A good two months before the congressional elections, ex-US President Donald Trump stepped up attacks on his successor Joe Biden. “He (Joe Biden, ed.) is an enemy of the state,” Trump said during a Saturday night rally in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania.
Trump addressed Biden’s recent attacks on him and his supporters. Biden accused Trump of “extremism” and “attacks on democracy” in a speech on Thursday.
His successor gave “the most vicious, hateful and most divisive speech that an American president has ever made,” Trump said. “The enemy of the state,” Trump shouted at thousands of fans, “is him (Biden) and the group that controls him and that circles around him.”
Biden is, he said elsewhere, “cognitively impaired” and everyone knows it. The Democrats are a “radical left” party. The dangers to America’s democracy did not come from the right, but from “left radicals”.
In his more than 100-minute speech, Trump repeatedly addressed the FBI raid on his property in Mar-a-Lago (Florida). The FBI and the Justice Department have become “vicious monsters controlled by leftist scoundrels, lawyers and the media telling them what to do,” Trump said.
Trump accused the FBI of “corruption”. Referring to his case, he spoke of a “breaking into the houses of political opponents”. He complained that FBI officers searched his son Barron, 16,’s room and ransacked the “first lady’s closet, her drawers and everything else.” Trump claimed the whole world watched the raid and was “shocked”.
Trump had privately stored dozens of classified White House documents, including classified and top secret documents, after his term ended in early 2021. In doing so, he violated the rule that these documents belong to the US National Archives.
During his speech, Trump again attacked ex-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton for her lax handling of classified information, which was revealed in 2016. Trump supporters chanted in this context: “Lock them up!”
A central theme of Trump’s speech was the 2020 presidential election he lost. “I ran twice, I won twice,” Trump claimed, alluding to the 2016 and 2020 elections. The 2020 election was a “rigged election,” Trump repeated his insubstantial statements Accusations. In 2020, Biden had won against Trump.
Also speaking at the rally were Republicans Mehmet Oz and Doug Mastriano, who are running for Senator and Governor of Pennsylvania respectively, and who are supported by Trump. In polls, both are behind their Democratic competitors. Concerns are growing within the Republican Party that the midterm elections on November 8 will disappoint.
A number of candidates supported by Trump have poor approval ratings. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell recently expressed internal skepticism about the election prospects. Trump attacked McConnell on Saturday, suggesting growing unrest within Republicans.
Biden’s approval ratings have risen recently, albeit at a modest level. If the Democrats lose their majority in the House of Representatives but can defend it in the Senate, it would be a face-saving election result for Biden.
As expected, Trump once again refrained from declaring his candidacy for the 2024 presidential election at his rally. He limited himself to non-binding formulas on how to win back the White House, but remained cloudy about his own ambitions.
To a certain extent, he acts here like a professional politician – who, of course, he always mocks. “I can’t stand politicians,” said the de facto Republican leader on Saturday.
Trump did not mention the name of his possible inner-party competitor, Ron DeSantis, Governor of Florida.
Trump repeatedly praised the so-called MAGA movement (MAGA stands for Make America great again), against which Biden had taken a stand on Thursday. MAGA is Trump’s motto. This movement is “the greatest in the history of our country, perhaps in the history of the world,” Trump said.
Under Biden, the United States had become a “third world country” and a “laughing stock,” Trump said. Trump did not address the drinking water crisis in the Republican-governed state of Mississippi. He accused the Democrats in Pennsylvania of supporting abortions up to the ninth month and even after birth, i.e. infanticide.
Trump also claimed that he had terminated the Nord Stream 2 Baltic Sea pipeline. He called for the “death penalty for drug dealers” and advised the US to orientate itself on authoritarian China in this regard.
The ex-president railed against a number of democrats. He complained that US financial aid to Ukraine was too high and stated that Vladimir Putin would not have started the war with him as president. Trump attacked the free media as “fake news” and labeled it “enemies of the people”. In the opening act for Trump, the right-wing conspiracy theorist Marjorie Taylor Greene spoke to the crowd.