GREENSBORO, North Carolina — Former President Donald Trump further escalated his immigration rhetoric on Saturday, baselessly accusing President Joe Biden of waging a “conspiracy to overthrow the United States of America” as he campaigned ahead of the Super Tuesday primaries.
Trump has a long history of attempting to dial back lines of attack on his rivals in an effort to reduce their impact. Biden has portrayed Trump as a threat to democracy, pointing to the former president’s efforts to overturn the outcome of the 2020 election. Those efforts culminated in the attack on the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, when his supporters attempted to halt the peaceful transition of power.
Trump, who has responded by calling Biden “the real threat to democracy” and has claimed without evidence that Biden is responsible for the charges he faces, turned to Biden’s border policies on Saturday, charging that “Joe Biden makes every day aid and comfort to foreign enemies of the United States.”
“Biden’s conduct at our border is, by definition, a conspiracy to overthrow the United States of America,” he continued in Greensboro, North Carolina. “Biden and his minions want to collapse the American system, overturn the will of actual American voters and establish a new power base that will give them control for generations.”
Similar arguments have long been made by those who argue that Democrats are promoting illegal immigration to weaken the power of white voters — part of a racist conspiracy once confined to the far right, and allege deliberate pressure from America’s liberal establishment to systematically reduce the power of white voters. the influence of white people.
Trump’s rally took place three days before Super Tuesday, with elections in 16 states, including North Carolina and Virginia, where Trump will hold a rally later Saturday. The primaries will be the biggest voting day of the year ahead of November’s general election, which is shaping up as a likely 2020 rematch between Trump and Biden.
Nikki Haley, Trump’s last major rival, also campaigned in North Carolina. Speaking to reporters after her event in Raleigh, about 80 miles away, the former U.N. ambassador objected to her plans after Super Tuesday.
“We will continue and we will continue to push,” she said, arguing that a majority of Americans do not want Biden or Trump as the country’s leader.
Much of Trump’s speech focused on the series of criminal charges he faces. While the former president successfully turned his legal troubles into a powerful rallying cry in the primaries, it’s unclear how that message 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 also as a proud political dissident and a public enemy of a rogue regime,” Trump said Saturday, 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, especially on the issue of immigration, which was the animating issue of his 2016 campaign and which he has seized upon again as the US faces a crisis . record influx of migrants at the border.
Trump and Biden both visited the US-Mexico border on Thursday to highlight their differing approaches to the issue.
On Saturday, Trump conjured up images of Biden turning “public schools into migrant camps” and “the US into a crime-ridden, disease-ridden dumping ground, and that’s 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.
Research has shown that native U.S. residents are more likely to be arrested for violent crimes than people who are in the country illegally, but Trump has seized on several high-profile incidents, including a recent Times video of a group of migrants arguing with police. Square.
“No more innocent American lives should be lost to immigrant crime,” Trump said.
A festive atmosphere surrounded the Greensboro Coliseum Complex ahead of Trump’s rally. Supporters stood in a line that snaked through a web of metal barricades and stretched hundreds of meters from the arena. License plates from North Carolina, Virginia and Tennessee filled the parking lot, where many vehicles flew Trump flags alongside American and Confederate flags.
“We just love Trump,” said Mary Welborn, who lives in nearby Thomasville, saying she was frustrated by the criminal charges and civil judgments against the former president. ‘The way he is being treated is insane. No other president has been treated this way,” she said.
After the meeting, several attendees praised Trump’s hard line on immigration.
“We look like fools all over the world with the border wide open,” said Samuel Welborn of Thomasville.
“My biggest concern is that my children will not have the same country I grew up in,” his wife Mary added. “It’s just a different time.”
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Associated Press writer Gary Robertson contributed to this report from Raleigh, North Carolina.