Trump lambastes Biden in Washington: US has been “brought to its knees”
Washington, Jul 26 (EFE).- Former President Donald Trump reappeared on Tuesday in Washington for the first time since he left office in January 2021, leveling harsh criticism at the country’s situation under his Democratic successor, Joe Biden, and saying that the United States has been “brought to its knees.”
Calling the US a “cesspool of crime” in his address before the America First Policy Institute, a conservative think-tank, Trump said that the US needs an “all-out effort to defeat violent crime.”
“Be tough, and be nasty and be mean if we have to,” he said, adding that “‘America first’ must mean safety first.”
Saying that the country had literally been “brought to its knees,” Trump asked rhetorically: “What’s happened to this great bastion?”
In addition, in a speech focusing on security and the need to retake control of the White House, but without speaking about his own intentions regarding the 2024 presidential race, Trump said that a new Republican mandate would reverse the situation.
Saying that in November the public will vote in the mid-term elections to halt the destruction of the country and to “rescue the future” of the US, Trump declared that he had come to Washington to speak about what “we must do” to achieve that future once Republicans win a sweeping legislative victory in 2022 and after a GOP president wins the White House in 2024, something that he said he really believes will happen.
Trump claimed that inflation is now at historic levels at 9.1 percent, although “a lot of people think it’s much higher than that,” gasoline prices are at historic highs and crime is out of control, all of which has resulted in the US having neither “security” nor “freedom” at present.
“Inflation is the highest in 49 years … gas prices have reached the highest in our country. We’ve become a beggar nation, grovelling to others for energy,” the former president said.
He asserted that two years ago, when he was still in office, the country had an economy flourishing like never before, the strongest and most secure border in history, energy independence and historically low gas prices.
The former president said that “Democrat-run cities” are seeing their crime figures shoot up and the US is suffering “one historic humiliation after another on the world stage.” Moreover, he declared that here at home Americans’ most basic rights and freedoms are completely besieged and “the American Dream is being torn to shreds.”
“Our country is now a cesspool of crime,” he said, “because of the Democratic Party’s efforts to destroy and dismantle law enforcement throughout America.”
Trump came back to Washington at a time when a bipartisan congressional commission for months has been investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol insurrection by an enraged mob incited by the then-president himself in an attempt to halt lawmakers’ certification of the 2020 election results.
In many hours of sworn testimony, former Trump staffers and supporters have testified that he did not want to halt the protest – during which five people died – or criticize any of the rioters, hoping that their actions would force Congress to postpone declaring Biden the election winner, thus giving Trump and his backers more time to work to contest, and perhaps overturn, the results.
EFE mgr/pamp/cpy/bp
