For the first time since leaving office, former president Donald Trump visited Washington on Tuesday and gave a dystopian speech in which he called for “tough,” “nasty,” and “mean” new responses to violent crime and the forced transfer of the homeless to hastily constructed tent cities in the suburbs.
As he considers running for president again as early as this fall, Trump’s speech, which was dripping with violent imagery of “streets riddled with needles and soaked with the blood of innocent victims,” death sentences for drug dealers, and detailed accounts of rape and murder, marked a return to the shocking rhetoric he used in his 2016 campaign.
Donald Trump Speaking In Washington As His Supporters Get Ready For A Second Term
Now, some people could be thinking, ‘Oh, that’s so awful.’ No, what’s awful is what’s occurring right now, he remarked about his proposal to move homeless people to the fringes of cities. He advocated for increased police spending, longer prison sentences for immigration offenses, a return to “stop and frisk,” the elimination of most early or electronic voting, and greater limitations on medical care for young transgender people.
President Biden made the observation that Donald Trump had played a key role in inciting a violent attack on the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, and had refused to immediately ask his supporters to stop attacking police, before Trump arrived to wrap up a two-day policy event by the America First Policy Institute, a new think tank he has helped fund.
A wide range of conservative leaders, including former House speaker Newt Gingrich, former Louisiana governor Bobby Jindal, Florida senator Rick Scott, and House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (Calif.), all appeared under Donald Trump’s “America First” banner at the AFPI event as a sort of public rebranding effort for Republican-backed policies. The event’s planners made it clear that they believed “America First” would become a popular slogan for initiatives like civil service reform, private-sector health care reform, and increased fossil fuel exploration.
