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In First Post-Debate Rally in Virginia, Trump Ridicules Possibility Biden Will Step Aside
National Review ^ | June 28, 2024 6:48 PM | AUDREY FAHLBERG

Posted on 06/28/2024 5:57:35 PM PDT by conservative98

Presumptive GOP nominee Donald Trump took a victory lap Friday afternoon during his first post-debate rally here in blue-leaning Virginia, where he painted Biden as a failed leader and poked fun at the growing chorus of Democrats who are publicly suggesting that the party should replace the president with a new candidate ahead of their August nominating convention in Chicago.

Last night was “a big moment for people with common sense,” Trump told the crowd in Virginia, a state he lost by ten points in 2020. This year, Trump is bullish that he can flip this state that no Republican presidential candidate has carried in 20 years. “We win Virginia, the race is over.”

Friday’s event also marked Trump’s first onstage campaign appearance alongside Governor Glenn Youngkin, whom the former president characterized as “very tall” and whom he praised as a strong chief executive. “I think this is the best Trump rally ever,” Youngkin told the crowd. “Mr. President, eight years ago you left your business career and built a great America, and in Virginia, we’re going to work to elect Donald Trump back to the White House.”

After the rally, Trump told reporter Henry Graff that Youngkin is among the people he is considering for his running mate. “I have so many good people. We have such a deep bench,” he said, before confirming that Youngkin is on the list.

Trump’s Friday rally came one day after the first presidential debate in Atlanta that marked a turning point in the race. Biden appeared old, confused, and incapable of allaying voters’ concerns over whether he is fit to serve another term — even after spending an entire week leading up to the event doing debate prep with aides at Camp David. Trump appeared uncharacteristically calm and collected, a clear indication that he internalized feedback from high-profile Republicans who had urged him not to make the same mistakes he made during his 2020 debates. That interruptive Trump wasn’t onstage last night; he kept his cool even in the face of repeated provocations by Biden.

Trump turned up the heat Friday afternoon. Clearly seeing Biden’s poor debate performance as a boon to his own campaign, the former president ridiculed a handful of high-profile Democrats whose names have been floated as potential successors to the president should he make the decision to step aside.

The problem for these hypothetical candidates, Trump said, is that they poll even worse against him than Biden does. “He’s got lousy poll numbers,” Trump said of California governor Gavin Newsom, who in the spin room in Atlanta as a surrogate for the president dismissed the suggestion from reporters that he might replace Biden on the ballot. Then Trump took a swipe at Vice President Kamala Harris. “It might have been Biden’s single best decision” selecting Harris as his vice president, Trump said, “because nobody wants” her in the Oval Office. Even former first lady Michelle Obama “polls badly,” the former president continued.

Biden “polls better” than every prospective replacement, Trump said, joking that it’s “hard to believe.”

Speaking before a crowd of supporters in North Carolina earlier Friday, a relatively energetic Biden sought to play down concerns among swing voters and his own about Thursday’s disastrous debate. “I know I’m not a young man, to state the obvious,” Biden said in Raleigh. “I don’t debate like I used to.”

“But I know what I know,” the president continued. “I know how to tell the truth. I know how to do this job.”

On the ground in Chesapeake Friday, Trump made a play for the black and Hispanic vote, telling the crowd that “Biden migrants” will take their jobs — a new favorite talking point of his. And he threw a bone to the Teamsters union, which traditionally backs Democratic presidential nominees but is warming to the presumptive GOP nominee this cycle. “Maybe the Teamsters go with us,” Trump said.

The rally was typical Trump. “I’m being indicted for you,” he said. He praised his own administration for passing the “greatest tax cuts in history,” and the “greatest cuts in regulation.” He called the 2020 election “rigged” and said Democrats “used Covid to cheat” — an amusing contrast to the “swamp the vote” signs behind the podium earlier in the rally urging Republicans to make a plan to vote early and by mail.

And, twisting the knife, he polled the crowd twice to see which nickname rally-goers preferred for his Democratic opponent: “Crooked Joe” or “Sleepy Joe.”


TOPICS: News/Current Events; US: Virginia
KEYWORDS: biden; trump; virginia; youngkin

1 posted on 06/28/2024 5:57:35 PM PDT by conservative98
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Comment #2 Removed by Moderator

To: conservative98
“But I know what I know,” resident Bribe 'Em continued. “I know how to tell the truth. I know how to do this job.”

Yeah, like that 8-handicap in golf.

