Donald Trump takes fake claim on the road in hint of 2024 run

Donald Trump has tried to wrest back the political limelight by holding a rally for tens of thousands of supporters.

Donald Trump speaks at his campaign-style rally in Wellington, Ohio. Picture: AFP.

Donald Trump tried to wrest back the political limelight by holding a rally for tens of thousands of supporters, his first since voters ejected him from the White House last year.

Visiting Wellington, a small town in rural Ohio, a state he won in November by almost half a million votes, Trump, 75, spoke for an hour and a half. He returned to old grievances, introduced new ones, lauded his successes and reiterated his belief that he won the 2020 presidential election.

He attacked President Biden’s record after five months in office, accusing him of failing in most areas of policy, from the economy to foreign affairs, and from what is taught in the classroom to making the military “woke”. “The Biden administration is already a complete and total catastrophe,” he said.

Donald Trump is seen on a screen as his supporters listen to his speech during his campaign-style rally in Wellington, Ohio. Picture: AFP.

Many at the rally wore T-shirts and waved flags emblazoned with “Trump 2024” but those hoping that he would use the event to announce his intention to stand again for the presidency were left disappointed. Trump has hinted several times that he will seek the Republican nomination next time, but has maintained that he will wait to see how the party fares in the midterm elections next year. “You have the crime of the century, which I consider to be the election of 2020,” he said. “I consider it to be the crime of the century … The fake news media will do anything to destroy our [Make America Great Again] movement, which is a movement based on strength and peace and law and order, and above all else it’s a movement based on common sense. There’s never been a movement like it … We won the election twice, and it’s possible we’ll have to win it a third time.”

Donald Trump arrives for his campaign-style rally in Wellington, Ohio. Picture: AFP.

For some of the thousands who queued for hours to see Trump in temperatures that touched 30C there was a feeling that it may be time to pass on the mantle to others. “I don’t know if he’s going to be the candidate in 2024, I think his age is against him,” said Kelly Keith, who runs a family barber’s shop in Wellington, and is an enthusiastic supporter of the former president. “He’d be the same age as Joe Biden is now, and I think it’s too old, but him being in support of whoever the candidate is, that would be huge.”

To cheers from the faithful, Trump said Biden had undermined industry, was exporting jobs to China and had strengthened the hand of Beijing, Moscow and Tehran.

To these familiar lines of attack, he added new ones. Petrol prices were going to soar, he said, and the government’s commitment to a so-called green new deal, an economic package to encourage the growth of green industries, would also cost millions of jobs.

Trump frequently returned to the allegation of voter fraud in last year’s election, and said that some states were now finding evidence that ballots had not been counted properly. “I hear now that Wisconsin is looking very seriously [at voter fraud], and I respect Wisconsin so much, it’s a great state,” he said. “Pennsylvania is really starting to take this very seriously [too].”

There is no evidence to support his claims but that has not altered the belief of many of his supporters. “I’d like to hear some truth about the situation with what’s going on and the [voting] audit thing that nobody in the mainstream media wants to talk about,” said Troy, an Ohian who did not want to give his surname, who says he knows that his vote was not counted.

“Nobody wants to talk about what’s going on in Maricopa county [in Arizona, where an audit of votes is taking place], nobody wants to talk about what’s going on in Georgia. It’s funny, they spent dollars 40 million on investigating Donald Trump and Russia, but they haven’t spent dollars 5 investigating any of these claims on voter fraud.”

Trump did not mention the invasion by his supporters of the US Capitol on January 6. Protesters who wanted to prevent confirmation of President Biden’s victory vandalised the building for several hours. More than 140 people were injured and five died.

On Wednesday, Trump will visit the US-Mexican border where he is expected to highlight the record numbers of so-called “illegal aliens” travelling into America. Trump has been highly critical of vice president Kamala Harris’s alleged failure to resolve the migrant crisis after she was tasked by Biden to solve it.

The Times