Former President Donald Trump did not have to appear in a Manhattan courtroom on Wednesday for his hush money trial, so he made the most of his ‘free day’ by campaigning in a key battleground state.
His visit to Waukesha, Wis., marked his inaugural campaign appearance on a weekday outside of New York since the commencement of his criminal trial on April 15. The trial revolves around allegations of falsifying business records to conceal a $130,000 payment to adult film star Stormy Daniels.
Trump quickly lashed out at “Crooked Joe Biden,” and hammered him over the state of the economy. “When I’m in the White House, the Biden economic bust will quickly be replaced by the Trump economic boom,” Trump said to a raucous crowd at the Waukesha County Expo Center, according to Newsmax. “When I left office, we handed Crooked Joe the fastest economic recovery ever recorded.
“The stock market was at a record high. The price of gasoline was $2 and even less than that a gallon. Think of that. We had periods of time where it was $1.57, $1.87; how does that sound to you? The 30-year mortgage rate was at a record low, the lowest ever recorded. Think of this, 2.65%, that’s what your mortgage rates were. Now you can’t get a mortgage. If you want to pay 8 or 9%, you still can’t get ‘em. And we had no inflation.”
Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee, criticized Biden’s recent budget proposal, which includes a $5 trillion tax increase. The proposal notably raises the capital gains tax to 44.5%, marking the highest in U.S. history.
“Biden has just declared if he gets four more years he will drench the middle class in the largest tax increases in the history of our country,” Trump said. “Vowing repeatedly that he will ensure that the Trump tax cuts, the biggest tax cuts in history — you know he says, oh, it’s for the rich. No, it’s for the companies that employ people, it’s for the middle class, and the people that benefited the most are lower-income people. And he wants them to expire. He never will replace them. I don’t think we’re going to let it happen.”
The libertarian CATO Institute reported in March that between January 2010 and January 2021, the price index for food consumed at home rose by less than 18% over 11 years. However, since Biden assumed the presidency, it has surged by 21% in just three years. Overall consumer prices have increased by at least 17% since Biden took office.
“Today, your inflation is so high it doesn’t matter,” Trump said. “If you make money it doesn’t matter. It eats you alive.” He added that Biden came in and unleashed mayhem on the U.S. economy like he unleashed mayhem on the border.
“Using COVID as an excuse, Crooked Joe Biden launched the greatest confiscation of middle-class wealth in the history of our country,” he said. “In three years, Joe Biden and his party stole trillions of dollars from hard-working Americans, and he gave it all to their cronies in Washington.
“They spent $2 trillion on the American Rescue Plan that didn’t rescue our country. … They spent another trillion dollars on their misnamed Inflation Reduction Act, and then they admitted it really wasn’t meant to reduce inflation. Joe Biden’s economic plan is to make China rich and America poor. My economic plan is to make America richer than ever before. That’s what we’re going to do.”
During a lighthearted moment, Trump invited a man dressed as Uncle Sam to the podium, who then requested Trump’s autograph on his hat. Trump asked the crowd for a pen, and as one was thrown towards him, it accidentally hit a prompter and landed on the floor. Trump stooped down to retrieve it, and before signing the hat, he quipped, “You think Biden can bend down like that? I don’t think so.”