Former President Donald Trump, speaking at the Steer N' Stein at the Iowa State Fair Saturday along with a contingent of congressional supporters including Reps. Matt Gaetz, Byron Donalds, Greg Steube, and others said in his brief remarks that their comments were a "tribute of love" that he's experiencing nationwide.
"No matter where we go, there's never been [more] enthusiasm," Trump said at the fair venue, where enthusiastic supporters crowded in and spilled onto the fairgrounds. "In 2016 we won. We did much better, I hate to say this, but we did much better in 2020 when the election was rigged ... I will say 2020 was fantastic and 2016 was fantastic."
Trump did not address the indictments he's facing or the scandals surrounding Hunter Biden, but instead stuck to promises to take care of the United States in his campaign stump speech.
But, Trump said, we "have never seen such love and enthusiasm" as he's seeing in his current campaign, and he told the Iowa state fairgoers that "we set a record for people today."
"We are going to take care of our country," he said. "We're going to take care of Iowa."
He added that under President Joe Biden, the United States is a "laughingstock all over the world," particularly "with millions and millions of people pouring into our country with no voter ID, with so many things, it's just so horrible."
But the "other side," he told the Iowans, does not "care about the farmers."
"I don't even think they're coming here to campaign, because they know they're not going to be able to beat us," he said. "Nobody's done what we've done."
Trump noted he's leading in the polls in Iowa and nationwide by at least 50 percentage points. But still, he said, "We don't want to take any chances. We'll be back."
He also encouraged those listening to "stay strong" as there are "bad, bad people from within."
"I say, we have problems from the outside and we have problems [from] the inside, and that is a much bigger problem," he added. "We can handle the outside, but the inside one is very bad. They're destroying our country, but what they're doing to our country is unthinkable. Stay strong. We're going to win big, and we're going to make America great again."
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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