Analysis: Trump unleashes new threat to American democracy

In his first public remarks since leaving the White House, he also dangerously lashed out at Supreme Court justices for failing to intervene to throw him the election he clearly lost to President Joe Biden.

"They should be ashamed of themselves for what they've done to our country ...

the Supreme Court didn't have the guts or the courage to do anything about it," Trump fumed in an authoritarian speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference, in Orlando, Florida, referring to false fraud claims thrown out by multiple judges.

Last seen leaving Washington in disgrace, the ex-President's self-regarding wander through old political fights emphasized his obsession with revenge at a time when the attention of the majority of the nation not in his camp is concentrating on more immediate concerns.

Depending on how it progresses in the Senate, the House passage of Biden's $1.9 trillion Covid rescue plan early Saturday could also accelerate the end of a pandemic that the ex-President ignored completely in his final weeks in office.

The embittered former commander in chief, however, was locked in his false but damaging alternative reality, to which millions of his followers subscribe, that he was the victim of a massive election fraud effort.

The last time Trump publicly used the kind of language that he spewed on Sunday was when Congress was certifying Biden's election win and his mob invaded the US Capitol, calling for the execution of then-Vice President Mike Pence, who refused to break the law to keep Trump in power.

His latest comments suggest that the fight to safeguard US democratic institutions and free elections did not end when he left the White House but will be a key struggle in the run-up to the next presidential election.

And in the shorter term, he is seeding even more suspicion about his exit from the White House with conservative voters, while providing more potential motivation for extremist groups who support him.

In such a way, Trump's corrupting influence could harm faith in the fairness of US elections, the bedrock of US democracy for months or years into the future.

Naming his enemies

In a further inflammatory move, Trump also called out by name Republican lawmakers who voted to impeach him in the House and convict him in the Senate for his assault on the Constitution, including Reps.

And then a Republican president will make a triumphant return to the White House," Trump said.

"And I wonder who that will be."

Trump's unhinged conduct and attacks on his successor so soon after leaving office represented a historical aberration.

Ted Cruz of Texas and Josh Hawley of Missouri, demonstrated Trump's unbroken hold on the Republican grassroots.

Trump's inflammatory language and new push to dismantle the infrastructure of elections is likely to mean more frustration for Republican leaders in Washington who are trying to build opposition to the current President's Covid rescue package in the Senate but who will now be assailed by questions about Trump's new insurrectionary rhetoric against the Supreme Court.

The ex-President's comments came with the Capitol and the Supreme Court building still behind a massive steel fence, amid lingering fears of attacks by extremists fueled by Trump's seditious rhetoric.

There was no doubt about the former President's desire to remain the dominant figure in the Republican Party.