Former US President Donald Trump is expected to present another White House bid on Tuesday, even as another of his fellow vote-breakers lost a key race in last week’s midterm elections.

The 76-year-old billionaire, whose 2016 win shocked America and the world, has called the press to his Florida mansion for a “very big announcement” on Tuesday at 9:00 p.m. (0200 GMT Wednesday).

Known for his unpredictability, Trump could change his mind at the last minute, but for months he has barely concealed his desire to run for the presidency again in 2024.

And delaying the announcement now, as some of his advisers have reportedly suggested, would be embarrassing given Trump’s repeated boasts about the scope of his Tuesday speech.

“Hopefully TODAY will be one of the most important days in our country’s history!” Trump posted on his platform Truth Social overnight.

But in a new sign that Trump and his hardcore supporters are not running the electoral juggernaut they once did, one of Trump’s staunchest supporters, election denier and establishment skeptic Kari Lake, has been forecast to abandon her race as Arizona governor would lose.

The results have emboldened Trump’s Republican critics and weakened most of his political momentum heading into Tuesday’s expected campaign start.

In 2016, Trump and the Republicans came to power, seized control of the White House and maintained their majorities in both houses of Congress.

But Democrats won back the House of Representatives in a landslide in 2018 after largely fighting Trump’s caustic style.

They completed their trifecta of US political power by capturing the Senate and White House in 2020.

President Joe Biden, whose victory Trump is refusing to acknowledge, recently announced that he plans to run for a second term, although he said he would make a final decision next year.

Trump left Washington in chaos two weeks after his partisans stormed the US Capitol, but he chose to remain in the political arena and continue to raise funds and hold rallies across the country.

Ahead of last week’s midterm vote, in which Biden’s Democrats were expected to lose easily, Trump made the rejection of the 2020 election results a key litmus test for candidates to win his influential political support.

But the predicted Republican “red wave” failed to materialize, and Democrats will retain control of the Senate.

In the still undecided House of Representatives, the Republicans are likely to win only a wafer-thin majority.

Trump’s once-loyal wingman, former Vice President Mike Pence, lashed out late Monday, telling ABC News that Trump was “reckless” in the U.S. Capitol on the day of the Jan. 6, 2021 riot, and that he communicated this to the president no power to unilaterally block certification of the election, as Trump sought.

However, Pence declined to say directly whether Trump should be president again. “It’s up to the Americans, but I think we’re going to have better choices going forward,” he said in the interview.

Part of the conservative world has already turned to another potential White House contender who, like Trump, lives in Florida: Gov. Ron DeSantis.

The 44-year-old rising far-right star has shown himself in strong form after his resounding re-election victory in the southeastern state and appears poised to challenge the former president.

Tuesday’s announcement is widely seen as a way for Trump to take the wind out of the sails of potential rivals, including DeSantis and Pence, who is releasing his memoir the same day.

For now, Trump retains an undeniable popularity with his base, a flood of die-hard red baseball-capped fans who continue to flock to his rallies.

Most polls also give him the lead in a hypothetical Republican primary — despite being impeached twice by the House of Representatives and facing dissatisfaction from corners of the Republican party.

His prosecution in the White House is also hampered by multiple investigations into his conduct before, during and after his first term as president – which could ultimately lead to his disqualification.

These include allegations of fraud by his family business, his role in last year’s attack on the US Capitol and his handling of classified documents at Mar-a-Lago, his private Florida mansion, which was raided by the FBI in August.