Trump reserves sharpest angry attack for Biden
MINNEAPOLIS — Firedup President Trump lashed out against Democrats at a combative campaign rally Thursday night, deriding them as “very sick and deranged people” who were investigating his interactions with foreign leaders to “erase your vote.”
Facing an impeachment vote in the House, Trump took his case to his core supporters, arguing that Democrats were trying to overturn the 2016 election because they knew they could not beat him in 2020. And he derided former Vice President Joe Biden, who he said did nothing but “kiss Barack Obama’s ass.”
“They want to erase your vote like it never existed,” the president told an arena filled with cheering backers in a liberal city in a state that he hopes to switch from blue to red next year. “They want to erase your voice, and they want to erase your future. But they will fail because in America, the people rule again.”
In his first campaign rally since Speaker Nancy Pelosi declared the formal beginning of an impeachment inquiry last month, Trump was as raw and rancorous as ever, targeting individual Dems in highly personal terms past presidents would never have employed.
“She’s either really stupid or she’s really lost it — or maybe there’s a certain dishonesty in there,” he said of Pelosi.
Rep. Ilhan Omar, DMinn., one of his favorite targets, is an “Americahating socialist” who married her brother in order to come into the country, he said.
And he spent a lot of time singling out Biden.
“He was only a good vice president because he knew how to kiss Barack Obama’s ass,” the president said.
Trump’s son Eric warmed up the rally crowd for his father by proposing a new chant to be directed at Biden: “Lock him up.”
President Trump has been pushing baseless claims that Biden and his son, Hunter, traded on the family name to earn millions from governments in Ukraine and China.
Eric Trump suggested to the crowd that the familiar Trump rally chant of “Lock her up” — directed at Hillary Clinton — become “Lock him up.” The crowd then chanted, “Lock him up, lock him up.”
Meanwhile, protesters packed the streets surrounding the Target Center. Many clutched heliumfilled balloons depicting Trump as a baby. Others blew whistles, a nod to the whistleblower whose complaint encouraged Pelosi to launch the inquiry.