via Associated Press
UNITED STATES – Will Donald Trump rise from the ashes in Phoenix? The former president is organizing this Saturday, January 15, a “rallying” meeting, the first of 2022 and the first for several months. The billionaire chose Florence, a city south of Phoenix, Arizona, to reconnect with his supporters, and it’s far from trivial.
This rally called “Save America Rally” is organized by a political action committee called Save America. The latter, as his name suggests, intends to save the country -from the Democrats- by continuing to advance the famous program of the ex-president: “MAGA” “Make America Great Again” (“Let’s make America great again”). The idea of this rally, explain the organizers in a press release, is to revitalize the electorate loyal to Trump and to highlight in each state the candidates who also support his cause. The Grand Canyon State, a conservative bastion, was thus the first chosen for the Republican reconquest.
Arizona, a bitter aftertaste for Trump
Donald Trump has a special relationship with Arizona. He is the very symbol of his failure. While he had made seven public appearances in this state in 2020 during his presidential campaign, he still narrowly lost it, by 10,000 votes against Joe Biden.
A defeat that he and his followers found it very difficult to accept, even if it means doing a new recount several months later by an auditing company called Cyber Ninjas. Indeed, under intense pressure from Donald Trump loyalists, the Republican majority in the state Senate had ordered an autopsy of the county’s votes. The review was largely funded by $5.7 million in donations from far-right groups and Donald Trump advocates.
Cyber Ninjas have ended up proving the election wasn’t stolen by the Democrats. And even more: not only had the former president had 261 votes counted too many, but Joe Biden had 99 fewer than what should have been counted. Donald Trump has thus become the first Republican presidential candidate not to win Arizona in 24 years.
Despite this observation, the supporters of the billionaire continue to shout at the theft of the election. It must be said that Trump has not budged either and has been hammering this message since November 2020. This was his leitmotif last July during his trip to Phoenix. On that occasion, he said he was there “to show (his) support for electoral integrity and the brave and unyielding conservative warriors of the Arizona State Senate.” For him, come what may, there is no doubt that the Grand Canyon State has passed him by due to massive voter fraud.
Restoring his truth before the “midterms”
Donald Trump’s first official speech should have taken place earlier, on January 6, from his residence in Mar-a-Lago, at the same time as the commemorations of the anniversary of the assault on the Capitol by his supporters. . It was expected that he (re)give his version of the story and put a layer on the alleged “theft” of the presidential election by Democrats. He finally canceled the event the day before, in the face of the outcry it caused, including in his own camp. He will therefore be able to satisfy his need to once again establish his truth in Arizona this Saturday and address his other favorite theme: immigration.
It will also be an opportunity for the billionaire to back in the stirrup for the mid-term elections (“midterms”) next November. Already during a meeting on June 27 in Ohio, he had declared that this was the “very first meeting of the 2022 election”, assuring: “We will take over the House (of Representatives), we will take over the Senate”. And much more: Trump does not hide his desire to run in the next presidential election. In early November, he explained that he would “probably” announce his decision to run for the White House after the midterm elections and hinted that his choice would make “a lot of people happy.”
Arizona is expected to be the first of a long list of meetings aimed at galvanizing the real estate mogul’s Republican base. Especially since Donald Trump will be able to recover his media voice shortly. Indeed, if for a year the world was able to escape his daily bursts of incendiary tweets, it is because of his banishment from social networks. Banned for life from a Twitter account, and for a minimum of two years on Facebook, he will however make his comeback through its own social network entitled Truth Social. After months of relative silence, the world should soon have news of the sulphurous ex-president.
See also on The HuffPost: One Year After Capitol Storm, Biden Blames Trump