On Saturday, former President Donald Trump spoke at a Save America Rally in Wellington, Ohio. That particular rally was in support of Max Miller, whom Trump endorsed in his primary challenge against Rep. Anthony Gonzalez. The Republican congressman, who has represented Ohio’s 16th congressional district since 2019, voted to impeach Trump in his second impeachment trial.
The former president we know so well was there to remind the crowd of the obvious, stark contrast between his administration and the Biden administration, especially when it comes to “our poor borders.”
While Trump inevitably devoted much of his speech to the 2020 elections, he also reminded the audience of the importance of the 2022 midterm elections. In fact, Saturday evening’s rally is considered the “first rally of the 2022 elections.”
Some Republicans, including Trump allies like Sen. Roy Blunt (R-MO), would rather focus on 2022 and 2024 than 2020. But Trump is determined to focus on both the past and the future because he sees them as interconnected. “The greatest tragedy of all,” Trump lamented, “is that millions of Americans have lost confidence in their vote,” something he vowed “we cannot allow … to happen.”
Addressing those telling him not to look back, Trump insisted: “yyou have to look back. We won the 2020 elections. Who knows what’s going on be in 2024? We won’t have it he left the country. And if we don’t figure it out, we will not be in position to win in 2022 or 2024.”
The crowd was reminded of the importance of taking back the House and Senate, and that “with your help, we will defeat the radical Democrats” because “we have no choice… we have no choice,” Trump said.
Trump actually also addressed the name of the rally, in which he stated that Republican victory in 2022 and 2024 is the way to “save America.”
Inevitably, Trump ridiculed the media’s penniless ratings, but he did so in the context of reminding the crowd of the message to the media and others who had been so harsh on him and his supporters. It’s a message, Trump said, that “together we will stand send Biden and the media and all that people who are bad for us country, tyrants of big technologies, and a message they can’t censor, “cancel or ignore.”
Much of the speech was similar to Trump’s previous speeches since leaving office. While the former president may rant and ramble against the current one, he has his reasons.
“After taking office,” Trump noted, “Joe Biden deliberately and systematically by my people, because that’s what I do don’t think he did it, eliminated the American border defense and incitement to illegal activities migrants like this country never seen. They have violated our rights since every corner globe.”
He then noted that “Joe Biden is doing the exact opposite of us,” arguing that “the current president’s policy is to make illegal immigration as easy as possible.”
To really drive home just how bad the border crisis is, Trump said, “Biden has violated his constitutional oath, he has compromised our security, and, look, he has surrendered us, really, if you think about it, no matter how you disguise it, our sovereignty. What he has done to our country is unthinkable,” the former president said. “And I said it would happen. I said it would happen,” Trump recalled, prompting him to remind the crowd of the need to “convene a Republican Congress to end this lawless agenda.” The crowd began chanting “four more years.”
And not just on the issue of illegal immigration, Trump warned the crowds that Biden and Democrats are “doing everything to put your family in mortal danger” and “a very bad situation.”
In addition to “freeing criminal aliens,” the program also includes “defunding the police” and “abolishing cash bail,” with the former president citing “what has happened to our poor New York” as an example.
Noting that he attended a rally supporting Max Miller as Anthony Gonzalez’s primary opponent, Trump also drew a distinction between the candidates.
Max Miller is part of what the former president called ” incredible crowd list America first Republicans next year.”
Trump has used every possible term imaginable to describe Rep. Gonzalez, including “bad news,” “showing off” and “RINO.” As for RINOs, Trump later warned that they are worse than Democrats. In Gonzalez’s case, Trump he wasn’t thrilled with how he went from talking about the congressman as someone who would gladly fly with him as president to Ohio on Air Force One to someone voting to impeach him.
It wasn’t just Trump who was angry about the move to vote on impeachment, but the Ohio GOP, which Trump noted had called on Rep. Gonzalez to resign. The congressman remains in office.
Unlike Rep. Gonzalez as a “fake Republican and a disgrace to your state” of Ohio, there is Max Miller, described by Trump as an “incredible patriot” who is not a carpetbagger. In typical Trump style, the former president noted that he enjoyed Miller’s work in the White House as his assistant, especially on foreign policy issues, compared to “some of the real losers” who worked in the White House.
Memorable lines and jokes did not concern only the Rep. Gonzalez. As for Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), during what Trump called a “semi-state of the union” and said it was “kind of a weird state of the union,” she wore what Trump called “the biggest mask I’ve ever ever seen on a human,” to the point where he didn’t even know how many masks she was wearing.
Trump also repeated his call from a speech earlier this month at the Republican Party convention that China should be owed many trillions of dollars because of its unleashing of the Wuhan virus in the country. Trump reminded the crowd that he was right about one other thing, specifically regarding the leak of the Wuhan virus from a Wuhan lab.
He recently posted a list of things he was right about, which he repeated at a rally, but which don’t matter because “the election is over so they don’t care.”
Trump being right about such things has only made him more certain that he won the 2020 election. He has discussed other “hoaxes” and “crimes” in Democratic policies and ideas, but ultimately, Trump has called the 2020 election “the crime of the century.”
What is particularly unfair, as Trump sees it and what he thinks 2020 has been, is the contrast between the treatment of losers like Hillary Clinton and Stacey Abrams, who similarly claimed to have had a stake in their races, and himself. “The truth is,” Trump said, “we caught them off guard in 2016,” so “in 2020, they planned for four years. They said it wouldn’t happen again.”
The expected moment of the rally, the “lock her up” chant, was present, as was Trump’s opinion that “by the way, she is the unhappiest person in the United States” regarding Hillary Clinton.
Trump, who recently spoke out criticizing the military’s fixation with critical race theory, also didn’t mince words in this speech, calling the generals “woke,” which he is. “Military brass became weak and ineffective leaders and our enemies are watching and laugh,” Trump warned.
However, it is not just the military that is influenced by CRT, but also impressionable children in school who are “learning to hate our country.” Trump reiterated that this was based on “racism” and used it as an opportunity to call for freedom of school choice as well as banning CRT.
You can certainly point to CRT, as “the radical left is trying to tear our country apart” and that “there’s no depth they won’t sink to,” but it’s also mostly about “the election that we say we’re proud of because we did so well,” as Trump put it.
Trump’s claims about the 2020 election have been called the “Big Lie,” but the former president insisted they were not disproven but “were completely debunked in other ways” to support his own claims.
Specific areas of scrutiny included Mark Zuckerberg’s influence, mass mailings of absentee ballots and applications, and concerns about poll watchers. Trump compared the 96 percent that Joe Biden achieved in some counties that came in as slow as they did to “North Korea-style turnout,” referring to the vote.
It was because of concerns about the 2020 election, the border crisis, the money spent on obsession, and the “fabricated witch hunt on Russia” that Trump emphasized his warnings that “you don’t have a country.”
Trump ended his speech, as he did at the North Carolina GOP convention, like most of them, as a campaign speech but still full of hope. But he does have one thing to brag about: In 2020, he became the first Republican to win Lorain County, Ohio, since President Ronald Reagan.
But perhaps the most obvious connection to the campaign speech is that Trump once again ends by reminding the crowd that “we will make America great again” – a phrase and move that is sure to galvanize many.
Trump’s speech Saturday was similar in some ways to the speech he gave earlier this month at the NC GOP convention. You can read an equally detailed account of that speech here.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-l561c_BR-w
