Donald Trump celebrated his debate night where he slaughtered the president Joe Biden with a campaign rally on Friday in Virginia, where the Democratic Party has the upper hand. He reflected on his performance the night before, as a sign of the increasingly bright prospects of winning back the White House.
Dressed in his trademark red Make America Great Again cap, Trump heaped insults on the embattled President Joe Biden, calling him “grossly incompetent” and a “train wreck” while describing the election as a “choice between strength and weakness, and competence and incompetence.”
“The question every voter should ask themselves today is not whether Joe Biden can survive a 90-minute debate performance, but whether America can survive four more years of crooked Joe Biden in the White House,” he told the crowd. “Actually, I don’t know if we can really survive another five months.”
The location reflected the Trump campaign’s belief that it can compete in traditionally Democratic strongholds, given its national polling advantage. He has campaigned in blue states like Minnesota, New Jersey and New York this spring.
While Biden is still projected to win those states, the president continues to trail Trump in key electoral battlegrounds. That includes North Carolina — where the president held his own rally in Raleigh on Friday — and Nevada, a state Trump lost in both 2016 and 2020 and where Vice President Kamala Harris also campaigned earlier in the day.
Trump’s rally in Chesapeake took place just 20 miles from the North Carolina border.
He opened his speech by asking the audience if they had watched a debate that most commentators thought he dominated.
“That was a big one,” he cheered, and immediately began criticizing Biden’s performance.
“He studied so hard he didn’t know what he was doing,” Trump said, noting that Biden had set the desired date, rules and television network for the debate.
Trump said he did not believe Democrats would replace Biden as their nominee, as some officials from both parties have speculated, pointing to the fact that the president is polling higher than Democratic alternatives — he named California Gov. Gavin Newsom, Vice President Kamala Harris and Michelle Obama.
The Virginia rally was the first attended by Gov. Glenn Youngkin, who has largely kept Trump at arm’s length to court suburban moderates. Youngkin, who recently met in person with the former president, took the stage twice Friday to rally the crowd.
“Mr. President, this is the best Trump rally you’ve ever had, and you’re doing it in Virginia,” he said. The governor vowed to “get to work and get you back in the White House.”
Trump focused his 90-minute speech on economic, public safety and national security issues — while refraining from bashing Biden. At one point, he decided to appeal to his far-right, election-denying base when he called for the release of defendants charged in the Jan. 6, 2021, storming of the Capitol.
He celebrated the Supreme Court’s new decision that is expected to undermine the January 6 prosecution of hundreds of suspects. These are people he says have been “terribly treated” and whom he has promised to consider pardoning if they are re-elected.
“Release the J6 hostages now,” Trump said. “They should release them now for what they went through.”
Trump also used his appearance to urge his supporters to take advantage of early and mail-in voting options, even as he continues to criticize the integrity of both.
“Our case against Virginia is very simple,” Trump said. “We will seal the border, we will make the American dream affordable again, but we will bring back the American dream — something you don’t hear about anymore.”
