“If Joe Biden is elected, he will surrender your country to the mob,” President Donald Trump told an enthusiastic crowd inside Tulsa’s Bank of Oklahoma Center Saturday night, indicating that Trump intends to make Biden either repudiate the violence that has enveloped America’s cities, from Seattle to New York City, or embrace it.
Trump made a direct tie to the looters and rioters by noting that members of the Biden campaign actually bailed out several of them, adding, “If Democrats gain power, the rioters will be in charge.”
As is typical of a Trump rally speech, he jumped from one topic to another in the nearly two-hour speech. He attacked the mainstream media that has clearly made it their mission to destroy the Trump presidency, calling them the fake news media. He spent several minutes with an example of how they covered his commencement address to the cadets at West Point, noting that they concentrated on his slow descent down a slick ramp in leather shoes, speculating that he might be suffering from Parkinson’s Disease or something similar.
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“They [the left-wing media of CNN, MSNBC and so on] are among the most dishonest people on earth.”
It was clear that Trump was ready to pump his own accomplishments and to go after former Vice President Joe Biden and the Democrats, no doubt concluding that the media will never do either one.
Among the accomplishments he is most proud of is his filling the federal courts with almost 300 judges during his first term, and promising to do more of the same in a second term. He took credit for tax cuts, while asserting, “Democrats want to raise your taxes.” He said that his administration had cut more regulations on business than any other administration in the history of the country. This, Trump argued, had contributed greatly to the lowest unemployment rates in half a century before the Covid-19 pandemic — which he joked had more names than any other disease in history, but its source was clear: China.
With the opening of the economy, Trump predicted that over the next several weeks there will be enough improvement in the economy for the voters to realize that we can do it again. He cited the recent drop in the unemployment rate — the greatest one-month drop in American history. Trump also offered as proof of a coming economic rebound the fact that the past 50 days has seen the greatest 50-day surge in stock market history. Another reason for the good economy — and something that would not surprisingly appeal to many in Oklahoma — was how the United States has been turned into the dominant energy producer in the world.
But Trump reserved the most intense part of his oratory for painting a picture of Joe Biden as a man who has no business running the executive branch of the U.S. government, taking aim at what some political pundits have considered one of Biden’s supposed political strengths — the black vote. Trump contrasted his own support for criminal justice reform with Biden’s opposite record, and called for greater access to education as a “civil right,” both important issues among African-Americans. Perhaps signaling that Trump intends to challenge Biden directly for support in the black community, he recalled the eulogy that Biden delivered for a former Ku Klux Klan organizer, the late Senator Robert C. Byrd of West Virginia.
“I’ve done more for the black community in four years than Joe Biden in 47 years,” Trump said.
He added that those cages that the news media featured in their news reports when covering captured illegal aliens were built by President Barack Obama — and Vice President Joe Biden.
Next, Trump directly challenged Biden’s image as some sort of a centrist politician, with words no doubt intended to destroy that carefully crafted image: “Biden is a very willing trojan horse for socialism.” One might recall that, as the story goes, the city of Troy brought in the gift horse from the Greeks, not realizing what they were actually getting. To buttress his argument, Trump offered that Biden had named avowed socialist Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to be in charge of environmental policy in a Biden presidency. “She wants us to go back to the stone age,” Trump said of AOC, adding that “Biden is fully controlled by the fringe of his party.”
In contrast to Trump’s claim that he had put staunch constitutionalists on the federal bench, he charged, “Joe Biden will stack the courts with extremists.”
Trump recalled that when he shut down travel from China in January in an attempt to keep out sick people who could bring in the coronavirus, Biden attacked the policy as “xenophobia” — fear of foreigners. But that policy and the ensuing ban on travel into the United States probably saved “hundreds of thousands of lives” Trump claimed.
“If Biden is elected,” Trump warned, “he will surrender our country to the mob.” He gave as an example of the mob what is going on in Seattle, where the mob has taken over a section of the city. He said that in Portland, mobs have torn down a statue of George Washington, and wrapped it in the American flag and set it on fire. Yet, Trump said, “Biden remains silent in his basement.”
Turning to foreign policy, Trump reminded the audience that Biden voted for the war in Iraq. “We will keep America out of ridiculous foreign wars,” and touted his recent withdraw of American troops form Germany. He noted that Biden’s son was paid $83 thousand a month in Ukraine, that Iran wants Biden to win, and that he will be a “puppet for China.”
“They want to take away your guns,” Trump said of the Left, and that Biden has sold us out to that crowd, offering as evidence that Biden made former U.S. Representative Beto O’Rourke of Texas in charge of gun policy (the same guy who said he is coming for our AR-15s).
Finally, Trump charged that “Joe Biden wants to prosecute Americans for going to church, but not for burning a church,” adding in words that bring back memories of Senator Ted Kennedy’s attack upon Supreme Court nominee Robert Bork, “In Joe Biden’s America, rioters and looters have more rights than law-abiding Americans.”
While some of what Trump said was predictable political hyperbole, much of it was no doubt pretty accurate. Joe Biden might be running cloaked in a moderate image, but his policies are straight out of the left-wing of the Democratic Party.
One thing that Trump said that one could quibble about was when he said that he has run one time for public office — and won that one time. It is certainly undeniable that Trump’s crushing of both the Bush Dynasty and the Clinton Dynasty in the 2016 campaign was remarkable, not to mention his besting of heavyweight opponents like Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, Senator Marco Rubio of Florida, Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky, Governor Chris Christie of New Jersey and so on.
But Trump did lose once in a bid for the Reform Party nomination in 2000 — to Pat Buchanan. But there is little doubt that Trump has no intention of ever losing again, and former Vice President Joe Biden is certainly going to find that out in November, if Trump’s stem-winder in Tulsa, Oklahoma, is any indication.
Photo of President Trump: AP Images
Steve Byas is a university instructor in history and government, and the author of History’s Greatest Libels. He may be contacted at [email protected].
