(Ben Sellers, Headline USA) In a political landscape fraught with despair and cynicism, former President Donald Trump brought a ray of hope and optimism for tens of thousands of supporters at Florence, Arizona’s Canyon Moon Ranch.
Trump said that the crowd stretched “as far as the eye could see”—proof positive for him that Arizona, which was certified for Biden with a roughly 10,000 vote advantage, was not a Biden victory by any means.
“They say, ‘well it is unsubstantiated and the big lie.’ The big lie. The big lie is a lot of bulls**t. That’s what it is,” Trump said, according to Politico.
Leftists have appropriated the phrase “the Big Lie”—first coined by Adolph Hitler and his propaganda minister, Joseph Goebbels—to suggest that disputes over the 2020 election outcome are a lie so brazen that people have no choice but to believe it.
In reality, as Trump noted, a forensic audit of the vote in Arizona’s Maricopa County found more than 270,000 votes cast for which the records were lost or otherwise appeared to be invalid. Many of the ballot images appeared to be facsimile copies of the same paper ballots.
The Maricopa board admitted to witholding or manipulating data to cover their tracks, and articles published by the leftist media celebrated the suspicious ballot-harvesting and intimidation tactics that relied upon outside activists—including a Los Angeles labor union.
Yet leftists have persisted in spreading their own Big Meta-Lie, projecting their own propagandist efforts onto 2020 skeptics and accusing them of partaking in an insurrection for questioning the outcome.
Trump’s rally came on the heels of two particularly egregious and ignominious examples of political theater by Democrats:
- During a Jan. 6 anniversary spectacle, Vice President Kamala Harris suggested a four-hour tour of the US Capitol by pro-Trump dissidents was tantamount to Pearl Harbor and Sept. 11. The only individuals killed as a result of the J6 melee were Trump supporters Ashli Babbitt and Roseanne Boyland, both victims of unprovoked attacks by Capitol Police.
- At a speech last week in Atlanta, President Joe Biden linked supporters of election integrity to Confederate President Jefferson Davis and pro-segregationist Alabama leaders George Wallace and Eugene “Bull” Connor. All three were Democrats—and Biden, himself, previously boasted on the campaign trail about his warm relations with other segregationist Democrats.
Trump directly addressed the Jan. 6 violence, honoring Babbitt and referring to her killer, Lt. Michael Byrd, as a “disgrace,” Business Insider reported.
“I watched this guy being interviewed—they wanted to protect him so they wanted to keep him,” Trump said of Byrd. “He couldn’t get on television fast enough, the guy who shot Ashli Babbitt for no reason.”
He also called on supporters of equal justice and due process to denounce the treatment of more than 730 protestors who have been arrested for their involvement in the Capitol breach. Many of them remain incarcerated in a special “Patriots Wing” at Washington, DC’s Central Detention Facility.
Trump danced around the question on the minds of many: whether he intends to announce his candidacy for the 2024 presidential race. Insiders have indicated previously that he will wait until after the 2022 midterm results to do so.
However, despite the cautious approach, Trump has been clear about his mindset.
“If an election were held today, we would trounce them so badly in a landslide in every way, just as we really did on Nov. 3,” he said at Saturday’s rally. “We trounced them. If we had an honest press, the election would have been much different.”
Trump’s primary aim, for now, seems to be boosting his political allies—most notably Kari Lake, a former television journalist who switched from Democrat to Republican and is challenging current Gov. Doug Ducey in Arizona’s Republican gubernatorial primary.
Trump was especially harsh on Saturday in his criticism of Ducey, a RINO who has been tentative in his support of the former president and who ultimately signed off on the bogus election outcome that was certified by George Soros-backed Secretary of State Katie Hobbs, a Democrat.
“He’s not going to get my endorsement,” Trump said of Ducey, according to AZCentral. “Ducey has been a terrible, terrible representative of your state.”
Trump did recognize a long list of supporters in attendance—including Reps. Andy Biggs and Paul Gosar, both Arizona Republicans. Several of Trump’s own former advisers, including former acting Director of National Intelligence Ric Grenell, were in attendance also.
Grenell’s name often has been floated as a possible Republican challenger to California‘s Democrat Gov. Gavin Newsom in his upcoming re-election bid.
Trump said to expect a raft of endorsements in the weeks and months to come, including his preferred choice to challenge Sen. Mark Kelly—a Democrat whose bid to fill the seat left vacant by the late Sen. John McCain likely benefited from the same vote fraud that helped install Biden.
“A great red wave is going to begin right here in Arizona, and it’s going to sweep across this country,” Trump said.
The rally closed with the 1966 Sam & Dave hit “Hold On, I’m Comin'” which saw Trump briefly introduce some new moves to his signature shuffle.
