Former President Donald Trump spiked the football — over and over again — on Friday afternoon in Virginia, declaring victory over President Joe Biden following Thursday’s debate on CNN.
Though he likely would have declared victory even if he had lost decisively — a tactic he used after losing the 2020 election and has prepared to use for the 2024 election — and though he told many verifiable lies throughout the night, Trump was widely declared the victor (or, at least, not the loser) against a sitting president who looked every one of his 81 years.
Trump was less than gracious in his post-debate rally.
“As you saw on television last night, we had a big victory against a man that really is looking to destroy our country. He’s the worst. He’s the most corrupt, the most incompetent president in the history of our country. And we have to take it back from that party. That’s an evil party,” Trump said.
His rhetoric, as it so often is, was extreme and divisive — ironic, given he called Biden and “radical left” Democrats “extreme and divisive” shortly before falsely insisting a former Virginia governor advocated for post-birth abortions of children.
Trump, in claiming that Democrats “put America last,” began using the word “Palestinian” as an epithet in an attack on Sen. Chuck Schumer.
“I’ve known him a long time, I come from New York. He’s become a Palestinian. He’s a Palestinian now. Congratulations. He was very loyal to Israel and the Jewish people, he’s Jewish, but he’s become a Palestinian because they have a couple more votes or something,” Trump said.
Though Schumer has advocated for Israel and called for Hamas to accept offers of cease-fire, in March he did urge Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to wind down his longstanding leadership of Israel after Hamas is made weak — a call that outraged the pro-Israel right, even as Schumer has steadfastly decried antisemitism and anti-zionism.
The November presidential election, he said, is a choice between “competence and incompetence,” blaming the Biden administration for everything from building windmills on every corner as part of the “green new scam” and for two new wars (Ukraine’s defense against Russia and Israel’s war on Hamas) taking place during his administration.
Repeatedly, between his frequent crowd work and polls to the crowd (“Crooked Joe, or Sleepy Joe?” he asked, surveying his audience for which Biden nickname they prefer), Trump went to his strongest political talking point: attacks on immigration.
Immigration, he said, is the greatest ill facing America — and, in particular, the American economy and American labor.
But, curiously, only for specific groups within the workforce.
“The worst thing that’s happening to Blacks, number one; Hispanics, number two; and unions, number three; is the millions of people pouring into our country,” Trump said. “They’re taking their jobs…they’re taking the Black jobs, people that have had their jobs for a long time are losing their jobs, and Hispanic jobs.” He did not define what “Black jobs” and “Hispanic jobs” are being taken by the undocumented workforce.
Trump also attacked Biden on energy, saying that under his administration, the U.S. Was “going to be energy dominant, we were going to be sending it out to Europe, all over the world. Nobody had every seen anything like it. And this guy ended it,” Trump said, referring to Biden.
However, the U.S. has been largely energy independent, becoming a net energy exporter in 2019 and growing its exports throughout the Biden administration.