Donald Trump lost the state of New Jersey by 16 points in 2020. Judging by the turnout at this rally in Wildwood on the Jersey shore, it appears that New Jersey is going to be a lot less blue in November.
It was the largest political rally in the history of New Jersey.
🚨BOOM: 80,000 in attendance at President Trump's rally in Wildwood, New Jersey!
— Benny Johnson (@bennyjohnson) May 11, 2024
pic.twitter.com/sMNhAhVRHu
Politico reports that people had camped out for days to get the best seats for the event. Trump made it worth the wait.
It was red meat from start to finish.
“All of this persecution is only happening because I’m running for president. If I wasn’t leading in the polls by a lot and running for president, they wouldn’t be after me. I’d have a nice place. I’d be down in Palm Beach. I’d be traveling the world,” Trump said.
After referring to the people around Biden as "the Gestapo" last week, Trump ratcheted up the insults against Biden himself.
“You could take the 10 worst presidents in the history of our country, and add them up .. and they haven’t done the damage to our country that this total moron has done,” Trump, 77, said to the cheering crowd.
“He’s a fool, he’s not a smart man. He never was,” Trump said. In the 1980s, Biden was known as the "dumbest man in Washington."
Things got very rowdy when Trump talked about Al Capone.
“Al Capone was so mean that if you went to dinner with him and he didn’t like you, you’d be dead the next morning. And I got indicted more than him. On bulls**t, too. Just bulls**t,” Trump said. The crowd erupted into cheers of “bulls**t.”
Trump went for the soft underbelly of Biden when he railed against the president's decision to withhold arms from Israel.
“He has truly set the world on fire,” Trump said. “This week, he announced that he will withhold shipping weapons to Israel as they fight to eradicate Hamas terrorists in Gaza. That was shocking to hear it, even as there are still American hostages being held by Hamas.”
Biden has managed to enrage the left by supporting Israel as long as he did and anger the right for denying the Jewish state weapons to finish off Hamas. If there's a clearer example of Biden's incompetence, I can't think of it.
Biden's sense of the national interest is clouded by his desire for a second term. He has gone back and forth on supporting Israel and destroying Hamas to where he's now advocating policies that will destroy Israel and allow Hamas to live to fight another day.
“The enemies from within are more dangerous to me than the enemies on the outside. Russia and China we can handle, but these lunatics within our government that are going to destroy our country, we have to get it stopped,” Trump said. “They’re not on the right, they’re on the left.”
The Biden campaign took it all in stride. On the surface, they didn't appear worried.
“We’re focused on communicating directly with the voters who are actually going to decide this presidential election,” Biden campaign communications director Michael Tyler said. “So, no matter where the Trump team decides they want to spend their time, the fact of the matter is, as I said at the top of this call, they do not have the infrastructure to reach the voters who are going to decide this election.”
This is going to be a turnout election. And with a projected $1.4 billion that will be raised for his presidential campaign. Joe Biden is going to have a massive advantage over Donald Trump.
The rally on the Jersey Shore was impressive, but the Biden campaign is right. With that ungodly amount of money, Biden will be able to organize in battleground states down to the precinct level. Biden voters will be identified weeks before the election and an army of volunteers will make sure that those Biden voters get to the polls and vote.
The Biden campaign currently has twice as much cash on hand as Trump. That gap will be narrowed by election day, but Biden's head start in organizing means that the Trump campaign is going to be playing catchup the rest of the way.
The Wildwood rally made for great optics and I'm sure it was a boost for the candidate. But this is an election that will be won or lost in the trenches. And right now, Trump is trailing badly.
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