It took nearly an hour for Donald Trump to utter the name of the man he’d come to Iowa to support, Senator Chuck Grassley.
The veteran Republican, who is seeking a seventh term in the upper chamber, hardly had more than a few minutes to speak on Thursday night alongside the twice-impeached ex-president, who chose instead to spin anecdotes about Mr Grassley’s voice and attack his opponent, retired US Navy Admiral Mike Franken.
Mr Trump took the stage at roughly 8.30 pm ET and almost immediately began denigrating the country he led two years ago, calling the Hawkeye State “under siege” by a rogue’s gallery of familiar villains including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Senator Chuck Schumer, and President Joe Biden.
He interspersed canned lines about inflation and the cost of Americans’ thanksgiving dinner with racialised attacks on the New York State Attorney General who is currently suing him, his family, and his eponymous real estate company to recoup millions of dollars her office alleges were defrauded from New York financial institutions.
Mr Trump also complained about the ongoing Department of Justice probe into whether he violated US laws prohibiting the mishandling of national defence information, baselessly accusing the Biden administration of weaponising the criminal justice system against him without offering any evidence to support his claims.
“One of the worst and most sinister aspects of the Biden administration is their complete and total corruption of our justice system and the rule of law before our very eyes,” he said, adding that Mr Biden and aides were in the process of “turning America into a police state like something straight out of a communist country” because they dared examine whether he has broken the law.
Continuing, the ex-president also whinged about the conduct of the election he lost nearly two years ago, repeating many of the same outrageous lies which led a riotous mob of his supporters to storm the US Capitol in hopes of keeping him in office.
“Your favourite president got screwed,” he said.
The twice-impeached, disgraced ex-president delivered his rambling, grievance-laded, hour-long monologue on an Iowa tarmac as part of a five-day swing in support of the Republican candidates he hopes will help him undermine America’s democratic institutions and return him to the White House in two years.
He largely repeated the same attacks on the country he was once the leader of, with some of his complaints set to music towards the end of his remarks.
“We are a nation in decline — we are a failing nation,” he said, beginning a closing string of complaints which often appeared to be made up out of whole cloth with the expectation that his audience would not do any further investigation.
Among Mr Trump’s closing grievances was a claim that the US “is no longer respected” because he is no longer president, and “no longer has a free and fair press” because legitimate news organizations report on him critically.
“Two years ago we were a great nation, and we will soon be a great nation again,” he said, implying that the trigger for the return of America’s greatness will be when he is back in charge, and only then.
