Summary
Donald Trump has concluded his approximately 90-minute speech at CPAC in National Harbor, Maryland. Here are the key takeaways:
If Joe Biden wins, “the worst is yet to come”, Trump warned the audience in his opening remarks. He went call Biden the “crookedest, most incompetent president in the history of our country”.
Trump also mocked Biden and his mental capabilities and called the current president “a threat to democracy”. He went on to call himself a “proud political dissident”, adding: “A vote for Trump is your ticket back to freedom.”
On his legal troubles, Trump compared himself to American gangster Al Capone, saying: “I’ve been indicted more than Alphonse Capone.” He also accused the Biden administration and Democrats of “weaponizing” the justice department and FBI.
Trump, who previously compared his criminal indictments to the persecution of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, who suddenly died last week, described his court cases as “Stalinist show trials”. He then accused the Biden administration of replacing “law, precedent, and due process with a rabid mob of radical left Democrat partisans masquerading as judges and juries and prosecutors”.
On foreign policy, Trump said that if he had been president, Hamas’s attack on Israel and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine would have never happened. He then descended into a lengthy ramble on how he attempted to strong-arm Mexico over his border security measures – while veering into stories of his flight to Iraq, pilots who were “better looking than Tom Cruise” and his attempt to award himself the congressional Medal of Honor.
On border security, Trump vowed that his first order of business as president would be “sealing the border, stopping the invasion” and sending “Joe Biden’s illegal aliens back home”. He then said there are languages in the US that nobody has ever heard of, calling it a “horrible thing”.
On law enforcement and crime, Trump vowed that he could solve crime rates “in one day, in one hour, in one minute” if he was president. He then said: “We have the greatest law enforcement people in the world but they’re not allowed to do their job.”
Trump closed his speech by calling on voters to vote for him in South Carolina, where the state’s Republican primary is being held today. “We’re going to win the election. We’re going to win it big and we’re going to win it bigger than ever before,” he said.
That’s it from me, Maya Yang, as we wrap up the blog for today. Thank you for following along.
Updated
“Our country is run by people that are destroying it. We’re not going to let it happen. We’re going to have a great military … our country is going to function properly,” Donald Trump said in his closing remarks.
“I’m going to leave you with this one final message. We’re going to win the election. We’re going to win it big and we’re going to win it bigger than ever before … We are going to make America great again,” he said.
Updated
