Donald Trump suggested that convicted drug dealers should be given the death penalty during a sombre speech in Las Vegas on fridaynight.
He also said his former attorney Rudy Giuliani is in hospital with a “heart problem” just days after being subpoenaed in the Georgia prosecutors’ Fulton County election fraud investigation.
The former New York City mayor is “getting better,” Trump said, adding: “Can you believe it? What they did to Rudy.’
However, Giuliani’s lawyer later told NBC that he was already out of the hospital after having cardiac stents earlier this week.
Speaking with clenched hands on stage, the ex-president called the United States a “failing nation,” citing emerging crime in the big cities and a wave of migrants on the southern border.
He also painted a murky picture of violence in American cities, claiming that “older women are being raped” and children are willfully slaughtered in an unusually grim tone.
“To put it simply, we are a nation in decline. We are a failing nation,” Trump said.
He claimed the country was gripped by a “deadly wave of lawlessness and chaos.”
“Our country has been knocked to its knees, humiliated before the world, yet we dare to lecture other people in other countries about their democracy,” Trump said.
He followed up with a statement that initially appeared to tease a 2024 bid.
“So this is a bit controversial. And I either get a standing ovation — and I don’t care about the ovation, I care about the country — or people walk out of the room for what I’m about to say. But it’s time to finally say it,” said the former president.
“If you look at countries around the world… The only ones who don’t have a drug problem are the ones that introduce the death penalty for drug dealers.”
The former president gave an unusually dark speech describing “blood” flowing in the streets of Democrat-controlled cities
Former President Trump speaks at Treasure Island Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas
He added: ‘They are the only ones who have no problems.’
‘We just want, it’s very simple, another great country. And we must have a safe country.’
Trump, he said, described the toll of rising crime in unusually dark detail, claiming that democracy-led cities were full of rape and murder crimes. He was also quick to blame President Joe Biden’s policies for fueling the wave of violence.
“The blood of these victims is almost exclusively in these Democrat strongholds. Babies are being killed, older women are being shot in the face and raped,” Trump said.
‘Older women are raped. Children are stabbed and mutilated. As a candidate, Joe Biden aided his party’s despicable campaign against our police officers, then took the rioters’ agenda straight to the White House.”
He said Biden’s recent executive order increasing police accountability — including banning chokeholds, limiting no-knock orders, among other measures — was funding police departments.
Trump accused Biden of “staffing his administration with an army of anti-police radicals,” despite voices on the president’s left urging that his closest advisers may be too moderate on the issue.
He also used concerns about the crime wave to launch another presidential plague.
Trump said his former attorney Rudy Giuliani is in hospital with a “heart problem” days after being subpoenaed by prosecutors in Georgia in their ongoing election fraud investigation.
Task number one for a new Republican Congress will be to turn this extreme agenda on its head. We want law and order,” Trump said.
“And then we have to elect a Republican president in 2024 to end Joe Biden’s rule of lawlessness.”
A recent report suggested that violent crime is increasing at an alarming rate compared to last year.
Six major cities — Los Angeles, Baltimore, Philadelphia, Atlanta, New York City and Washington, D.C. — are all poised to surpass their violent crime rates by 2021, despite being just over the middle of the year, according to Fox news†
During the speech, Trump again targeted New York Attorney General Letitia James, a frequent political enemy of his since the Democrat official launched an investigation into his family’s real estate empire in 2019.
He and his two oldest children, Ivanka Trump and Donald Trump Jr., have agreed to testify in James’s civil investigation into whether the Trump organization has committed financial fraud by misrepresenting the value of its assets. Their impeachment date is scheduled for next Friday, July 15.
Trump suggested that James’s investigation was a violation of his civil rights in Friday night’s speech.
“We must dismantle every street gang, cartel and violent criminal organization operating in America,” Trump told his supporters. Prosecutors, not an easy job, must go after these violent criminals and mean it.”
“However, in many cases, racist prosecutors must also be vigorously investigated for their brutal violations of federal civil rights laws.”
New York Attorney General Letitia James has been investigating the Trump Organization since 2019. At the end of last year, she sued Donald Trump and his two oldest children
Hitting James directly, he said: ‘It’s happening to me, with a racist attorney general in New York, campaigning only on the fact that she would get Donald Trump’
‘I said, who is this woman? Is she crazy? A little. No, a lot,” he added as the crowd laughed.
Trump opened his meeting with a video montage that began with clips falsely suggesting that defunding the police is a target for mainstream national Democrats.
It ends with hopeful, cinematic music and Trump promises, “We’ll make it.”
But his rallying performance got off to an awkward start when the former president began paying tribute to recently assassinated ex-Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe — but was drowned out by his intro song, Lee Greenwood’s “God Bless the USA.”
Republicans see Nevada as a full of vulnerable blue seats that they can flip in the upcoming midterm elections.
Trump is in Las Vegas to campaign for Adam Laxalt, the former Nevada attorney general who now wants to remove Democratic Senator Catherine Cortez Masto in November.
He is also targeting Nevada governor nominee Joe Lombardo. Clark County sheriff’s Lombardo won the Republican nomination with Trump’s support and is now about to meet incumbent Democrat Governor Steve Sisolak.
Both races are considered toss-ups. Lombardo narrowly follows Sisolak by just over two points in the FiveThirtyEight poll average.
A Change Research poll conducted at the end of June shows that Cortez Masto maintains a small lead of three percent.
Trump follows his speech in Las Vegas on Saturday with a Save America rally in Alaska.
It is the first of two consecutive rallies for the former president this weekend. He speaks Saturday in Alaska
Nevada Republican Senate candidate Adam Laxalt (3L) speaks during a panel discussion at an “America First Agenda” meeting where former US President Donald Trump will speak in Las Vegas, Nevada, July 8
Trump previously made comments during a tele-rally for Laxalt, the former Nevada attorney general (pictured shaking hands with Trump)
There, the ex-president is calling for support for Republican Senate candidate Kelly Tshibaka and House candidate Sarah Palin, the former governor of Alaska and a one-time vice presidential candidate.
As Palin runs to fill the seat of the late former Representative Don Young, who died this year, Tshibaka attempts to take down incumbent Senator Lisa Murkowski.
Murkowski is a fellow Republican who infuriated Trump by voting to convict him in his second impeachment trial.
The high-profile primary race will take place on August 16.
Trump’s back-to-back campaign appearances follow multiple reports that he plans to announce a new presidential bid soon as the Jan. 6 committee’s investigation of the House of Representatives approaches his current and former allies.
And in yet another hint that the former president wants to run to the White House in 2024, he announced Wednesday night that his iconic “Trump Force One” plane is back in service after it had been nearly unused since he took office in 2017.
The Boeing 757 was Trump’s preferred mode of transportation during his 2016 presidential campaign.