Trump rally watch live: Donald in Waukesha, Wisconsin tonight ahead of CPAC speech
Former President Donald Trump is in Waukesha, Wisconsin, Friday for a “Save America” rally to stump for his preferred candidates ahead of the state’s GOP primaries.
The former president has a busy weekend, speaking to supporters from the Waukesha County Fairgrounds on Friday evening and delivering the keynote address at a CPAC gathering in Dallas on Saturday. Trump’s Friday speech comes one day after his endorsed candidates emerged victorious in Arizona’s contentious Republican primary and ahead of Wisconsin’s primary on Tuesday.
Trump is backing Tim Michels as the state’s GOP candidate for governor, a contrast from former Vice President Mike Pence, who is backing Lt. Gov. Rebecca Kleefisch in the primary. The two diverged on candidate preference in Arizona as well, though Pence’s choice came in a close second in that gubernatorial race.
Trump has also endorsed Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) in his reelection effort, though the incumbent senator will not be attending the rally because he is not interfering in the state GOP’s gubernatorial primary. Johnson said in a statement late last month: “I do not endorse candidates in contested primaries. Instead I rely on the good judgement of Republican voters to choose our candidates and will be fully supportive of those who win their primary elections.”
Follow along here to see how the speech unfolds.
Closing out his nearly hourlong speech, Trump said Republican voters were going to come out in droves to vote against the Biden administration.
“We are not going to let this continue. Two years ago, we had the greatest country that we’ve ever had. We were doing better than we had ever been, and soon, we will have greatness again, — we will have greatness again,” he told the crowd. “It is hard-working patriots like you who are going to save our country.”
“We have the Jan. 6 unselect committee of political hacks and thugs, and these are the very same people who perpetrated the lies that I was an agent of Russia,” Trump told the crowd, prompting boos.
Getting specific, Trump argued the committee including Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) and other longtime critics of him made the Jan. 6 select panel less legitimate.
“Like shifty Adam Schiff, watermelon head, and others who were standing before the same microphones that they have for the last five years and doing the exact same thing with Jan. 6 as they did with all the previous assaults on our country and on my family. They assaulted my family,” he said.
Referencing crime while listing his party’s pledges to voters, Trump noted, “We will not take immunity protection away from police.”
Trump praised Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) even though he declined to attend the rally.
With the crowd cheering at the mention of the senator’s name, Trump said, “I also need to ask you to vote for a very good friend of mine and a special man. He’s one of the most respected people in the Senate. He has done an incredible job, and he’ll take unpopular positions if they’re right. His name is Sen. Ron Johnson, so get out and vote for Ron Johnson. He’s tough, he’s smart, and he loves your state.”
The Republican agenda, Trump said, “is to make America safe again, no crime.”
Trump then offered some crime statistics on the city of Milwaukee, saying that last year, “murders reached an all-time high, and in 2022, homicides are up.”
Touting high crime rates in Democratic-run cities nationwide, Trump called for Republicans to pass “emergency funding to hire thousands more police officers” if and when they retook the House of Representatives in November. The legislation, he argued, would “put violent criminals behind bars and keep them behind bars.”
“Leave our police alone. Let them do their job — give them back their respect,” he told the crowd. “They know what to do. We have to allow them to do it.”
Trump excoriated Senate Democrats’ latest legislative effort led by Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) before mocking Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) for being caught by surprise by the secret deal.
“The radical Democrats now intend to impose the biggest tax hike in American history, the exact opposite of what I did,” the former president told the crowd. “And they are working feverishly to pile on more regulations at levels never seen before, you could have regulations like nobody’s ever seen before. Mitch McConnell got taken for a ride by Joe Manchin and the group.”
“The great people of West Virginia, where I won by, like 45 points or something have been seriously hurt by these political antics,” he continued. “Joe Manchin has totally sold out West Virginia, what he’s done to that state is disgraceful.”
He then took aim at the Senate minority leader.
“I told the old broken crow, Mitch McConnell, that this was going to happen. I said, ‘It’s going to happen to you, Mitch. It’s going to happen to you.'”
It is unclear what he meant about warning the Senate Republican leader, who has famously not spoken to the former president since he refused to concede his 2020 election loss.
Trump celebrated Wisconsin’s Supreme Court over a ruling that cracked down on the use of ballot drop boxes.
“Last month, the Wisconsin Supreme Court — I give such credit to them — ruled that the widespread use of ballot drop boxes across the state is totally illegal,” he said to cheers from the crowd.
“You know what that means?” he continued. “That means they were obviously illegal in the 2020 election.”
The use of absentee drop boxes exploded across the state and country in 2020 as election officials tried to minimize voters’ interactions with each other during the coronavirus pandemic. However, Trump and his allies have long argued that bypassing the legislature to make such changes amounted to election maleficence, a view the high court agreed with in its 4-3 ruling.
Voters must personally return their absentee ballots, the high court ruled in the case first brought by the Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty on behalf of two Wisconsin voters.
President Joe Biden defeated Trump by nearly 21,000 votes in Wisconsin, a result that has been upheld by recounts and court rulings that have rejected assertions of widespread fraud.
Trump’s continued insistence that the election was stolen, despite refutations by White House lawyers and other top officials, up until the Capitol riot has been a focus of the House Jan. 6 select committee.
The former president was quick to take a dig at House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), asking the Wisconsin crowd: “What was she doing in Taiwan?”
“She was China’s dream. She gave them an excuse. They had been looking for that excuse, she gave it,” he continued, offering his first thoughts on Pelosi’s controversial Asia trip this past week. He did not immediately specify what excuses he was referring to.
He then went on to say of Pelosi, one of his most prominent political foes: “Everything she touches turns to you know what. Two failed impeachments, remember that?”