Hailing a great victory in South Carolina and rebuking President Joe Biden's "disaster" administration as a "train wreck," former President Donald Trump did not hold back at his Save America rally Saturday night in Florence, South Carolina.
"Eight months from now, the people of South Carolina are going to vote to fire the radical Democrats," Trump told a loyal crowd braving cold and wet weather, at times breaking into a chant of "We love Trump." "You're going to elect an incredible slate of true America First Republicans. You're going to reelect your Gov. Henry McMaster, and together we're going to end Nancy Pelosi's political career once and for all.
"The past year we've watched in horror as everything Joe Biden touches turns into a calamity and a total disaster. It's one train wreck after another."
Trump blasted America's weakness under Biden, including the Afghanistan withdrawal and allowing Russia's Vladimir Putin to invade Ukraine: "the stench of the Biden administration stretches all over the globe."
"He disgraced our nation with a humiliating surrender in Afghanistan; there has never been a lower point in the history of our country," Trump said.
Biden is following former President Barack Obama in leading from behind, and it has proved deadly and damaging for Ukraine and the world, he continued.
"We had peace through strength," Trump said. "That's what it was. Our country was safe and the world was calm because America was strong, and they respected our leadership.
"And America was always a place that I put before everybody else. It was always America first. Very simple."
Trump continued his assault on the fake news, tarnishing his administration and allowing Biden into office to lead to "bloodshed" around the world.
"The fake news said my personality would get us into a war: 'I'm telling you, that guy is going to get us into a war,'" Trump added. "But, actually, my personality is what kept us out of war. I was the only president in nearly four decades who did not get America into any new conflicts instead.
"I brought our troops and our wonderful children back home. I brought them back home where they belong. Under Joe Biden, America's neither feared nor respected. There has never been a time where our country has been treated the way it is right now.
"Other countries are lecturing us and telling us what to do, and that's why we are seeing chaos and mayhem and bloodshed all over the world. Never been a time like it."
Trump warned there is nobody to talk tough to Putin now.
"Well, we need to help stop this brutal invasion," Trump said. "We also have to clean out the rot of our failed foreign policy establishment. It is indeed rotten to the core. Before these total lunatics lead us down the path World War III. They will do it too. We have to continue to drain the swamp. We did a lot of it, but the swamp was deep, deeper than anybody believed.
"Despite all of Biden's weakness, cowardice and incompetence, there is still a path for him to end this tragedy in Ukraine without getting Americans snared in a gruesome and very bloody war."
Trump trolled Green New Deal-pushing Democrats for talking global warming when the world is on the verge of nuclear war.
"They say over the next 300 years, the oceans will rise, about this much," Trump said showing a pinch of an inch. "But you know, the real threat we have is the nuclear threat. That's going to be the global warming and we can't let that ever happen. The nuclear threat: That's the real global warming that nobody ever talks about – the lunatics on the left, the globalist radicals, global environmental radicals."
Trump continued his reminder of the left's war on police in Democrat-run cities around the country.
"The Biden energy crisis and the Ukraine crisis are glaring reminders that America cannot be strong abroad if we are not first strong at home, and we are not strong at home," Trump continued. "It's time to stop the bloodshed in our own cities.
"Look at what's going on in Chicago and New York and Los Angeles and Portland."
Lamenting the deterioration at the southern border, Trump warned the U.S. is being lost from within, as if we "lost it in a war."
"It's time to save our own nation from the people who are trying to destroy it," Trump said. "Under Biden, [House Speaker Nancy] Pelosi and the radical Democrats, we're losing our country – no different than if we had lost it in a war.
"The Biden administration has spent months and months obsessing over how to stop an invasion of a foreign country," he continued. "I believe Americans deserve a president who will stop the invasion into our country."
Trump also reminded his supporters he was right on so many things he predicted would unwind under Biden, including secure borders, energy independence, safety, security, among others.
"We're going to be paying a big price from what we took out [of Afghanistan] and from the people that pour into our country for many years to come, you watch," Trump said. "You know I've made a lot of good predictions and now they're saying, 'Trump was right.'
"I was right on the border. I was right on the pipeline. I was right on Germany" and NATO.
It is not just Democrats who need to be defeated in this midterm election year, Trump added, noting Republicans in name only (RINOs) need to be defeated, too.
"But before we can defeat the Democrats, socialists, and communists at the ballot boxes this fall, we first have to defeat the RINOs and grandstanders in the primaries earlier this year," Trump said. "Those RINOs are no good.
"Thankfully this June, you have the chance to dump these grandstanding losers."
Trump teased another 2024 presidential campaign run, stopping short of announcing his official campaign.
"This is the year we are going to take back the House; we are going to take back the Senate, and we are going to take back America – and in 2024, we are going to take back that beautiful, beautiful White House," Trump concluded. "I wonder who will do that? I wonder."
Eric Mack ✉
Eric Mack has been a writer and editor at Newsmax since 2016. He is a 1998 Syracuse University journalism graduate and a New York Press Association award-winning writer.
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