Humming economy is Trump's main asset

Four years after the real-estate tycoon and reality TV show host glided down the escalator at Trump Tower in Manhattan and began his campaign for the White House - an event regarded in June 2015 as a political sideshow if not a joke - President Donald Trump announced his bid for re-election before thousands of cheering supporters in a rally at the 18,500-seat Amway Center in Orlando, Florida, expressing confidence that he would beat any Democratic challenger, win a major electoral victory next year and spend four more years in office.

A lot has changed in the last four years. But after having been in the White House for 30 months, he sounded on Tuesday very much like the 2015 Candidate Trump, bashing the Democrats - even their 2016 presidential nominee, "crooked" Hillary Clinton - and railing against all the usual suspects, including the political elites in Washington and the mainstream media and their "fake news".

Casting himself as a victim in his speech to supporters in Orlando, he said he has been forced to spend most of his time in office defending himself against his political enemies and a "witch hunt" in the form of allegations of "collusion" with Russian officials, a vendetta aimed at reversing the outcome of the 2016 presidential race and sabotaging his plans to disrupt the way things are done in Washington.