few details of how he planned to achieve his campaign promises.
But things are different this time around.
Trump's grip on the Republican party remains vice-like, despite a disappointing performance for almost all of the candidates he backed in competitive midterms races.
He has millions of dollars in campaign finance ready to be spent and a network of like-minded loyalists at his disposal.
And, for the first time, he has a clear policy agenda that would dramatically change the United States.
The celebrity who became the most powerful man in the world
When he glided down the escalator at Trump Tower and announced his bid for the presidency in 2016, Trump didn't appear to have much of a plan.
The real estate mogul-turned-reality TV star gave a long and apparently unscripted 45-minute stump speech to the cohort of journalists in the building's lobby.
But he had done enough preparation to come up with one of the most evocative political slogans in recent US history.
"I am officially running for president of the United States, and we are going to make our country great again," he said.
"Sadly the American dream is dead. But if I get elected president I will bring it back bigger and better and stronger than ever before."
While his campaign was widely dismissed as attention-seeking, it also struck a chord in America's heartland.
A tangle of dwindling job opportunities, stagnant wage growth, racial resentment and misogyny had quietly formed in some key battleground states.
Trump — a self-proclaimed billionaire who lived in a gilded Manhattan apartment— tapped into the fears of white working-class American men who believed their status was under threat.
"When Mexico sends its people, they're not sending their best," he said.
"They're bringing drugs. They're bringing crime. They're rapists."
America's political elite assumed his campaign was a lark, and Trump would eventually bow out in exchange for a prime-time speaking slot at the Republican National Convention.
Even as he collected states and eventually accepted his party's nomination, Trump believed he could never win against Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton.
But after four chaotic years in power, a devastating loss in 2020 which he still will not publicly accept, an insurrection, and an FBI raid on his Florida mansion, Trump is making another charge for the White House.
And this time, he has a plan.
'Drain the swamp' is back, with big plans to revive 'Schedule F'
Trump himself outlined his agenda for a second term in a speech at the America First Policy Institute in late July.
He harked back to the convoluted "deep state" conspiracy theory that roared into the mainstream consciousness during his presidency, of a secretive, elitist — and in extreme versions, reptilian — cabal working to undermine the US government.
"To drain the swamp and root out the deep state, we need to make it much easier to fire rogue bureaucrats who are deliberately undermining democracy, or at a minimum just want to keep their jobs," Trump said.
"Congress should pass historic reforms, empowering the president to ensure that any bureaucrat who is corrupt, incompetent or unnecessary for the job can be told … 'You're fired. Get out, you're fired.'"
These "historic reforms" could take the familiar shape of an executive order doled out in the twilight of Trump's presidency, allowing him to effectively gut the public service.
The month before the 2020 election, he signed off on establishing a new category for federal employees that would have stripped away protections and effectively made the positions much easier to terminate.
The order would have reassigned thousands of civil servants in policy roles to so-called Schedule F status, paving the way for the administration to purge the public service at will.
That didn't come to pass, with Joe Biden reversing the order as soon as he took office.
But Trump has already hinted that reimposing Schedule F could be on the cards if he steps back into the Oval Office.
Axios reports those closest to Trump are working on plans that go even further than the usual conservative targets such as the Environmental Protection Agency and the Internal Revenue Service.
This time, they could set their sights on as many as 50,000 staff from all over, including the Justice Department, FBI, State Department and Pentagon.
Trump has even gone so far as to suggest abolishing the Education Department entirely.
In a keynote speech to the Conservative Political Action Conference in August, the former president hit out at local school boards, latching onto the political football that has been tossed around for much of this year.
"Across the country, we need to implement strict prohibitions on teaching inappropriate racial, sexual and political material to America's schoolchildren in any form whatsoever," he said.
"And if federal bureaucrats are going to push this radicalism, we should abolish the Department of Education."
FBI raids may have further emboldened these plans
While the FBI raid on his Florida residence in August undoubtedly spooked Trump, it looks to have simultaneously emboldened supporters who have latched on to his promise to "drain the swamp".
Within hours of the former president announcing his "beautiful home" was "under siege", supporters had sprung to his defence, declaring war on social media and gathering outside Mar-a-Lago waving "Trump 2024" banners.
Trump and his allies painted the search warrant, approved by Attorney-General Merrick Garland, as a politically motivated witch hunt.
"They are terrified he's going to announce any day that he's running for president in 2024, and this is a very convenient way to just throw a little more mud on Donald Trump, as though they haven't already done enough," his daughter-in-law, Lara Trump, told Fox News.
