Trump lays groundwork for Republican presidential campaign at rally in Arizona

Lucia Lil

Washington, Jan. 15 (EFE). Former US President Donald Trump this Saturday aired his own conspiracy theories about the 2020 election and the attack on Capitol Hill, at a rally that set the tone for the Republican campaign for the November legislative elections. .

In his first political act of the year, the president from 2017 to 2021 promised his followers that the Republican Party would win the midterm elections in November and “take back the White House” in the 2024 election, but he didn’t. Determine if he himself will come to that last date with the polls.

“We’re going to make a comeback like never before,” Trump told hundreds of supporters in Florence, Arizona, during a rally that lasted more than an hour and a half.

The former president was referring to the November legislative elections, in which everything suggests that the Republicans, a party he still tightly controls, would regain control of the House and possibly the Senate, as well as control of many other parties. State fee.

His speech was intended to follow the scenario of Republican candidates wanting to win in November, but at the same time it followed the classic pattern of those Trump used during his 2016 and 2020 campaign, with the same attacks on immigrants or the media driving his fans crazy.

January 6

Trump had promised to present his thoughts on the attack on the Capitol on January 6, 2021 at this gathering, after canceling a press conference he had initially planned to give on the first anniversary of that attack by a crowd of his supporters, which was eventually cancelled.

Far from delving into what happened that day, Trump focused on criticizing the commission of events, which he called “Stalinism,” and on claiming that among the crowd that stormed Congress were “FBI informants,” a theory defended by his followers and not proof of them.

“Political prisoners” also described more than 700 accused of crimes related to the assault that left five clients dead and 140 injured.

“If we think they are innocent, we should help them defend themselves,” said the former president, who did not receive a warm response from the public in that part of his speech.

What excited the audience was his attack on US President Joe Biden and the Democratic Party. As well as his complaint without evidence of fraud in the 2020 elections, which he lost.

The president stressed that “the real rebellion took place on the election day, November 3rd.”

Arizona is one of the key states that Trump lost by a few thousand votes in 2020, and he didn’t hesitate to lie about it once the rally began, asserting that he scored a “tremendous victory” that was “his” in that area.

Arrows for Biden

From there, he moved on to criticize the Biden administration, which he said has caused “more problems and more destruction” in the past year than “five presidents together.”

“We have become a large-scale version of Venezuela, which 20 years ago was a very successful country and now they have no food, no water, everyone is dying, and it is run by a horrible group of killers,” he stressed. .

Trump displayed his nationalism with authoritarian overtones, lamenting that the United States no longer spoke of its “greatness” and its “army and strength” like other countries, but instead spoke of “the environment, COVID-19” and “race”.

The former president criticized his successor over supply chain problems and inflation, and the Supreme Court halted the scale of infections caused by the omicron variant and his attempt to force the majority of workers in the country’s private companies to get vaccinated. this week.

“Radical Democrats, leave our children alone with their strong immune systems,” shouted Trump, whose supporters are in many cases reluctant to get a coronavirus vaccine.

Internationally, he said Biden had “totally humiliated” the United States, and that Russia “threatens not only Ukraine, but” Cuba and Venezuela” as well, which he considered “disrespectful” as a problem and asserted that he had never been around during his tenure.

Trump was referring to the comments of Russian Deputy Minister Sergei Ryabkov, who this week did not rule out the deployment of military infrastructure in Cuba and Venezuela, although the White House later saw that these comments could simply be “bragging.”

It has also raised fear about illegal immigration, by over-emphasizing that the border with Mexico has been “nulled” and that “millions and millions and millions” of illegal immigrants are entering the country, which is wrong, because most arrivals are automatically deported. EFE

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