Donald Trump‘s first high-profile 2024 campaign event had him sounding more like a politician than he did during any of his 2016 or 2020 rallies – showing the ex-president may be ready to ‘play ball’ in his third presidential campaign.
He also said that Joe Biden running the country makes every day feel like April Fools Day.
While Trump did resurrect some of his greatest hits during remarks at the New Hampshire Republican Party’s annual meeting on Saturday afternoon, he mostly stuck to the script.
He did, however, make sure to reassure voters that he is still ‘angry’ and still invested in winning and promised the rallies are coming ‘soon.’
‘The rallies, which are starting very soon, even though it’s very early,’ Trump said. ‘They’re almost forcing me into the rallies. ‘Why isn’t he doing rallies two years early?’
Donald Trump defended himself against claims he has been slow to start his 2024 campaign for president in his first high-profile event with a speech in first-in-the-nation primary election state of New Hampshire
‘But we’re going to do them soon. I think we should do a big one up here. Let’s do a big one. They love our rallies,’ Trump said in previewing a future rally in New Hampshire.
Some strategists and politicians have pointed to Trump’s slow-to-start campaign to back claims that he’s lost the spark or drive to get a second term in the White House – but the former president rebuked those claims.
‘The fake news… said when I announced that I just wanted to put my cards on the table. Like you know, when playing that very big game right now, the biggest game of all because it involves the country and the survival of the United States of America,’ Trump said to a group of New Hampshire Republicans in Salem.
‘But when I put the cards on – and then I said, ‘alright let’s go.’ They said, ‘he’s not campaigning.’ This is like about a month ago when I announced. I said, well, you know, ‘I’ve got two years.’
‘They said, ‘he’s not doing rallies, he’s not campaigning, maybe he’s lost that step.’ Well, I’m more angry now and I’m more committed now than I ever was,’ he insisted.
At his speech in the first-in-then-nation primary election state, Trump announced that outgoing chairman of the New Hampshire GOP Stephen Stepanek will come on as the senior advisor for his campaign in the Granite State.
With Stepanek on board, Trump says he actually has a chance to flip New Hampshire red.
Trump also said that if he isn’t successful in 2024, ‘that’s going to be the end’ and the ‘communists and Marxists’ would have won and will now rule the United States.
Trump announced at the event that he is brining on outgoing chairman of the New Hampshire GOP Stephen Stepanek (right) as the senior advisor for his campaign in the Granite State
‘He’s going to help us make sure we have a win in the Granite State in 2024,’ Trump said of Stepanek. ‘We stopped the communists, we stopped the Marxists, if we don’t stop them this time, I think that’s going to be the end.’
‘Everyone in this room shares the one key mission – we’re going to defeat Joe Biden and the radical Democrats,’ the former president said. ‘These are radical left people. I think in many cases they are Maxists and Communists. I used to say that seldom, and now I say that all the time.’
Trump spent a considerable amount of time pointing to Biden’s failures, and said it makes him feel like every day is the April 1 jokester holiday April Fools.
Among the listed failures included the disastrous mishandling of the troop withdrawal from Afghanistan, which was widely criticized. He also mentioned the Defund Police movement leading to massive crime spikes, as well as migrant policies allowing drug smuggling and human trafficking to pour over the border.
‘We have people in the midst of the greatest crime wave in history that want to defund the police. That’s April Fools, isn’t it, right?’ Let’s defund the police.’ You can’t even get your car – you go to New York, nobody ever gets prosecuted,’ Trump accused.
‘I’m the only one they go after. It’s true,’ he said to massive laughter. ‘Nobody gets prosecuted, they go after me.’
Trump urged Americans to ‘be careful’ with the ‘fragile’ United States.
‘It’s crazy – this is a crazy world we’re living in,’ Trump said. ‘And we have to be very careful because we have a very fragile country – this is a very fragile place.’
