PHOENIX — Former President Donald Trump rallied supporters in Arizona on Thursday to call President Biden’s executive order to tighten border security “bullshit,” exactly one week after a Manhattan jury convicted him in the Stormy Daniels hush-money trial.
“Joe, you’re fired!” Trump yelled to a crowd of more than 3,000 at Dream City Church in north Phoenix, his first event since being convicted on 34 charges related to falsifying business records.
At least 11 attendees were hospitalized after waiting in line outdoors in temperatures exceeding 100 degrees.
Turning Point Action and the Turning Point Political Action Committee hosted town halls primarily in Arizona, Wisconsin and Georgia to promote their “Follow the Vote” campaign, which aims to hire field representatives to bring low-turnout voters who are more likely to vote Republican to the polls.
“This election is about more than Donald Trump. It’s about civilization,” Charlie Kirk, founder of Turning Point USA, said to voters hesitant to cast their ballot for the former president.
“This is a class struggle. It’s a struggle between the ruling class and you,” he added.
Trump focused his speech primarily on immigration before answering questions from the audience.
Regarding the southern border, he said, “2016 was beautiful in comparison, but we will fix it again.”
At the end of the event, he said it was “really interesting” that most of the questions were about border security and the economy.
Trump said his successor’s immigration policies were a “heinous and criminal destruction of our southern border” and that recent executive orders were “bullshit,” a phrase chanted by the crowd despite the former president saying he “didn’t like” using it “in front of these people.”
He declared that if Biden is re-elected, his “open borders” policy will be repealed on his first day in office.
The Tucson, Arizona, sector is one of the busiest on the border, with 373,220 encounters recorded so far in fiscal year 2024, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection data.
“It’s really sad to see what happened here,” Trump said of the Grand Canyon State.
“Arizona is turning into a Third World garbage dump.”
Trump also addressed the Manhattan ruling, saying he was “faced with a judge who had a huge conflict of interest, when there was no crime.”
State Democratic Party leaders held a news conference on behalf of the Biden campaign Thursday morning ahead of Trump’s visit to the Valley.
“It is shocking, but not surprising, to me, that on his first visit to Arizona in two years, Trump’s sole mission today is not to win the support of Arizonans, but to raise money, undermine our democratic institutions and promote political extremism,” said Yolanda Bejarano, chair of the Arizona Democratic Party. “Arizona voters will be reminded why they rejected Trump in 2020 when he brought his campaign of revenge and retaliation to our state, and we will continue to reject him.”
Arizona is a key battleground in the 2024 presidential election, and the swing state is roughly evenly split between registered Republicans, Democrats and independents.
Trump narrowly lost to Biden by 10,457 votes in 2020, but the decision this time will likely again come down to Phoenix-area voters.
