(Newton) Campaigning in Iowa, Donald Trump assured Saturday that he would “win” the November presidential election against Joe Biden, the “worst” president of the United States, a country “in decline” and on the verge of collapse. “World War III”.
Three years to the day after the assault on the Capitol, the former president held two meetings in the small Midwestern state, which is organizing its caucuses on Monday, January 15 and thus kicking off the ball for the 2024 Republican primaries, giving him half a century an oversized weight in the presidential campaign.
The Republican billionaire, who dreams of being re-elected in November and returning to the White House on January 20, 2025 despite his four criminal charges, will face voters in eight days for the first time since his crashing departure from the presidency on January 20, 2021.
Exactly three years after the unprecedented attack on the seat of Congress in Washington by his supporters on January 6, 2021, Donald Trump assured in a rambling speech lasting more than two hours in Newton, near the regional capital Des Moines, that he was going to “win for the third time” the presidential election in November.
“Scoundrel Joe”
PHOTO ANDREW HARNIK, ASSOCIATED PRESS
Donald Trump meets his supporters on Saturday
Elected in November 2016 and defeated four years later, the Republican tribune considers that the victory in this election was “stolen” from him by the Democrat Joe Biden, 81, whom he once again called “Joe-the-Scum » and whose age he made fun of.
Describing Joe Biden as the “worst” president in the history of the United States, Donald Trump, 77, who has turned American democracy upside down in less than ten years, deplored that the world’s leading power was “in decline”.
He even estimated that his country was risking a “Third World War” and “Depression” like in the 1930s and warned a few hundred delighted MAGA (“Make America Great Again”) supporters in a Newton room: “It’s our last chance to save America.”
“I am a dictator”
Ironic about warnings from Democrats and the media in recent months of a risk of a Trump “dictatorship” in the event of a second term, the billionaire proclaimed: “I am a dictator.”
PHOTO CHENEY ORR, REUTERS
A crowd of supporters come to listen to Donald Trump in Clinton, Iowa
The day before, in a campaign speech in Pennsylvania focused on the defense of “democracy”, Joe Biden had compared his rival’s rhetoric to that of “Nazi Germany”.
Despite his legal setbacks and the risk of prison for his attempts to reverse the results of the November 2020 presidential election, polls credit Donald Trump with 60% of the Republican vote against his main opponents, Nikki Haley and Ron DeSantis.
He also did not hold back from making fun of his two Republican competitors.
In Iowa and in many conservative states across the country, the septuagenarian has a very loyal base that brushes aside his escapades and legal troubles.
The attack on the Capitol, temple of American democracy, remains a subject of deep division in the United States: a quarter of Americans and 44% of Trumpist voters believe, without proof, that the federal police (FBI) are behind it. originally, according to a survey by the Washington Post and the University of Maryland.
1200 arrests
This same FBI announced on Saturday the arrest in Florida of three people for their participation in January 6. In 35 months of a sprawling investigation still ongoing, authorities have charged more than 1,200 people in almost all 50 American states. More than half were convicted.
For Mr. Trump, they are “hostages”.
He has denied for three years having incited his supporters to insurrection – new images of violence of which were broadcast on television on Saturday – and to attack Congress where Joe Biden’s victory was certified on January 6, 2021.
So to judge the pressure he would have exerted to try to reverse the results, a criminal trial must begin on March 4 in Washington.
This will be on the eve of one of the biggest deadlines in the Republican primaries: “Super Tuesday” in around fifteen states: Texas, California… but also Colorado and Maine.
The latter two states declared him ineligible for the presidency in December due to his actions on January 6, 2021. The Supreme Court took up this case on Friday, even if, while waiting for it to decide in February, the name Trump remains on the primary ballot.