Donald Trump followed up his endorsement by the National Rifle Association on Saturday with a speech stoking fears of the government under Joe Biden “coming for your guns,” and a bizarre monologue set to dramatic music resembling a song favored by QAnon.
Addressing thousands of members of the NRA at their annual meeting in Texas, the former president stuck to his usual talking points, hailing the reversal of Roe v. Wade as an “amazing thing,” comparing himself to Al Capone, and insisting “genius” runs in his bloodline.
Then, as he wound down, in a disorienting shift, sentimental music began to play and Trump furrowed his brow and shook his head to deliver the grim message that America is “a failing nation.”
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In a monologue set to melodramatic instrumental music, Trump described the current state of the country as if he were breaking the news to a small child that his mother had just died: “Now we are a nation in decline. We are a failing nation. We are a nation that has the highest inflation in 58 years, where banks are collapsing, and interest rates are skyrocketing.”
“We are a nation that is begging Venezuela and others for oil,” he went on. “We are a nation whose leaders are demanding all electric cars, despite the fact that they don’t go far…”
“Where, and who, are these people, that would do this to our country? Who are these people who would ruin us and make us look like fools?” he said, before calling the U.S. a “drug-infested, crime-ridden nation, incapable of solving even the simplest of problems.”
With an economy that is collapsing into “a cesspool of ruin,” Trump said, and an educational system “at the bottom of every list,” America is no longer “admired” or even “listened to” on the world stage, he claimed.
He went on to call those who attacked the U.S. Capitol Building on Jan. 6 “hostages” who have been “unfairly imprisoned” simply for staging a “protest.”
“We are a third-world nation that has weaponized its law enforcement against the opposing political party like never before,” he claimed.
The list of grievances and horror stories went on and on, veering off at one point to “dirty” airports, where Trump claimed “you sit and wait for hours and then are notified that the plane won’t leave and they have no idea when they will.” To stop such “horror,” he said, NRA members need to “fight for America like no one has ever fought before” in the “final battle” that is the 2024 presidential election, vowing to “liberate our country from these tyrants and villains.”
The music this dramatic part of his speech was set to, quite fittingly, sounded like an instrumental song that was previously described as a sort of anthem for QAnon, the conspiracy theory movement whose followers believe Trump has literally been anointed by God to save America from human trafficking and the “deep state.”
