Donald Trump, the former President of the United States whose term ended yesterday, is considering starting a new party.
Trump, who was elected as President in 2016 as a Republican, is mulling the possibility of establishing the ‘Patriot Party,’ according to the Wall Street Journal.
This comes as many senior Republican officials have turned on Trump and have blamed him for the Capitol riots earlier this month, when a number of his supporters stormed the seat of American legislative power.
Parties other than the Democratic or Republican parties have generally failed to challenge the two established parties in any significant way, whether in state elections or federally. The last presidential candidate who was not a Democrat or Republican but gave a good account of himself was Ross Perot. Perot won nearly 20% of the vote in 1992 and nearly 10% in 1996. The last third-party presidential candidate to win a state was the segregationist George Wallace in 1968, who won five states in the American South on an explicitly racist platform.
It remains to be seen whether the party will act as a legitimate political party by attempting to win votes or whether it will act as a marketing and merchandising vehicle for the former president.