Former President Donald Trump – a future presidential hopeful – came to the Greensboro Coliseum Special Events Center on Tuesday evening, Oct. 22, and, for a couple of hours, delighted the crowd that, for the most part, already knew exactly who they were going to vote for this year – if they hadn’t voted already that is.
In recent rallies, Trump has been somewhat rambling and all over the place – sometimes just swaying to the music and not speaking – however, in Greensboro Tuesday night Trump went off course occasionally, but for the most part he stayed on the issues that could very well win him the election.
He constantly drove home the two subjects his supporters see as his strongest issues: the economy and immigration.
He also, of course, threw in some of his old favorites – like claiming that his Democratic opponent Kamala Harris is “stupid” and that Joe Biden has been the worst president in the history of the country – however, much of his speech was on the economy and immigration.
His comments on those subjects were particularly welcomed by his supporters, many of whom had been waiting since 11 a.m. that day for the 7 p.m. event.
By early afternoon, hundreds of Trump voters were already lined up to get a good seat to see their hero – the man who was president four years ago before narrowly losing the 2020 election to President Joe Biden, or “Sleepy Joe,” as Trump likes to call him.
Trump told the crowd that, when he, Trump, was president, Russian dictator Vladimir Putin was too worried about the consequences to invade Ukraine.
However, after Biden became president, Trump said, Putin saw “how weak we were and how pathetic we were due to the stupid generals calling the shots.”
“What a stupid group of people they were,” Trump said of the generals, some of whom are now major critics of Trump.
Trump said the “real” generals were the ones he used to defeat ISIS.
In Greensboro, Trump promised to make America energy independent and bring the cost of fuel down.
“We will frack, frack, frack, and we will drill, baby, drill!” Trump told the thousands of supporters who came from around Guilford County as well as from very distant places to see the former president.
“In 12 months from January 20th – that’s the day we take office – I will cut your energy prices by 50 percent,” he pledged.
He added that this country has a lot of “liquid gold” and said that, when we start taking it out of the ground with abandon, not only are energy prices going to come down but so will the cost of many other items.
“Then everything else is going to start coming down too,” he said, “because you’re paying too much.”
The former president added that people tell him all the time that grocery prices are out of control: “They say the overall effect of the cost of bacon and lettuce and all of this stuff – this is the biggest, the worst we’ve ever had. We’ve never had anything like it.”
Trump added that, back when he was president, the interest rate was 2.2 percent.
“Now it’s 10 percent, and you can’t get any money – so it’s much higher than 10 percent,” he told the crowd.
According to Trump, the cost of gas was $1.84 a gallon when he was president, and now it’s nearly $4 a gallon – and it has, at times during the Biden administration, hit $7 and $8 a gallon in California.
“We were at $1.84 and everybody was happy,” Trump told the extremely supportive crowd.
At the rally, Trump also pledged to clean up the crime in Washington, DC.
“We’re going to clean that city up and we’re going to make it greater,” he said. “We’re going to make it safe to go down to the Washington Monument, and you can see the statue of Thomas Jefferson.”
“They wanted to rip that down, remember?” he said. “They wanted to rip down the statue of Thomas Jefferson and I said, ‘That’s not going to happen!’”
He told his supporters that, when he was president, and protesters began defacing and tearing down federal monuments, he quickly signed a new law that provided10-year prison sentences for anyone who defaced a national monument.
If Trump wins the presidency this year, inflation will probably be the greatest contributing factor to that victory.
“Millions of Americans are suffering,” he said.
“Because of inflation they’re losing their jobs and they can’t afford housing, groceries or a car – and yet Kamala is importing millions of illegals across our borders and giving them taxpayer benefits at your expense while taking the jobs from African Americans and from Hispanic Americans at levels that we have never seen.”
According to Trump, the current administration favors illegal aliens over American veterans who’ve served this country faithfully.
He said that’s clear because the current government puts illegal aliens up in luxury hotels, “while homeless veterans sleep on the street right in front of that hotel.”
Trump added that voters across North Carolina and America can put a stop to all that by voting the correct way in two weeks.
“For four straight years, Kamala Harris has imported an army of illegal alien gang members and migrant criminals from prisons and jails, from insane asylums and mental institutions from all around the world – from Venezuela to South America,” Trump said.
He added that those immigrants constantly prey upon innocent Americans, thanks to Biden and Harris.
“She’s a stupid person – open borders, open borders,” he said, adding, “No checking, no vetting.”
He touted the fact that he had received the endorsement of border patrol agencies.
Since he was in North Carolina, he also, of course, addressed the federal response to Hurricane Helene in the western part of the state.
“She spent the last four years taking your money to provide shelter and benefits to illegal aliens,” he told the crowd. “But when North Carolina needed help, Kamala Harris was nowhere to be found.”
The former president added, “They’re gonna probably have to call an emergency meeting, a special session of Congress, because the illegal aliens – many of them killers, many of them drug dealers, many of them released from prison – have taken the money that they were supposed to spend in North Carolina and Georgia and Alabama and Tennessee and Florida and South Carolina.”
Trump continued, “The money was supposed to be spent in those states and they don’t have the money now – they don’t have the money because they’ve spent, think of it, hundreds of millions of dollars flying migrants into states all over the country.”
He also said his opponent doesn’t have the compassion, the smarts, or the strength to be president of the United States.
“She can’t do the job,” he said. “She’s not mentally or physically able to do the job, and, on top of all of it, she says she would not do anything differently than crooked Joe Biden, which is disqualifying.”
Toward the end of the rally, former soldier, former Democrat and former US Representative from Hawaii Tulsi Gabbard said a few words.
After greeting the crowd with “Aloha,” she said she was a registered Democrat for over 20 years, but now she is backing Trump because it’s so evident that he’s the right choice in this election.
“He has pledged to end wars, not start them,” Gabbard said.
Harris, likewise, has recently been appearing at her campaign events with Republicans who are now Never Trumpers.
At the rally in Greensboro, Trump complimented the coliseum staff and the venue, saying that buildings were often swelteringly hot when he gave rallies, but that this venue was very comfortable.
“We appreciate the air conditioning,” Trump said.
