San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
Vengeful Trump seeks to punish impeachment foe
WELLINGTON, Ohio — Donald Trump on Saturday reprised his baseless election grievances and painted a dystopian picture of the country under Democratic control in his first campaignstyle rally since leaving the White House.
His mission, in part, was to exact revenge on one of the Republicans who voted for his historic second impeachment.
Trump’s event Saturday night at Ohio’s Lorain County Fairgrounds, not far from Cleveland, was held to support Max Miller, a former White House aide who is challenging Republican Rep. Anthony Gonzalez for his congressional seat. Gonzalez was one of 10 GOP House members who voted to impeach Trump for his role in inciting the deadly Jan. 6 insurrection at the Capitol building. Trump wants them to pay.
In his remarks, Trump revisited some of the false claims familiar from his fruitless challenges of President Biden’s election victory.
“On the evening of Nov. 3 the election was over, and then all of a sudden things started closing down all over,” he said of election night. “We took a massive victory, they did, into something that should never be allowed.”
In fact, Trump was describing a legitimate vote counting process that saw Biden take the lead as the night wore on, as Democraticleaning cities in key states and results from mailin ballots were reported. Trump administration election officials and top election officials in Republicanled states affirmed the validity of the election.
The rally, held five months after Trump left office under a cloud of violence, marks the beginning of a new, more public phase of his postpresidency. Trump is planning a flurry of public appearances in the coming weeks. He’ll hold another rally in Florida over the July Fourth weekend unattached to a midterm candidate and will travel to the southern border this week to protest Biden’s immigration policies.
Trump has said he is committed to helping Republicans regain control of Congress in next year’s midterm elections. But his efforts to support — and recruit — candidates to challenge incumbent Republicans who have crossed him put him at odds with other Republican leaders who have been trying to unify the party after a brutal year in which they lost control of the White House and failed to gain control of either chamber of Congress.
Gonzalez, a former professional football player, has stood by his impeachment vote in the face of fierce criticism from his party’s conservative wing, including his censure by the Ohio Republican Party.