Vows to fulfill promises
SEEKING TO TURN the page on a rocky first month in office, President Trump played the role of campaigner-in-chief Saturday during a massive rally in Florida.
Trump looked and sounded like the candidate of old as he delivered a campaign-style speech filled with attacks on the media, promises to build a border wall and frequent nods to the size of the crowd.
“Do you think that one media group back there, that one network, will show this crowd. Not one!” Trump said at the event in Melbourne.
The President brought up the Founding Fathers in his opening attack on the media, noting that Thomas Jefferson and Abraham Lincoln also engaged in heated battles with the press.
“Thomas Jefferson, Andrew Jackson and Abraham Lincoln, and many of our greatest Presidents, fought with the media and called them out, oftentimes on their lies,” Trump said before an audience of roughly 9,000 people.
The President again vowed to “build safe zones in Syria and other places” and force Persian Gulf nations to pay for them. He did not elaborate.
The rally twice turned surreal when Trump invited a supporter to address the crowd and later when he began reading from his executive order on immigration.
A federal appeals court upheld a decision to freeze Trump’s order denying entry to refugees and citizens from seven Muslim-majority countries.
The Trump supporter brought on stage, identified as Gene Huber, delivered a short speech extolling the President for following through on his promises.
“A star is born,” Trump said afterward. “I wouldn’t say that the Secret Service was thrilled with that, but we know our people, right?”
The event came after another rough week that saw national security adviser Michael Flynn resign for misleading administration officials about his calls to a Russian diplomat, Trump’s first choice to