Trump raises $24M in campaign launch
Touts ‘bright’ sharp’ future at Florida rally
President Donald Trump raised US $24.8 million in less than 24 hours as he officially launched his campaign for re-election, Republican National Committee Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel said.
The haul dwarfs the first day fundraising totals announced by some of his Democratic rivals, including former Vice President Joe Biden’s US $6.3 million, former Texas congressman Beto O’Rourke’s US $6.1 million, and Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders’s US $5.9 million.
Trump formally launched his 2020 re-election campaign on Tuesday by presenting himself as the same political insurgent who shook up the Washington establishment four years ago and who is now a victim of an attempted ouster by Democrats.
At a packed rally at an arena in Orlando, Trump made clear he would run for re-election as an outsider, just as he did in 2016.
He revisited campaign themes from four years ago, decrying illegal immigration, the news media and his 2016 Democratic opponent, Hillary Clinton.
“Together we stared down a broken political establishment and we restored government by and for the people,” Trump said. “As long as you keep this team in place, we have a tremendous way to go. Our future has never looked brighter or sharper.”
Trump said his Democratic challengers would radically change the U.S. and seek to legalize migrants coming across the southern border so they could vote and boost the Democratic political base.
Democrats “want to destroy our country as we know it” and that it’s “not going to happen,” Trump said.
Two dozen Democrats are competing for their party’s nomination to face off against Trump in the November 2020 election.
Trump called his opponents a “radical left-wing mob” who would bring socialism to the United States.
“A vote for any Democrat in 2020 is a vote for the rise of radical socialism and the destruction of the American dream,” he said
In a speech that lasted an hour and 20 minutes, Trump blasted the news media as “fake news,” took credit for a strong economy, said he was putting the heat on China on trade, promoted his proposal for a “space force,” vowed to protect Americans’ rights to own guns and said he wanted to launch a space mission to Mars.
He said Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election ”was all an illegal attempt to overturn the results of the election.”