Former President Donald Trump addressed a packed rally at the Covelli Centre in Youngstown this weekend, reprehending Joe Biden, Tim Ryan, and other Democrats for economically crushing working Buckeye Staters with unrelenting inflation.
Trump further laid into the leftists who control Congress and the White House for advancing policies that exacerbate illegal immigration and impress anti-American civic and historical narratives upon K-12 students. He urged listeners to back Republican Senate candidate J.D. Vance as well as GOP U.S. House candidates to reverse these trends. He showed particular enthusiasm for the re-election of U.S. Representative Jim Jordan, a Republican who represents the north central and western 4th district.
“The choice this November is simple,” Trump said at the Save America event. “If you want to continue this national catastrophe, vote for the radical-left Democrats – do it, go ahead. You won’t have a country left. If you want to stop the destruction of America and really reinvigorate that good old-fashioned American dream, you must vote Republican – have to do it.”
Vance, an attorney, author, and venture capitalist, has faced a tight battle with Ryan, a congressman representing the eastern Ohio 13th district, in terms of polling. The data aggregator FiveThirtyEight calculates that public surveys altogether indicate the Democrat leads Vance by 0.5 percent, though the most recent poll from Emerson College Polling and The Hill shows the Republican leading by 4 percent.
Trump and other Republicans believe that rising consumer prices under Democrat Party governance will benefit GOP candidates promising another way forward economically. According to the American Institute for Economic Research’s Everyday Price Index, overall price increases are up 11.1 percent over one year ago.
“Inflation just reached another historic high: Congratulations!” the president said facetiously. “Surging food, energy, and electricity prices are busting family budgets, crushing small businesses and and causing shortages, suffering, mayhem, and despair. Yet Biden and the Democrat Congress keep spending us further and further into oblivion, pouring fuel on the inflation fire and incinerating trillions of dollars of middle-class wealth; they’re doing it at a level that nobody ever thought possible.”
The former president furthermore sought to excite his base over the investigations in which he has been immersed since leaving office in early 2021, which recently entailed the Federal Bureau of Investigation searching his Florida home for classified materials. Many of Trump’s associates have also recently been served with subpoenas.
“The unhinged persecution of my staff – and they go into people and they threaten them with jail time – unless you say something bad about Trump, they’re threatening them,” he lamented. “These people are sick; they’re sick.”
Amidst all of his reproof of the Left, Trump also denounced Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) for failing to sufficiently filibuster – i.e., require 60-vote supermajorities to stop – progressives’ policy goals.
“He’s like a Democrat,” the ex-president fumed.
At Trump’s invitation, Vance briefly took the stage and castigated Ryan for kowtowing to the current president’s agenda in almost every respect. He also responded to the Democrat’s accusation that he is truly a creature of California because he briefly worked there.
“Tim Ryan has called to ban gas-powered cars and Tim Ryan has voted for the [socialist-proposed] Green New Deal,” Vance said. “Who’s from California, Tim? It sounds like you are.”
In a Twitter post, Ryan alerted his supporters to the energy Trump and his allies are putting into his prospective defeat.
“This is a five-alarm fire. Trump just attacked me, calling me a ‘radical phony’ and said that he ‘never liked me that much.’ Good one, buddy,” Ryan tweeted. “It’ll only get worse from here and I need your help to fight back against the attacks. We can flip Ohio blue, but only with your help.”
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Bradley Vasoli is managing editor of The Ohio Star. Follow Brad on Twitter at @BVasoli. Email tips to [email protected].
Photo “J.D. Vance and Donald Trump” by J.D. Vance.
