Last night's rally was apparently even rantier than usual.
In one of his most vitriolic appearances to date, President Donald Trump on Thursday night railed against the Washington establishment and his other perceived foes as an existential threat to the nation’s democracy.From House Democrats to the Biden family, a wide spectrum of “the swamp” came under fire during the president’s political rally in Minneapolis — his first since House Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced an impeachment investigation against him more than two weeks ago. Rather than focusing on usual “Make America Great Again” topics like the economy or border security, Trump used over 40 minutes of his stage time to go hard after his adversaries in Congress and the media.
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“The do-nothing Democrat extremists have gone so far to the left that they believe it should not be a crime to cross our border illegally and that it should be a crime to have a totally appropriate, casual, beautiful, accurate phone call with a foreign leader,” Trump said during the Thursday rally. “I don’t think so.”
He also repeated unfounded claims that the former vice president worked to nix a Ukrainian investigation into his son when Hunter Biden sat on the board of an energy corporation in the country. (Trump expressed frustration over the media’s reports that the claims have been debunked, saying during the rally: “It’s not unsubstantiated, you crooked son of a gun. It’s 100 percent true.”) The president’s team has often recited the claims to counter the accusations of fishing for foreign election assistance. Shortly before his father took the stage, Eric Trump led the audience in a chant of “Lock him up,” referring to Hunter Biden.
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Polls have recently shown increased public approval for the impeachment inquiry, including a Fox News national poll that showed 51 percent of voters supporting Trump’s impeachment and removal from office. During the rally, he denounced the surveys as “crooked” and the media as “so bad for our country.”
At times, Trump seemed more fed up than riled up in his rhetoric. He railed against the constant scrutiny his administration has been under since taking office. He went after former special counsel Robert Mueller for disrupting his administration by investigating him and his circle over several months. He accused the media of unfairly targeting his people while working in tandem with Democrats.
“They took people that were full of life and energy and vigor — we’d just won the greatest campaign in the history of American politics, it’s true — and they destroyed their lives!” Trump said of the numerous investigations into his administration and campaign.
“They destroyed people, good people, people that ended up paying far more money in legal fees than they made,” he continued. “And the media was behind every single step.”
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The president also went back deep into the early days of the federal investigations into the 2016 election. He invoked former FBI agents Peter Strzok and Lisa Page, who had a romantic relationship, with a mocking dialogue: “‘Oh, I love you so much. I love you, Peter!’ ‘I love you too, Lisa! Lisa, I love you. Lisa, Lisa! Oh God, I love you, Lisa.’”
― shared unit of analysis (unperson), Friday, 11 October 2019 11:26 (six years ago)