Trump rally watch live: Donald in Pennsylvania for first campaign event since FBI raid
Former President Donald Trump is in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, on Saturday for a “Save America” rally to stump for his preferred candidates in a must-win swing state.
The event, which is taking place at the Mohegan Sun Arena at Casey Plaza, will feature appearances by GOP Senate hopeful Dr. Mehmet Oz and state Sen. Doug Mastriano, the Republican gubernatorial nominee. Trump endorsed both in their highly competitive primary races. While not on the set list for Saturday’s event, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) was seen walking into the event. The rally is taking place over Labor Day weekend, the unofficial start of the midterm election season.
Trump’s Saturday rally comes three weeks after the FBI searched his Mar-a-Lago estate, igniting a political firestorm.
Federal authorities say the unprecedented search was conducted to retrieve boxes of classified documents the 45th president brought to his Palm Beach, Florida, golf club after leaving office. Trump, who has not been charged related to the matter, has denied any wrongdoing, arguing that the files he possessed were “all declassified.”
Trump has been vocal on his Truth Social platform in the weeks since the raid about his fury over the search of his resort and the seizure of documents. He has even phoned in to a number of conservative radio shows to bemoan how federal authorities have treated him, as well as to denounce the investigation itself. Trump is known for being his most politically comfortable at campaign rallies, where he frequently goes off-script and takes aim at his opponents.
He is widely expected to have much to say on the raid and investigation into him at the Pennsylvania event. He also may go after President Joe Biden and Attorney General Merrick Garland, likely accusing them of partisanship related to the raid of his Florida home.
Follow along here to see how the speech unfolds.
The former president offered more of his typical comments while closing his speech, predicting big political and electoral advances for Republicans in the November midterms.
After that red wave, he told the crowd, “In 2024, most importantly, we are going to take back our magnificent White House.”
After speaking about his issues with Lt. Gov. John Fetterman, the Democratic Senate candidate, and his overall candidacy, Trump took aim at his uniquely casual fashion choices.
“This guy’s a disaster. He comes in with a sweatsuit on, I’ve never seen him wear a suit. A dirty, dirty, dirty sweatsuit, it’s really disgusting,” Trump said. “You know, I’m a clean freak. I’m a clean freak, Oz, I don’t like those dirty sweatsuits, that disgusting.”
“Fetterman may dress like a teenager getting high in his parents basement, but he’s a raging lunatic hell bent on springing hardened criminals out of jail in the middle of the worst crime wave in Pennsylvania history. He wants everybody out of jail. And by the way, he wants to get rid of your police.”
Trump said he was speaking to the then prime minister during a G7 meeting as Germany was about to embark on a pipeline with Russia that would supply 75% of Germany’s oil.
“If you look back over the decades, Russia and Germany haven’t done too well together,” Trump said. “When there’s a war, when there’s a problem, they’ll just turn off.”
The crowd is more energized at this rally than they’ve been at any Trump campaign event since the 2020 election. The screams have been off the charts, easily comparable to a concert. This is the most electric event Trump has held since losing the 2020 election.
Trump bemoaned investigators “on a phony pretext, getting permission from a highly political magistrate, who they had picked late in the evening, just days before the break in that trampled upon my rights and civil liberties.”
He went on to add: “We’re a third world nation. We’re like a third world nation.”
“And do you believe it, the FBI and the Justice Department have become vicious monsters, controlled by radical left scoundrels, lawyers, and the media, who tell them what to do to you people right there and when to do it.”
He continued by noting that those in the FBI and Justice Department that went after him were the same people who went after Hillary Clinton over her email scandal. He also defended his handling of documents and accused the FBI of staging the photos taking in his Mar-a-Lago office recently released to the public.
“Think of that? Yet now the same people the exact same people are sending the FBI storming through the home of their number one political rival. It’s a disgrace, a disgrace, like possibly never before,” he said. “Our country has never seen anything like, if they talk about documents not being properly stored, we had. They go in and take documents, dump them on the floor. Stage a photoshoot and pretend that I had done it, like I had put them all over the floor.
“Then they put out for public consumption, a picture which is seen all over the world. This is what they do with all this information. These are very dishonest, sick people, very dishonest,” he added. “Americans are sick of the lies sick of the hoaxes and scans and above all sick of the hypocrisy. But our opponents have badly miscalculated this egregious abuse of the law is going to produce a backlash, the likes of which nobody has ever seen.”
“There’s only one party that’s waging war on American democracy by censoring free speech, criminalizing dissent. You see that happening,” Trump said of Democrats. “Disarming law abiding citizens by issuing lawless mandates and unconstitutional orders, imprisoning political protesters. That’s what they’re doing. Rigging elections, weaponizing the Justice Department and the FBI like never ever before, and raiding and breaking into the homes of their political opponents. I wonder who that could be?”
