Trump takes aim at familiar targets at Mich. rally
President: Democrat should quit over VA nomination brouhaha
WASHINGTON TOWNSHIP, Mich. — President Donald Trump took aim at familiar political targets and added a few fresh ones during a campaign-style rally Saturday night in an Upper Midwest state that gave him a surprising victory in the 2016 election.
Trump has been urging voters to support Republicans for Congress as a way of advancing his agenda. In his rally in Washington Township, he repeatedly pointed to Sen. Debbie Stabenow of Michigan as one of the Democrats who needed to be voted out.
After saying Stabenow was standing in the way of protecting U.S. borders and had voted against tax cuts, Trump said: “And you people just keep putting her back again and again and again. It’s your fault.”
Earlier Saturday Trump tweeted criticism of Democratic Sen. Jon Tester of Montana over his role in the failed nomination of White House doctor Ronny Jackson to run the Department of Veterans Affairs, calling for Tester to resign or at least not be re-elected this fall.
In his rally remarks, Trump railed against the allegations Tester aired against Jackson and suggested that he could take a similar tack against the senator.
“I know things about Tester that I could say, too. And if I said ‘em, he’d never be elected again,” Trump said without elaborating.
As he has at similar events, Trump promoted top agenda items that energize grassroots conservatives — appointing conservative judges, building a wall on the U.S.-Mexico border, ending “sanctuary cities” and protecting tax cuts approved by the Republican-led Congress. He also took credit for the warming relations between North and South Korea, telling his audience “we’ll see how it goes.”
Trump chose a friendly venue for his rally, which not coincidentally came the same night as the annual White House Correspondents’ Dinner. He skipped the dinner last year, too, and attending a rally in which he took time to attack the news media and assure his audience — as he did in Washington Township, about 40 miles north of Detroit — that he’d rather be with them.
Ahead of the rally Trump said in a fundraising pitch that he had come up with something better than being stuck in a room “with a bunch of fake news liberals who hate me.” He said he would rather spend the evening “with my favorite deplorables.”
During the 2016 campaign, Clinton drew laughs when she told supporters at a private fundraiser that half of Trump supporters could be lumped into a “basket of deplorables” — denouncing them as “racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic, you name it.”
Clinton later did a partial rollback, said she had been “grossly generalistic” and regretted saying the label fit “half” of Trump’s supporters. But she didn’t back down from the general sentiment.
Trump soon had the video running in his campaign ads, and his supporters wore the “deplorable” label as a badge of honor.
Trump repeatedly weaved back into immigration and his support for a border wall throughout the speech.
“If we don’t get border security, we’re going to have no choice, we’ll close down the country,” Trump said.
He accused Democrats of not wanting to secure the border and keep violent criminals out of the country.
“Debbie Stabenow is one of the leaders for weak borders and letting people in. I don’t know how she gets away with it,” Trump said. “A vote for a Democrat in November is a vote for open borders and crime. It’s very simple. It’s also a vote for much higher taxes.”
Macomb County, the site of Trump’s rally, is among the predominantly white counties known as a base for “Reagan Democrats” — blue-collar voters who abandoned the Democratic Party for Ronald Reagan, but who can be intriguingly movable.
Democrat Barack Obama won the county twice in his White House runs, then Trump carried it by more than 11 percentage points.
WASHINGTON — A furious President Donald Trump on Saturday called for the resignation of the Democratic senator who assembled and released what he called “false” allegations that scuttled the nomination of the White House doctor who’d been in line to lead the Department of Veterans Affairs.
Trump stepped up his criticism of Montana’s Jon Tester, the top Democrat on the Senate Veterans’ Committee, in two tweets days after asserting that Tester “has to have a big price to pay” politically in the GOP friendly state for his leading role in Ronny Jackson’s failed VA bid. Tester faces a competitive re-election race this year.
Tester, in a statement, didn’t directly respond to Trump but said he was committed to aiding veterans.
At issue are allegations that Tester has said were brought to his attention by more than 20 military and retired military personnel who’ve worked with Jackson. Tester said not investigating would have been “a dereliction of duty” and said making them public was important for the sake of transparency.
The charges against Jackson raised questions about his prescribing practices and leadership ability, including accusations of drunkenness on the job. Tester’s office collected the allegations, which included a claim that Jackson “got drunk and wrecked a government vehicle” at a Secret Service going-away party.
Trump tweeted early Saturday that the allegations “are proving false. The Secret Service is unable to confirm (in fact they deny) any of the phony Democrat charges which have absolutely devastated the wonderful Jackson family. Tester should resign.”
Trump said people in Montana, a state he won by 20 percentage points in 2016, “will not stand for this kind of slander.” He called Jackson “the kind of man that those in Montana would most respect and admire, and now, for no reason whatsoever, his reputation has been shattered. Not fair, Tester!”
Before leaving for a rally in Michigan, Trump directed another tweet at Tester, likening the senator’s claims against Jackson to the “phony Russian Collusion” accusations leveled against Trump’s 2016 campaign. “Tester should lose race in Montana. Very dishonest and sick!”
In his free-wheeling remarks Saturday night, Trump told his supporters that “what Tester did to this man is a disgrace.” He also insinuated that Tester himself could be the target of allegations: “I know things about Tester that I could say, too. And if I said ‘em, he’d never be elected again.” He didn’t elaborate.
A written statement by Tester didn’t respond directly to Trump’s tweets.
“It’s my duty to make sure Montana veterans get what they need and have earned, and I’ll never stop fighting for them as their Senator,” it said. It also said Trump has signed eight Tester bills on veterans into law.