Former US President and Republican candidate Donald Trump (2017-2021) held his first outdoor rally since his assassination attempt last July with heightened security on Wednesday.
The chosen venue was the city of Asheboro, in the key state of North Carolina, where Trump was protected by sheets of bulletproof glass.
Despite the extra security measures, at one point during his speech he briefly left the protected space to hug a woman in the audience who had felt unwell.
Criticism of Kamala Harris and Joe Biden
The event focused on national security and he used it to argue that the United States was stronger under his leadership and to emphasize that wars like the one in Ukraine would not have happened if he had remained in power: “My attitude kept us out of wars. I stopped wars with phone calls,” he said.
Trump repeated his claim that current President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris are “leading us to the precipice of World War III.” He, he claimed, will bring peace back to the world.
The former president also stressed the promise to build an Iron Dome in the United States like the one in Israel.
“We helped Israel and other countries. (Former President) Ronald Reagan wanted it many years ago. He was right, but we didn’t have the right technology back then. Today we have incredible technology. Other countries have it and this country should have it,” he said.
Special security for the former president
The 78-year-old New York tycoon was wounded in the ear on July 13 after a young man shot him at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania. The attacker was on the roof of a building outside the venue where the political event was taking place and, before being shot down by police, killed one member of the public and wounded two others.
The then director of the US Secret Service, Kimberly Cheatle, ended up resigning ten days later due to security errors at that meeting and after having stated that this assassination attempt represented the “biggest operational failure” of the agency “in decades”.
Last week, it emerged that the Secret Service has approved a plan to increase Trump’s security that includes the use of bulletproof glass screens. Normally, such bulletproof sheets are only provided to presidents and vice presidents when deemed necessary for outdoor appearances.
Trump’s appearance on Wednesday, the first to take place under this new device, comes during an intense week of campaigning in which he and his vice presidential candidate, Senator JD Vance, are trying to counter the media spotlight that is hovering over the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, which has made Harris’ candidacy for the White House official.
Trump, focused on the campaign
Trump and his team will be visiting four key states in the coming days: Pennsylvania, Michigan, North Carolina and Arizona, where they will focus on issues that are crucial for conservatives in the run-up to the November 5 presidential election, such as immigration, security and the economy.
Harris currently leads the polls with 46.6%, 2.9 points more than Trump, according to the average of polls carried out by the website FiveThirtyEight.
“They are going to lie like hell to win the election because they have no limits,” Trump said on Wednesday of the Democratic side. “If we don’t win, we are going to be in a very big problem as a country. We are already in it, but I am going to fix it,” he concluded.
Washington / EFE
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2024-08-23 16:39:14
