Trump vilifies migrants, mocks Biden’s stutter in Ga. speech
ROME, Ga. — Early in his remarks in Rome, Ga., at what was effectively his first campaign rally of the general election, former President Donald Trump on Saturday blasted President Joe Biden’s State of the Union address as an “angry, dark, hate-filled rant” that was more divisive than unifying.
He then mocked Mr. Biden’s lifelong stutter, a jab that set the tone for the lengthy speech that followed.
Over nearly two hours, Mr. Trump lobbed sharp personal attacks at Mr. Biden’s mental and physical health and revived a litany of grievances against political opponents, prosecutors and television executives. He used inflammatory language to stoke fears about immigration, called the press “criminals” and repeated his false claim that the 2020 election was stolen from him.
Mr. Trump told thousands of his supporters gathered at the rally that “everything Joe Biden touches” turns to filth, though he used an expletive to describe the result. “Everything. I tried finding a different word, but there are some words that cannot be duplicated.” (He used the word, or a variant, at least four times in his speech.)
The speech that Mr. Trump gave on Saturday was his first since Mr. Biden repeatedly attacked him and his policies in his State of the Union address. “Joe Biden should not be shouting angrily at America,” Mr. Trump said. “America should be shouting angrily at Joe Biden.”
But his critiques moved toward personal insults. At one point, Mr. Trump slurred his words and pretended to stutter in a mocking imitation of the president, who has dealt with a stutter since childhood.
A Biden campaign spokesman, T.J. Ducklo, responded to Mr. Trump’s insults in a statement Sunday, contrasting the former president’s speech with Mr. Biden’s State of the Union address.
“Thursday night President Biden spoke about the kind of America he wants for our future — one based on the core values of honesty, decency, dignity, and respect for everyone — values that are unrecognizable to Donald Trump. Trump thinks mocking people and taking away their rights makes him look strong. But it just reveals how weak and insecure he is.”
The former president’s speech in Georgia, a key battleground state that he narrowly lost in 2020, underscored that Mr. Trump is not likely to temper the ominous and at times apocalyptic vision that has animated his campaign, even as his last remaining Republican rival has dropped out and the general election has come into focus.
As he has in the past, Mr. Trump insisted that the biggest danger facing the United States was his political opponents, whom he labeled “the threat from within,” a turn inward that has alarmed experts for its similarity to language used by totalitarian leaders.
But in a speech replete with digressive rants, Mr. Trump reserved some of his most incendiary rhetoric to vilify migrants crossing the border illegally. Much of his speech was focused on immigration, an issue that he and his advisers have signaled will be central to his efforts to defeat Mr. Biden and return to the White House.
While vowing to expand his crackdown on immigration, Mr. Trump described the continuing surge of migrants across the southern border as “the agony of our people, the plunder of our cities, the sacking of our towns, the violation of our citizens and the conquest of our country.”
Mr. Trump also took aim at Mr. Biden’s policies on immigration, in part by using the Georgia setting to blame his rival for the death of Laken Riley, a 22-year-old nursing student who was killed in the state last month by, according to the authorities, a Venezuelan migrant who had entered the country illegally and had been released on parole.
Mr. Trump met with Riley’s parents before taking the stage, and the Trump campaign distributed signs at the rally with Riley’s photograph. During his speech, Mr. Trump accused Mr. Biden of neglecting the surge of migrants at the border, which he called a “deadly invasion that stole precious Laken’s beautiful American life.”