That'll be true the day that obamas fly out my butt.

3 posted on 06/28/2024 6:11:56 PM PDT by kiryandil (FR Democrat Party operatives! Rally in defense of your Colombian cartel stooge Merchan!)
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To: kiryandil
"Yeah, like that 8-handicap in golf."

....... When Joe the Corpse brought that up in the debate .... I thought Trump was going to challenge him to a Golf match .... Kinda disappointed he didn't ....

.

4 posted on 06/28/2024 6:19:08 PM PDT by R_Kangel ("A nation of sheep will beget a nation ruled by wolves")
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To: conservative98

Obama has spoken. Joe is staying


5 posted on 06/28/2024 6:27:15 PM PDT by griswold3 (Truth, Beauty and Goodness. )
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To: conservative98

Looks like the official line about Trump from the liars is, Trump lies.

The liars cannot really point to any accomplishments by the old fool, so they think they can skate by accusing Trump of all Biden’s shortcomings.


6 posted on 06/28/2024 6:32:04 PM PDT by odawg
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To: All

They will circle the wagons.

The numbers won’t move, which will say the debate did not hurt Biden.

Just run out the clock. Early voting starts in Sept and ballots must be printed before that.


7 posted on 06/28/2024 7:39:49 PM PDT by Owen
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To: conservative98

Political leaders are more often than not, carried out. Russia’s Ivan the Terrible and Peter the Great killed their respective sons rather than give up power. Trump ginned up Animal House on the Potomac in hopes of preventing Biden from taking office.

This isn’t a matter of ego. The presidency is objectively a huge prize. Entire armies have been butchered to secure similar prizes. If someone told you the lottery ticket in your possession had only a 10% chance of winning the jackpot, but if you gave it to someone else, that chance would increase, you’d have to be altruistic in an otherworldly way to hand it over.


8 posted on 06/28/2024 8:04:09 PM PDT by Zhang Fei (My dad had a Delta 88. That was a car. It was like driving your living room)
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To: R_Kangel

I don’t recall who, but some pro golfer offered to host one yesterday.


9 posted on 06/29/2024 3:34:47 AM PDT by piytar
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To: Owen

If you are Biden, you are behind, but feel like you can turn it around, this is a deeply divided country, then why step aside, why give up power?

He would not only lose his shot at being a two term presidency but its an admission of failure, himself as the man doing the job, and his term.

That’s always been why I was iffy on the Joe stepping down deal. That’s a big plate of crow to make him eat.


10 posted on 06/29/2024 3:39:29 AM PDT by goodolemr
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To: goodolemr

I have been amused and disgusted by the Never Trump Freepers, known to be such from past posts, suddenly all self righteous about national security and Biden, or even all focused on good Democrat decision making.

They are Trump haters. Trump is changing the GOP from “a party of governance” to a party that holds the elite to be worthy only of contempt.

This was always the majority. Almost by definition. How can elite be majority?

But these guys with this sudden focus on Biden removal don’t care about Biden. It’s Trump they want removed via a stronger opponent.


11 posted on 06/29/2024 6:55:05 AM PDT by Owen
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To: Owen

There are times the elite will be given a pass. Those times are when things are working.

It never made sense to me the GOP didn’t adopt a more populist streak along time ago. How the heck do they see us winning states needed otherwise? The big idea was Jeb “please clap” Bush in 2016. I think that’d have been as big a disaster as MCCain. Trump has his warts, but at least he cares and no one can’t say he isn’t battle tested. He’s bee n perhaps the most beat up official by both parties I can recall in my life time.

The things going on now is madness. We don’t have time to deal with some kind of neocon dreams of forever wars when you got young people who can’t even see themselves owning a home, affording having children, even the cost of actually dating to make any of that happen. The forgotten man is becoming a forgotten nation.

There was a conception of the Democratic party where they stood for the working class and the idea people deserved a far shake. Their solutions was always tax and spend, the programs they created were greatly ineffectual, but it was ‘something.’ This is changed in wild ways with this woke movement/identity politics talking hold with Obama’s rise. The big pot of voters they try to patch together, they are in many cases at odds in reality.

Biden won’t even give us a vision of his second term. Is he serving til he drops dead, “well, after I’m reelected, 25th Ad me...” what about solutions, more of the same? This is not a serious campaign. There’s no vision and the system seems to be failing on every level right now.


12 posted on 06/29/2024 9:33:37 AM PDT by goodolemr
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