Delirious MAGA crowd laps up Trump’s rage against Biden and Democrats
Donald Trump whips his MAGA posse into a frenzy before January 6's attempt to overthrow US democracy. Photo: AAP
Former US president Donald Trump has hit back at Joe Biden, saying the Democrat’s recent address in Philadelphia was “the most vicious, hateful, and divisive speech ever delivered by an American president, vilifying 75 million citizens”.
Mr Biden, days earlier, had sharply excoriated Mr Trump and his allies as a danger to American values.
“Donald Trump and the MAGA Republicans represent an extremism that threatens the foundations of our very republic,” Mr Biden said at Independence Hall in Philadelphia.
To the roars of the Saturday night crowd, Mr Trump branded Mr Biden “an enemy of the state, and said Philadelphia was the right place for the President’s speech, “because the city is being devastated under Democrat rule”.
While the speech was billed as a rally to help Pennsylvania’s top Republican candidates, Mehmet Oz, for Senate, and state Senator Doug Mastriano, for governor, Mr Trump spent most of it airing old personal grievances, and some new ones.
He briefly mentioned Mr Oz and Mr Mastriano, before immediately pivoting to his anger at Mr Biden and the recent FBI search of his Mar-a-Lago home as it tried to recover classified documents.
‘Evil and demented’
He called it an “evil and demented persecution of you and me”.
It was Mr Trump’s first public response to Mr Biden’s blistering condemnation on Thursday, when mr Biden cast Mr Trump and “MAGA Republicans” as a threat to democracy, pointing to Mr Trump’s attempts to invalidate the 2020 election and the January 6, 2021.
After a presidency marked by his own slash-and-burn style, personally insulting Democrats for their looks, calling them “sick” and “evil”, pressuring law enforcement to prosecute his rivals and go easy on his friends, Mr Trump on Saturday pointed those same accusations at Democrats, casting them as vicious.
“The danger to democracy comes from the radical left, not from the right,” he said, as the crowd roared in approval.
Mr Trump then continued to lie about the 2020 election, calling it rigged – despite that claim being refuted by law enforcement and even some of his own former aides.
Return to the campaign trail
The rally was Mr Trump’s first major general election event this year – the congressional mid-term elections are due in early November – and his first formal public appearance since the FBI search.
While Mr Trump nodded to the campaign arguments that Republicans hope will power their campaigns this fall – calling the election “a referendum on skyrocketing inflation, rampaging crime’, and “the corruption and extremism of Joe Biden and the radical Democrat Party” – he was mostly focused on his own complaints.
Over the first hour of his talk he mostly railed against his two impeachments, the Russia-gate investigation, the 2020 election outcome, and Hillary Clinton, the Democrat he defeated six years ago.
He complained about electric cars and wind turbines, barely mentioning Mr Oz or Mr Mastriano in his first 80 minutes of speaking.
Pennsylvania’s races for Senate and governor are two of the US’s marquee contests. Mr Trump could get credit for GOP wins – or blame if his picks cost the party winnable races.
-AAP