Trump hits back at Biden in rally
WILKESBARRE: Former US president Donald Trump has hit back at President Joe Biden, saying the Democrat’s recent address in Philadelphia was ‘‘the most vicious, hateful, and divisive speech ever delivered by an American president, vilifying 75 million citizens’’.
‘‘He’s an enemy of the state,’’ Trump told a roaring crowd of thousands in WilkesBarre, Pennsylvania, yesterday.
While the speech was billed as a rally to help Pennsylvania’s top Republican candidates, Mehmet Oz for Senate and state Senator Doug Mastriano for governor, Trump spent most of it airing his personal grievances.
He briefly mentioned Oz and Mastriano, before immediately pivoting to his anger at Biden, and the recent FBI search of his MaraLago home for classified documents — an operation he called an ‘‘evil and demented persecution of you and me’’.
It was Trump’s first public response to Biden’s blistering condemnation on Friday, when the president cast him and ‘‘Maga Republicans’’ as a threat to democracy, pointing to Trump’s attempts to overthrow the 2020 election and the January 6, 2021 riot he inspired.
After a presidency marked by his own slashandburn style, personally insulting Democrats for their looks, calling them ‘‘sick’’ and ‘‘evil’’, pressuring law enforcement to prosecute his rivals and go easy on his friends, Trump yesterday pointed those same accusations at Democrats.
‘‘The danger to democracy comes from the radical left, not from the right,’’ he said, as the crowd roared in approval. He then continued to lie that the 2020 election was rigged despite that claim being refuted by law enforcement and his own aides.
It was Trump’s first major general election event this year, and his first formal appearance since the FBI search.
Over the first hour of his talk he mostly railed against his two impeachments, the 2020 election outcome and Hillary Clinton, who he defeated six years ago.
He complained about electric cars and wind turbines, barely mentioning Oz or Mastriano through his first 80 minutes of speaking. — DPA