Trump on attack after climbdown
Hours after reversing himself to end the forced separations of migrant families, US President Donald Trump returned to the warm embrace of his supporters at a raucous rally yesterday to defend his hardline immigration policies while unleashing a torrent of grievances about the media and those investigating him.
Trump downplayed the crisis that has threatened to envelop the White House amid days of heart-wrenching images of children being pulled from their immigrant parents along the nation’s southern border.
He made only a brief mention of his decision to sign an executive order after spending days insisting, wrongly, that his administration had no choice but to separate families apprehended at the border because of federal law and a court decision.
‘‘We’re going to keep families together, and the border is going to be just as tough as it’s been,’’ Trump told the cheering crowd in Duluth, Minnesota.
Seemingly motivated to promote his hawkish immigration bona fides after his about-face on forced separations, the president denounced his political opponents and those who make unauthorised border crossings, suggesting that the money used to care for those immigrants could be better spent on the nation’s rural communities and inner cities.
‘‘Democrats put illegal immigrant before they put American citizens. What the hell is going on?’’ asked Trump, prompting the crowd to chant: ‘‘Build the wall!’’
He even invoked his campaign kickoff speech, held three years ago this week, in which he declared that Mexico ‘‘wasn’t sending their best’’ in terms of migrants crossing into the US.
That wasn’t the only throwback moment at the rally. Trump fumed over what he deemed ‘‘dishonest’’ coverage of his summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. He raved about the economy and his tough new tariffs meant to create fair trade. And he erroneously suggested that a recent Department of Justice watchdog report into the FBI’s handling of the Hillary Clinton email probe proved his innocence in the special counsel’s Russia investigation while covering up Clinton’s guilt.
Again attacking the special counsel probe as a ‘‘witch hunt’’, Trump went on to blast the media for focusing on the recent immigration crisis at the expense of covering what he contends is bias against him at the FBI.
The Duluth rally was Trump’s first in a blue state since taking office. He narrowly lost Minnesota in 2016. And with the industrial and upper Midwest looming large for his re-election hopes, he vowed to spend more time there before 2020.
Trump was in Minnesota to back Pete Stauber, a Republican congressional candidate running in a traditionally Democratic district. Minnesota is a state where Trump’s tariffs on foreign steel could play especially well.
Energised by the roaring crowd in his first rally since the Singapore summit, Trump soaked in the applause and caustically dismissed a few protesters who tried to interrupt. He beamed as the crowd chanted ‘‘Space Force!’’ in response to his plan to create a new branch of the US military to safeguard the cosmos. –AP