‘I feel so powerful’
President Trump declares at Sanford airport rally
SANFORD — Thousands of people packed closely together cheered and chanted “We love you!” as President Donald Trump flew into Central Florida on Monday night to hold his first campaign rally outside Washington since his coronavirus diagnosis 11 days ago.
“It’s great to be back in my home state of Florida,” Trump declared during his hourlong speech. “We’ve all endured a lot together, and we are doing better by far than in2016. We are going to have an even greater victory thanwe did four years ago.”
The mostly maskless crowd erupted with applause when Trump took the podium on the tarmac at Orlando Sanford International Airport, with Air Force One parked nearby. Many had waited four or more hours for the event to begin.
Trump declared the election between himself and Joe Bid en“the most importantin American history” and attacked Biden for what he said would be a “draconian, scientific top-down” way of combating COVID-19.
“If you don’t feel good about” going out amid the pandemic, then “stay,” Trump said. “If youwant to get out there, get out there.”
Trump, whose voice sounded raspy at times, told the audience he was fully recovered fromthe virus.
“I feel so powerful,” Trump said. “I’ll walk in there and kiss everyone in the audience. I’ll kiss the guys; I’ll kiss the beautiful women.”
White House physician Sean Conley on Monday night released a memo that said the president had tested negative for coronavirus on “consecutive days’’ to support the diagnosis that Trump was no longer ill or contagious.
Florida Gov. Ron De Santis high-fived spectators as he arrived at the rally before the president began speaking. He wasn’t wearing a mask. The governor later told the cheering crowd thatRepublicans “will be storming
the polls to reelect Donald Trump.”
The rally officially rebooted Trump’s return to the campaign trail, a strategy briefly derailed when the virus put him in the hospital. Strategists for both Trump and Biden consider victory in Florida key to winning the White House.