“Republicans in the MAGA movement are not the ones trying to undermine our democracy,” he continued. “We are the ones trying to save our democracy very simple.”
“[There] could be no more vivid example of the very real threats from American freedom than just a few weeks ago, you saw, when we witnessed one of the most shocking abuses of power by any administration in American history. The shameful raid and breaking into my home Mar-a-Lago was a travesty of justice. It made a mockery of America’s laws, traditions, and principles before the entire world. The entire world was watching and they’re shocked, they’re shocked.”
“South American countries numerous of them, their leaders said: ‘Could you imagine if that was ever done in our country, what the United States would be saying about us?’ The Biden administration invaded the home of their chief political opponent who is absolutely destroying him and everyone else in the polls, I hate to say it.”
Trump kicked off his speech excoriating Biden for his speech this week going after his wing of the Republican Party.
“As you know this week, Joe Biden came to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania to give the most vicious, hateful and divisive speech ever delivered by an American president,” Trump told the crowd. “Vilifying 75 million citizens, plus another probably 75 to 150 if we want to be accurate about it, as threats to democracy and as enemies of the state. You’re all enemies of the state.”
“He’s an enemy of the state. You want to know that? The enemy of the state is him and the group that control him, which is circling around him, ‘do this do that, Joe, you’re gonna do this Joe,'” he continued.
“I think Philadelphia was a great choice to make this speech of hatred in anger, his speech was hatred and anger. By the way, the next morning he forgot what he said, you saw that?…But Philadelphia was a great choice because the city is being devastated under Democrat rule, devastated, I hate to tell you. We love Pennsylvania. I went to school in Philadelphia, what’s happening to Philadelphia? Fourteen people were shot last weekend in Philadelphia.”
The former president took the stage to screams of applause from the packed stadium.
Mastriano took aim at his gubernatorial opponent, Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro, whom he claimed “sued to keep your kids masked up.”
“Big time loser. He sued to keep your businesses shut down,” he continued. “He’s not a man of the people. He’s a man of his party politics.”
Mastriano also called Shapiro a “big failure” who “did nothing, who didn’t lift a finger” to help families during the COVID-19 pandemic.
The crowd went wild when the aspiring first couple of the commonwealth took to the stage.
Mastriano’s wife Rebbeca spoke first after being introduced by her husband to the audience. Rebbeca took issue with Democrats calling their side “the party of women’s rights.”
“Well, guess what? Republicans do believe in women’s rights,” she told the crowd. “We believe in a woman’s right to be born. We believe in a woman’s right to have a say in her child’s education. We believe that a woman should have access to baby formula and affordable groceries for her family. We believe that it’s a woman’s right to raise a child in a safe community where the government enforces the law and prosecutes crime, and is not releasing criminals from jail, right? We believe in a woman’s right to live in a nation with a secure border.”
She continued on listing Republican talking points in the same fashion.
After taking aim at his Senate opponent, Lt. Gov John Fetterman, Oz joked to the crowd that: “I think the only thing Joe Biden has Built Back Better is the Republican Party, am I right?”
The line was a nod to Biden’s legislative agenda, only a small portion of which was passed through the Senate under a different name: the Inflation Reduction Act.
Dr. Mehmet Oz has taken the stage. He’s kicked off his speech sharing his breaking point that caused him to take severe issue with the Democratic Party.
“We all believe in the American dream, or at least we thought we would have it. And then we’ve been seeing some things of late that make us a little worried about status for the American dream. And for me, the wake up call happened during COVID,” he told the crowd. “Now you know what happens when you mix politics and medicine? You get politics. There’s no medicine left. We saw a government overreach into issues we never thought, especially the federal government, would get involved in.”
“We saw ideas crushed, we saw science weaponized, and I began to witness the same thing happening not just with shutdowns and mandates that were, I believe, not fair to the American people more based in science,” he continued. “But we saw the same thing happening with the Green New Deal, which cannot happen the way it’s designed, certainly the timeline.”
“Under Trump, the policies here in Pennsylvania and for our entire country were amazing, because he put tariffs on China that protected workers in Pennsylvania in the steel industry,” the firebrand GOP lawmaker said. “We also put American energy independence first that promoted Pennsylvania’s coal industry.”
“But under Biden, Democrats, they want wind turbines hovering your beautiful hills and mountains in Pennsylvania,” she added. “And all that’s going to do is plunge us into darkness. The Democrats want you to have an electric vehicle and then they’re going to tell you certain hours of the day that you can’t charge it because there’s not enough electricity.”
The crowd erupted in cheers and rose to their feet as Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) walked on stage.
“I love you too, every single one of you,” she told the audience, “But Joe Biden has declared all of you extremists. Joe Biden has declared that half of this country are enemies of the state.”
Greene was added to the rally lineup on Friday.

