Republican presidential candidate and former President Trump spoke at a campaign rally in Freeland, Michigan on Wednesday. His two rallies in key states including Wisconsin and Michigan were his first on the campaign trail since going on trial in New York for alleged campaign finance violations.
Paulo Sancia/AP
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Republican presidential candidate and former President Trump spoke at a campaign rally in Freeland, Michigan on Wednesday. His two rallies in key states including Wisconsin and Michigan were his first on the campaign trail since going on trial in New York for alleged campaign finance violations.
Paulo Sancia/AP
Donald Trump’s first campaign rally since the start of his criminal hush money trial in New York made little mention of the reasons for his absence from the campaign trail.
But on Wednesday, in lengthy speeches in Waukesha, Wisconsin, and Freeland, Miss., Trump continued to escalate his rhetoric around what a second term would look like and what he expected would be the consequences if he didn’t win.
Trump echoed comments he made in a Time magazine interview published earlier this week, outlining a positive approach to the presidency, including pushing to restore the power to withhold funding from Congress and give police further immunity from prosecution, to target immigration and crime hotspots.
Many of his signature proposals and policies frequently mentioned on the campaign trail were on display: increased oil drilling, a rollback of President Joe Biden’s economic policies including the Inflation Reduction Act and a massive bipartisan base facilities bill, and false claims that the 2020 election was stolen.
He also pointed to recent protests on university campuses surrounding Israeli military action in Gaza in response to Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack on the country.
He called on the schools to “defeat the radicals and take back our campuses for all our ordinary students” while making inflammatory remarks about refugees from the conflict as part of his hard-line immigration views.
Republican presidential candidate and former President Donald Trump speaks at a campaign rally in Waukesha, Wisconsin, on Wednesday. Actress Stormi goes on trial over campaign finance violations she paid.
Maury Gash/AP
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Republican presidential candidate and former President Donald Trump speaks at a campaign rally in Waukesha, Wisconsin on Wednesday. Actress Stormi goes on trial over campaign finance violations she paid.
Maury Gash/AP
In a speech in Wisconsin, Trump suggested that Palestinian refugees resettling in the United States would bring “jihad” and warned of the possibility of an “October 7-style attack” as he reiterated his support for the Muslim majority. The country proposed a travel ban and vowed to monitor “October 7-style attacks.”
During the nearly three hours of speeches between the two rallies, there was little time to mention the ongoing trial in New York, where Trump was found in contempt of court yesterday for violating his comments about witnesses and jurors in the case.
In Wisconsin, Trump cited a “dishonest judge” and Georgia prosecutors who are overseeing another racketeering case stemming from a failed effort to overturn his 2020 election defeat but largely reflecting criminal The accusations gave him a boost in the polls.
In Michigan, Trump’s dissatisfaction was even stronger. He denounced a “sham trial” in New York and said it was unconstitutional for a judge to prevent him from speaking, while dismissing the multiple criminal cases against him as “nonsense.”
“As you know, I came here today from New York, where I was forced to sit in a kangaroo court for days on end, enduring the trial of Biden in a Marxist district with a corrupt and inconsistent judge. Soros Supportive lawyers, taking orders from the Biden administration,” Trump complained.
The New York trial undermined Trump’s ability to campaign and capitalize on earned media coverage through interviews, social media posts and reactions to other news of the day. Bad weather forced the campaign to reschedule an April 20 rally in North Carolina at the last minute.
But the time away from the track hasn’t changed Trump’s message or messaging in a campaign he says will determine whether the country survives.
At an evening rally in Michigan, Trump repeated stories about Mexico providing troops to patrol the border with the United States, posited that if he had been in charge, the war in Ukraine and conflicts in the Middle East would not have happened, and warned that a Biden victory in November would ” Destroy the country.
