Former President Donald Trump has further escalated his immigration rhetoric, baselessly accusing President Joe Biden of waging a “conspiracy to overthrow the United States of America” at the border as he campaigned ahead of next week’s Super Tuesday contests.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Trump’s campaign stops came three days before Super Tuesday, with elections in 16 states, including North Carolina and Virginia, where thousands of enthusiastic supporters gathered for an evening rally in downtown Richmond.
While the former president has successfully harnessed his legal woes into a powerful rallying cry in the primaries, it is unclear how his message of grievance will resonate with the more moderate voters who will likely decide the general election.
“I stand before you today not only as your past and hopefully future president, but as a proud political dissident and a public enemy of a rogue regime,” Trump said, railing against what he called an “anti-Democratic machine.”
As he focuses on the general election, Trump has painted an apocalyptic vision of the country under Biden, particularly on the topic of immigration, which was the animating issue of his 2016 campaign and which he has once again seized on as the U.S. has experienced a record influx of migrants at the border.
On Saturday, Trump conjured images of Biden turning “public schools into migrant camps” and “the USA into a crime-ridden, disease-ridden dumping ground, which is what they’re doing.” He also spoke at length about the murder of Laken Riley, a 22-year-old nursing student whose alleged killer is a Venezuelan man who entered the U.S. illegally and was allowed to stay to pursue his immigration case.
Studies have found native-born U.S. residents are more likely to have been arrested for violent crimes than people in the country illegally, but Trump has seized on several high-profile incidents, including a recent video of a group of migrants brawling with police in Times Square.
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