Donald Trump told hundreds of supporters assembled inside a packaging plant in northern Kentucky on Wednesday that Iran’s military and nuclear capabilities had been significantly degraded.
“Their drones are down 85%, we’re blowing up their factories,” he told an ecstatic audience in Hebron.
“They don’t know what the hell hit them,” said Trump.
Without offering further details on when the 10-day-old conflict may end, Trumpseemed to suggest that might not be soon.
“We don’t want to go back every two years. We’re going to finish the job,” he said.
With Trump and his fellow Republicans under pressure, according to polls, due to a stuttering economy, immigration crackdowns and the Iran conflict, the president noted this year’s midterm elections “are going to be very, very important”.
He highlighted “clean, beautiful Kentucky coal” and new jobs he said his administration has helped create in the construction and pharmaceutical industries.
Amid thunderstorms and a tornado warning, hundreds of people lined up to see the president. One supporter was Chuck Wills, a 76-year-old Vietnam veteran who waited in the spring rain for three hours Wednesday morning to secure a front-row seat.
“It was worth it,” he said from a seat just feet from Trump’s podium.
Wills, who lives locally, admitted that the economy under Trump could be in a better place.
“There’s going to be a little pain before [the economy] turns around,” he said. On the war on Iran, Wills believes it’s a necessary intervention, saying: “He’s the first one to take on Iran. It’s the price to pay. I have no issues with it.”
Wills, who is retired from having worked for an oil company, said the rising cost of gas due to the Iran war was not a huge price to pay. “It’s a few dollars here, a few dollars there,” he said. “But they gotta get it over with quick. We hope it will be short term.”
Kentucky, a deep-red state, has emerged as an important testing ground for Trump’s agenda before a much-anticipated primary election in May.
On Wednesday, Trump posted on Truth Social his support for Ed Gallrein, a Kentucky farmer and Republican challenger running against Thomas Massie, a long-time Trump critic and one of the leading Republican voices calling for the full release of the Epstein files. On Wednesday, Trump called Massie the “worst Republican congressman” in a Truth Social post.
Gallrein, who spoke briefly at the Trump event in Hebron, claimed Massie has worked with Democrats to “destroy our nation”. The primary on 19 May is expected to be a tight race.
But even in Kentucky, where in 2024 more than 64% of voters backed Trump, the effects of rising prices have not gone unnoticed.
The Kentucky Republican party said the purpose of the president’s trip was, in part, to “lay out the work he’s doing to make America affordable again”, comments that highlight the challenges facing the administration amid rising prices and the Iran conflict.
Trump also visited a pharmaceutical company outside Cincinnati on Wednesday where he claimed his tariffs regime had brought businesses back to the US.
In Kentucky, Trump spoke for about an hour and 10 minutes and was acclaimed by hundreds of supporters carrying signs reading ‘lower prices’ and ‘bigger paychecks’.
Corina Petty, a nurse who drove two hours from Bullitt county, approved of Trump’s handling of the economy.
“He’s only been in a year. When he got in, the economy was so bad. He’s already done a lot of good things. It’s just going to take a little more time,” she said.
Petty, who was in line at 9.30am – more than eight hours before Trump arrived to speak – also thought the war on Iran was a necessary conflict and wanted it to continue “for as long as it takes”, which she estimated would be about three weeks.
“Iran needed to be dealt with. They fund terrorist groups. President Trump is the only president we’ve had with the nerve to go in,” she said.
Later, as Trump denigrated Barack Obama, people in the crowd behind him began calling for medics after an older woman collapsed directly behind him, causing him to stop his speech for more than five minutes.
Medics assisting the woman included Mehmet Oz, the former TV presenter and administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, who was attending the gathering.
For 18-year-old college student Troy McCoy, who drove from Louisville with two friends to see the president, the choice of political leaders in general in the US today wasn’t great but he still supported Trump.
“There are a lot of young people today who see him as the lesser of two evils,” he said. “But I’ve followed him for a long time, and I agree with a lot of what he says.”
