Former U.S. President Donald Trump will give a speech later this month to a gathering of political conservatives in Orlando, Florida, according to multiple reports on Saturday, his first extended public address since leaving the White House on January 20.

The appearance is scheduled for February 28 at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), one of the country's largest annual gatherings of political conservatives.

"He'll be talking about the future of the Republican Party and the conservative movement. Also look for the 45th President to take on President (Joe) Biden's disastrous amnesty and border policies," a source told Reuters.

Trump, whose tumultuous four years in the White House ended shortly after he was impeached on a charge of inciting his supporters' deadly January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, nevertheless remains a potent force in U.S. politics.

Three-quarters of Republicans want Trump to play a prominent role in the party, according to a poll from Quinnipiac University this week.

Since reluctantly departing the White House on January 20 and ceding to Biden, despite his constant but unsubstantiated claims that the election had been stolen, Trump has largely kept to himself at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida.

Stripped of his Twitter megaphone, he called into friendly cable TV news programs this week after the death of conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh, musing on far-right channel Newsmax about the possibility of a future political run.

"I won't say yet but we have tremendous support. And I'm looking at poll numbers that are through the roof."

Trump has expressed anger at the 17 Republicans in the House of Representatives and Senate who voted to impeach or convict him, and on Tuesday he aimed his rhetorical fire at Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, the nation's most senior elected Republican.

Trump called McConnell "a dour, sullen, and unsmiling political hack" and warned that if Republican senators stayed with him "they will not win again."

The gap between Trump and McConnell widened when the latter declared after the Senate's acquittal of the former president that Trump was "practically and morally responsible" for the Capitol siege.

A number of top Republicans who are considered possible candidates for the party's 2024 presidential nomination are also due to speak at CPAC, including Trump’s secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, and Kristi Noem, the governor of South Dakota.

Biden, who is trying to steer the United States through the COVID-19 pandemic and an economic crisis, has tried to avoid discussing Trump, at one point calling him "the former guy."

Lawmakers from his Democratic Party have unveiled legislation to create a path to citizenship for 11 million undocumented immigrants, reversing Trump's hardline policies.

Small numbers of asylum seekers, most of them Central Americans forced to wait in Mexico under Trump, have also begun crossing into the United States as their cases are being processed.

(Cover: Then-U.S. President Donald Trump speaks to the press on the South Lawn of the White House in Washington, D.C., U.S., September 9, 2019. /AFP)

(With input from Reuters, AFP)