The next day, he shared a campaign-style video on Truth Social all but announcing his 2024 run, pledging to "never ever back down" from "fighting tyrants".
For many, the optics of FBI agents carrying boxes out of Mar-a-Lago only affirmed their belief that Trump must be re-elected to purge tens of thousands of "corrupt" civil servants.
And the 45th president has been direct in leveraging the issue as a fundraising tool in the lead-up to his campaign.
Sweeping changes to electoral law and civil liberties
For years, Trump has called for widespread changes to electoral laws to eliminate what he calls "voter fraud" that lost him the popular vote in 2016 and the election in 2020 — claims that have been repeatedly debunked.
Among his suggestions are calls to require universal voter ID, as well as abolishing early in-person voting and restricting mail-in ballots.
Since 2021, at least 18 states have enacted laws that could make it harder for Americans to vote, according to The Brennan Centre for Justice.
Critics say these types of changes disproportionately disadvantage voters in lower socio-economic areas and those who are unable to leave work or carers' duties on election day to cast their votes.
Trump has also foreshadowed legislation that would give him total power to stamp out protests.
Currently, it is the decision of state governors whether or not to send in the National Guard if a demonstration becomes violent.
"Where there is a true and total breakdown of law and order where citizens' most basic rights have been violated, then the federal government can and should send the National Guard to restore order," he said in his speech to the America First Policy Institute.
He said he would no longer be willing to "wait for the approval of some governor that thinks it's politically incorrect to call them in".
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, considered the only realistic contender to beat Trump for the Republican nomination, has already revived a defunct state defence force that operates outside the Pentagon and national guard — partly to overcome interference from DC bureaucrats.
Trump also suggested that "the homeless, the drug addicted and the dangerously deranged" would be rounded up and placed in "thousands and thousands of high-quality tents" on "large parcels of inexpensive land in the outer reaches of the cities".
Pardons for allies and January 6 insurrectionists
There are some in Washington DC that a second-term president Trump would be far friendlier to.
While in office, Trump wielded his pardon power with enthusiasm, commuting the sentences of several high-profile associates and friends, including former political strategist Steve Bannon, former national security adviser Paul Manafort and long-time ally Roger Stone.
He even floated the idea of pre-emptively pardoning his three eldest children — Donald Jr, Eric and Ivanka — as well as his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, and personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani.
He capped off his final day as president with a dizzying 143-pardon spree.
The former president was so vocal about his willingness to scrub out consequences for bad behaviour that congressman Mo Brooks sent an email less than a week after the January 6 riot requesting more than 100 blanket pardons for himself and other Republicans who voted against certifying the 2020 election.
The email, sent with the subject line "pardons", was aired in a recent January 6 hearing.
Former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson testified that an original draft of the speech Trump delivered on January 7, 2021, included his desire to issue pardons for those who breached the Capitol building.
She said he wanted it to reflect "his mindset at the time, which was he didn't think they did anything wrong".
At a rally in Texas earlier this year, Trump doubled down on the plan, dangling the possibility of pardons for the hundreds of people arrested and charged with federal crimes in connection with the riot.
"If I run and if I win, we will treat those people from January 6 fairly," he told a crowd in Conroe.
"And if it requires pardons, we will give them pardons because they are being treated so unfairly."
The state of the race
Now that Trump has officially jumped into the race, several political action committees (PACs) flush with cash are ready to help.
He controls four PACs with more than $US121 million at his disposal, according to former Republican strategist Karl Rove.
While US campaign finance laws bar him from immediately transferring this cash to his campaign, the PACs could independently support his candidacy.
Trump may still wield considerable power over the Republican Party, but his advantage is by no means insurmountable for potential challengers.
His former vice-president Mike Pence, former secretary of state Mike Pompeo, and protege-turned-rival Governor DeSantis are reportedly considering 2024 runs.
And polls suggest Republican voters are happy to explore their options as well.
Trump still retains the support of 53 per cent of Republicans, according to a New York Times/Siena College poll conducted last month.
But DeSantis is hot on Trump's tail among the 30-44 age group, and ahead among voters with a college degree.
If he prevails, he will attempt to do to Joe Biden what the ageing Democrat did to him: unseat a one-term president.
President Biden, who has still not confirmed his own 2024 plans, has long maintained that he returned to politics at the age of 78 specifically to vanquish Trump from American life.
The president's approval rating may have recently dipped to an all-time low, and some Democrats are even calling for him to step aside.
But recent polls suggest any hypothetical rematch between Trump and Biden in 2024 is likely to go down to the wire — just like the midterms.
