Former President Donald Trump rallied a crowd in Mesa, Arizona, on Sunday to campaign for candidates he endorsed for the November midterms.
The rally’s primary focus was on boosting candidates up and down the Arizona Republican Party ticket, but Trump mainly focused on senate nominee Blake Masters and gubernatorial nominee Kari Lake when discussing the state in his remarks.
“Thirty days from now the people of Arizona are going to fire your radical and highly incompetent Senator Mark Kelly,” Trump said of the incumbent senator running against Masters.
“We need new blood, we need strong blood,” he added, as Masters is 36 years old. He is currently polling on average 4.1 percent behind Kelly in the competitive race.
In terms of issues discussed, a major theme in the speeches was border security and the fentanyl crisis.
“Just look at what Joe Biden and Mark Kelly have done to the southern border,” Masters said. “They’ve surrounded the border to the Mexican drug cartels. They gave up.”
Lake later said that the state’s reputation is being impacted by fentanyl trafficking from across the southern border. In Maricopa County, synthetic opioid overdose deaths, which include tramadol and fentanyl, increased by 6,000 percent between 2012 and 2021, according to county data .
“I want to be known as the Grand Canyon State, not the fentanyl state,” she said. “So I am officially putting the cartels on notice. Your days are numbered in Arizona.”
The Republican, who is up by 1.1 percent in the RealClearPolitics polling average, placed the blame on President Joe Biden for the severity of the drug crisis, and she said that the media is not covering the issue enough.
When the former president himself spoke, he invited National Border Patrol Council President Brandon Judd, who touted the Trump administration’s immigration policies.
Still, there were remarks on a variety of topics such as inflation, free speech, and the 2020 election.
Masters said that he wants the economy to get to the point where families “can afford to raise a family” on only one income.
Trump touched on abortion, and he said that he believes in “three exceptions” to the practice, which he says are rape, incest, and danger to the mother’s life. He also said that people will be “very happy” with the decision coming down the pipeline for 2024.
“Many powerful, influential people tell me ‘You must sue the government and the prosecutors for prosecutorial misconduct and frankly, for violating your own civil rights and liberties,’ and you know, there’s a lot of truth to that,” Trump said about investigations into him.
For example, he is under federal investigation over possession of certain classified documents after leaving office, and he is also being sued for financial fraud by New York Attorney General Leticia James, as RedState reported.
“Who the hell lives like this? They’ve been doing this to me for years,” he said. “Ever since I came down the golden escalator in Trump Tower no other president has ever been treated like this. And I’m not complaining because, you know what, I’m doing a great job for the people of our country.”
Secretary of State nominee Mark Finchem, and Attorney General nominee Abe Hamadeh addressed the crowd as well, among others.