Trump attended his first campaign rally ahead of the 2024 election in Waco, Texas, on Saturday. He is reportedly on the verge of being arrested in New York on charges related to campaign funding. Speaking to a throng of thousands of people, Trump reaffirmed his long-held opinion that the accusations against him, as well as the prosecution of the January 6, 2021 rioters, are part of a Democratic-orchestrated scheme to remove him from power and persecute his followers.
He referred to Biden's USA as "a third-world banana republic" and said, "The Biden regime's weaponization of law enforcement against their political opponents is something straight out of the Stalinist Russia horror show."
The deep state has been relentlessly after me since I vowed to rapidly put a stop to the bloodshed in Ukraine, Trump said, adding that "it's no coincidence that it's been one witch hunt and false inquiry after another from the beginning."
Trump has been claiming for months that, if elected, he could end the conflict in just 24 hours. Nonetheless, he has blamed the conflict on "all the warmongers and 'America Last' globalists" in the Pentagon, State Department, and other institutions of the national security establishment and "deep state," without going into further detail as to how he would accomplish this.
He told the gathering in Waco on Saturday that justice wouldn't be served until the "heck out of this filthy political class."
At the rally, Trump made a number of election-related promises, including that he would increase domestic energy production, reduce imports from China, stop funding "critical race theory and transgender insanity" in schools, and use state, federal, and military resources to "carry out the largest domestic deportation operation in American history."
On the deportation of more than a million illegal immigrants by Dwight D. Eisenhower's government in the early 1950s under "Operation Wetback," Trump said, "Eisenhower did it, so we don't have to feel so bad."
Most polls currently have Donald Trump ahead for the Republican nomination in 2024, with Florida Governor Ron DeSantis trailing by two to thirty points. Trump spent some of his rally in Waco criticizing DeSantis, even though he hasn't declared his campaign. In addition to criticizing DeSantis for closing down his state at the start of the coronavirus pandemic, Trump took credit for the governor's political career and referred to him as "DeSanctimonious."
