Former President Donald Trump accidentally admitted what his critics have long accused him of at an Iowa rally on Saturday night, telling the crowd: “We’ve been waging an all-out war on American democracy.”
But just as quickly as he made the shocking remark, he corrected himself to say his “opponents” are the ones guilty of attacks on democracy.
Trump, throughout the rally, argued that he was on a “righteous crusade” in support of democracy while his team handed out “BIDEN ATTACKS DEMOCRACY” signs to rally-goers.
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The former president faces dozens of charges for his efforts to overturn the 2020 election results and seize another term despite having lost the election, and on the eve of the rally, a federal judge ruled that he cannot rely on presidential immunity to shield him from prosecution.
He appeared as unhinged as ever during his speech in Cedar Rapids: Mocking the late Senator and veteran John McCain, vowing for the eighth year in a row to repeal Obamacare, and warning that the left is coming to take away voters’ dishwashers.
“Obamacare is a disaster and I say we’re going to do something about it,” Trump said—a promise he has made since 2015 and has yet to carry out.
“I saved Obamacare when we got John McCain’s negative vote, you know he voted against it. He said ‘uhhhhhh thumbs downnn.’ That was an amazing night,” Trump continued, making a crude impression of McCain, who was battling brain cancer at the time.
Biden has already sought to seize on Trump’s renewed vow to gut the landmark health-care law. “To those who want to repeal this lifesaving law, let me be clear: I won’t let it happen on my watch,” Biden said on Friday.
Trump also falsely claimed that the left is angling to take away voters’ dishwashers, re-upping gripes from his presidency about dishwashers that, apparently, didn’t work very well.
“They wanna talk about your dishwasher, how much water you’re gonna have in your dishwasher … because they wanna take em away,” Trump said, adding that “they wanna change everything” and “these people are sick.”
Biden has, in fact, only offered tax credits for homes that use an energy-efficient dishwasher.
Trump then bragged about taking money from the military to partially construct the southern border wall after Republican leaders balked at his funding requests early into his presidency, sounding off on Senator Mitch McConnell, who was “not good, not good,” and Paul Ryan, who “was like this real a real jerk a real fool like a stupid fool.”
Among Trump’s rant was the claim that the U.S. is not producing nearly enough oil to compete with other countries: “We are a nation that is begging Venezuela and many others for oil. ‘Please, please, please,’ Joe Biden says.”
This is untrue; the United States is producing record amounts of crude oil—more than at any point under Trump’s tenure—around 50 percent more than Saudi Arabia and oil prices fell even after the OPEC+ gas production rollback earlier this week.
