Donald Trump proposed in a somber speech in Las Vegas on Friday night that convicted drug dealers should be given the death penalty.
He also announced that his former attorney, Rudy Giuliani, is hospitalized in Fulton County with a “heart problem” just days after being subpoenaed into the Georgia Attorney’s Office vote fraud investigation.
The former mayor of New York City is getting “well,” Trump said, adding, “Can you believe it? What they did to Rudy.”
Speaking at the podium with his hands clenched, the ex-president called the United States a “failing nation,” citing rising crime rates in major cities and a wave of migrants at the southern border.
“To put it simply, we are a nation in decline. We are a failing nation,” Trump said.
“Our country has been brought to its knees and humiliated before the world, but we presume to lecture other people in other countries about their democracies.”
He followed up with a statement that initially seemed to tease a 2024 bid.
“So that’s a little controversial. And I’ll either get a standing ovation – and I don’t care about the ovations, I care about the country – or people will walk out of the room for what I’m going to say. But it’s time to finally say it,” the former president said.
“If you look at countries around the world… The only ones who don’t have a drug problem are those who implement the death penalty for drug dealers.”
He added: “They’re the only ones who don’t have problems.”
The former president delivered an unusually somber speech in which he described the “blood” flowing on the streets of Democrat-run cities
Former President Trump speaks at the Treasure Island Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas
“We just, very simply, want to have a great country again. And we must have a safe country.’
Trump described what he believes to be rising crime in unusually dark detail, claiming Democrat-run cities are riddled with rape and murder crimes. He was also quick to blame President Joe Biden’s policies for fueling the wave of violence.
“The blood of these victims flows almost exclusively in these Democratic strongholds. Babies are killed, older women are shot in the face and raped,” Trump said.
“Elderly women are raped. Children are stabbed with knives and disfigured. As a candidate, Joe Biden helped lead his party’s heinous campaign against our cops, and then he carried the rioters’ agenda straight to the White House.”
Trump opened his rally with a video montage that began with clips falsely suggesting that ousting the police was a goal for mainstream national Democrats.
It ends with hopeful score and Trump’s promise: “We will make it.”
But his rallying entrance got off to an awkward start, as the former president began with a tribute to recently assassinated Japanese ex-Prime Minister Shinzo Abe – but was drowned out by his intro song, Lee Greenwood’s “God Bless the USA.”
Trump said his former attorney, Rudy Giuliani, is in the hospital with a “heart problem” days after he was subpoenaed by Georgia prosecutors in their ongoing voter fraud probe
Republicans see many vulnerable blue seats in Nevada to flip in the upcoming midterms.
Trump is in Las Vegas to campaign for Adam Laxalt, the former Nevada Attorney General, who is running to unseat Democratic Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto in November.
He also stumbles upon Nevada gubernatorial candidate Joe Lombardo. Clark County Sheriff Lombardo secured the Republican nomination with Trump’s backing and now faces incumbent Democratic Gov. Steve Sisolak.
Both races count as toss-ups. Lombardo trails Sisolak by just over two points in the FiveThirtyEight poll average.
A Change Research poll from late June shows that Cortez Masto is holding onto a small 3 percent lead.
Trump will immediately follow his speech in Las Vegas on Saturday with a Save America rally in Alaska.
It is the first of two consecutive rallies held by the former president this weekend. He’s speaking in Alaska on Saturday
Republican Nevada Senate candidate Adam Laxalt (3L) addresses a panel discussion at an America First Agenda rally scheduled to be attended by former U.S. President Donald Trump July 8 in Las Vegas, Nevada
There, the ex-president is stoking support for Republican Senate nominee Kelly Tshibaka and House nominee Sarah Palin, Alaska’s former governor and former vice presidential nominee.
While Palin is running to fill the seat of the late longtime Congressman Don Young, who died this year, Tshibaka is trying to oust incumbent Senator Lisa Murkowski.
Murkowski is a Republican who enraged Trump by voting to sentence him in his second impeachment trial.
The high-profile primary race takes place on August 16th.
Trump’s back-to-back campaign appearances follow multiple reports that he may soon be announcing another presidential bid as the Jan. 6 House Committee investigation into his current and former allies draws to a close.
And in another hint that the former president wants to run for the White House in 2024, he announced Wednesday night that his iconic plane, Trump Force One, is back in service after being almost unused since he took office in 2017 .
The Boeing 757 was Trump’s preferred form of transportation during his 2016 presidential campaign.