Las Vegas Review-Journal (Sunday)
Trump: Biden ‘total moron’
Big Jersey Shore rally meant as show of force amid legal woes
WILDWOOD, N.J. — Sandwiched between his appearances in court, Donald Trump headed on Saturday to the Jersey Shore, where he blamed President Joe Biden for the criminal charges he is facing as the presumptive nominees prepare to face off in the November election and called his New York hush money case “a Biden show trial.”
Blasting the Democratic president as “a total moron,” Trump before a crowd of tens of thousands characterized the cases against him as politically motivated and timed to harm his ability to campaign.
“He’s a fool. He’s not a smart man,” Trump said of Biden. “I talk about him differently now because now the gloves are off.”
Trump, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, drew what his team called a “mega crowd” to a Saturday evening rally in the southern New Jersey resort town of Wildwood, 150 miles south of the New York City courthouse where he has been forced to spend most weekdays sitting through his felony hush money trial.
Lisa Fagan, spokesperson for Wildwood, said she estimated a crowd of between 80,000 and 100,000 attendees, based off her own observations on the scene Saturday, having seen “dozens” of other events in the same space.
Trump was joined on stage by several high-level endorsers including North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum and NFL Hall of Fame linebacker Lawrence Taylor.
The beachfront gathering, described by Rep. Jeff Van Drew, R-N.J., as the largest political gathering in state history, was designed to serve as a show of force with Trump facing dozens of felony charges in four separate criminal cases with the election less than six months away.
Hours before he was scheduled to take the stage, thousands of Trump loyalists donning “Never Surrender” T-shirts and red “Make America Great Again” hats crowded onto the sand between the boardwalk and carnival rides to greet the former Republican president.
“The everyday American people are 100 percent behind him,” said Doreen O’neill, a 62-year-old nurse from Philadelphia.
“They have to cheat and smear him and humiliate him in that courtroom every single day,” O’neill said. “This country is going to go insane if they steal the election again.”
Trump’s legal woes, which include three other unrelated criminal cases, have emerged as a central issue in the campaign.
Trump has accused the Biden administration and Democratic officials in New York of using the legal system to block his return to the White House. Prosecutors allege the former president broke the law to conceal an affair with a porn actor that would have hurt his first presidential bid.
Trump spent last week’s off-day from court in the general election battlegrounds of Wisconsin and Michigan. And he was campaigning with tens of thousands of voters Saturday in New Jersey, a reliably Democratic state. Parts of New Jersey have deepred enclaves, and the southern shoreline in particular draws tourists and summer homeowners from neighboring Pennsylvania, a swing state.