Former President Donald Trump received a stark reminder from President Joe Biden's campaign after telling his Florida rally crowd that "we're gonna take over the Capitol," a remark that evokes the Capitol riot of January 6, 2021, the day a mob of Trump's supporters attacked the U.S. Capitol on the false premise the 2020 election was stolen.
On Tuesday night, Trump resumed campaign activities in Florida, launching verbal attacks on Biden and revisiting a series of familiar complaints at a rally, but stopping short of announcing a running mate for November's general election.
Speaking to a crowd of several hundred supporters at his golf club in Doral, a Miami suburb, the former president and presumptive Republican nominee began his meandering speech over an hour late, leaving attendees waiting in the 90-degree heat.
At one point, he rehashed familiar GOP talking points about crime in urban centers, saying:
"We will take over the horribly run Capitol of our nation in Washington, D.C. and clean it up, renovate it, and rebuild our capital city so it is no longer a nightmare of murder and crime but rather it will become the most beautiful capital anywhere in the world."
"Right now if you leave Florida—"Oh, let's go darling, let's look at the Jefferson Memorial, let's look at the Washington Monument, let's look at some of the beautiful scenes'—you end up getting shot, mugged, raped."
"We're gonna take over our Capitol and run it tough and smart and we're gonna beautify it. We're gonna get all the graffiti off the marble. We're gonna fix the roads and the medians that are falling down all over the streets."
You can hear Trump's remarks in the video below.
The Biden campaign quickly highlighted his remarks in a post on X, formerly Twitter.
But the campaign went even further, posting a video of some of the violence that erupted during the January 6 insurrection, an event that resulted in at least five deaths, over 100 injuries to law enforcement—some of whom were forced to retire or resign due to PTSD—and millions of dollars in property damage to the Capitol building.
The Biden-Harris HQ post included the following caption, giving Trump—not to mention the American people—a brutal reminder of what happened that day:
"This is what happened the last time Trump tried to 'take over our Capitol."
You can see the post and video below.
Many concurred and affirmed why Trump must not be allowed to return to the White House.
Trump's 75-minute speech was filled with attacks on Biden, particularly criticizing his faltering debate performance. This critique has fueled doubts among Democrats about whether the 81-year-old president is fit for a second term in office.
He claimed that the "radical left Democratic party is divided in chaos, and having a full-scale breakdown all because they can’t decide which of their candidates is more unfit to be president, sleepy, crooked Joe Biden or laughing Kamala [Harris]," using his standard pejoratives for the president and vice president.
Biden has said he won't step aside, stressing the importance of defeating Trump in November. Many Democrats, including progressives Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (New York) and Ilhan Omar (Minnesota), have stood by him as the party's presumptive nominee.
But Trump didn't dedicate all of his time to assailing Biden over his debate performance. He made, for instance, patently false statements about electric vehicles, which he said have "cheated” Americans because drivers had to stop for three hours to recharge their vehicles after every 45 minutes of driving.
Oddly, at another point, Trump claimed Biden had raised the price of bacon, telling the crowd that “We don’t eat bacon anymore."
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