President Donald Trump added the Supreme Court to his list of central campaign issues on Wednesday following the surprise retirement earlier in the day of long-serving justice Anthony Kennedy.
Trump, at a North Dakota rally where he was campaigned against the state’s incumbent Democrat, said Kennedy’s retirement added a new urgency to increasing the number of GOP votes in the U.S. Senate.
‘Justice Kennedy’s retirement makes the issue of Senate control, one of the vital issues of our time. The most important thing that we can do,’ Trump said. ‘Democrats want judges who will rewrite the Constitution any way they want to do it, and take away your Second Amendment, erase your borders, throw open the jailhouse doors and destroy your freedoms.’
The president argued at the event for North Dakota Rep. Kevin Cramer that sitting Sen. Heidi Heitkamp will be a ‘vote no’ for whoever he nominates to replace Kennedy because ‘she will be told to do so.’
He told the crowd that a vote for Heitkamp or any other Democrat in the state is essentially a vote for Democratic Rep. Maxine Waters.
‘These radical Democrat protesters. They really want anarchy,’ he said of Democrats trying to abolish ICE. ‘But the only response they will find from our government is law and order.’
President Donald Trump added the Supreme Court to his list of central campaign issues on Wednesday following the surprise retirement earlier in the day of long-serving justice Anthony Kennedy
Since telling her supporters in weekend remarks that they should harass officials in Trump’s government wherever they appear in public, Trump has made Waters, a California congresswoman, a centerpiece of his attacks.
‘Maxine, she’s is a beauty, I mean she was practically telling people the other day to assault. Can you imagine if I said the things she said? “We demand that he immediately drop out of the race,” ‘ Trump in Fargo, North Dakota said.
‘Can you imagine, seriously, if I said that, or somebody else said that? Horrible what she said. Now they want to censure her. Let’s see where that goes, folks,’ he offered. ‘Her own party was talking about censure. Let’s see where that goes.’
The congressman who introduced the censure measure is a Republican from Arizona – Rep. Andy Biggs. The Republican representative has also called on Waters to resign.
Trump in another assault on Democrats said he could not believe that his former Democrat opponent Hillary Clinton had been allowed to walk away from her email scandal without charges.
The crowd at the mere mention of Clinton began chanting, ‘Lock her up!’
‘Point after point, guilty, guilty, guilty, guilty, oh she’s OK. And then they go after us for a Russian hoax. It’s a witch hunt hoax,’ Trump responded. ‘Isn’t it incredible when you talk about a double standard…and nobody even looks at her. Nobody even looks. Unless we’re going to be surprised some day.’
Trump told a packed auditorium on Wednesday that they ‘need Kevin Cramer to replace liberal Democrat Heidi Heitkamp’ in the upper chamber.
‘When Heidi ran for office, she promised to be an independent vote for the people of North Dakota,’ he said.
‘Instead she went to Washington and immediately joined Chuck – you know who Chuck is- and Nancy,’ he said. ‘And now they have a new leader. Who’s the new leader? Maxine Waters is the new leader. Maxine Waters. I think she’s taking over’
He said as an aside, ‘You know they say Trump, I never believed I was taking over the Republican Party, they say that to cause problems.’
Coming back to the topic later, Trump said he used to be called an ‘interloper’ and now he’s considered the ‘most popular’ Republican in history, even more-beloved than Ronald Reagan.
‘It’s a horrible term. I was just doing my thing, I’m not an interloper,’ he said.
Trump said that on Tuesday evening, as primary results rolled in around the country, his successes continued to stack up.
‘And one of my biggest critics, a slovenly man named Joe Crowley, got his a** kicked by a young woman who had a lot of energy. She had a lot of energy. I guess he didn’t see it. They couldn’t find him,’ Trump said. ‘And he was going to take Nancy Pelosi’s place, and I was so disappointed, because I want to keep Nancy Pelosi right where she is next to Maxine Waters.’
Trump begged Democrats to ‘please, please’ keep Pelosi as their party leader after the 2018 elections.
Back on Heitkamp, he said she voted against the repeal of Obamacare.
He claimed the vote was all but done when she and ‘another person’ tanked it.
Ripping Republican Sen. John McCain not-too-subtly, Trump said, ‘We were a little surprised when the thumb went down.’
But he said it all worked out because the association plan his administration has come out with and another plan he assured voters will be revealed in two two weeks are better anyway for consumers.
‘We are coming out with so many healthcare plans that are better than you anything you have ever seen before. Competitive,’ he said. ‘And Obamacare is essentially dead.’
Although, he said, amid cheering, ‘I would have been happier with a nice yes vote instead of a note vote, but that’s OK.’
Continuing, Trump said, ‘Heidi voted no on our massive tax cuts for North Dakota families. She voted no. Not one Democrat voted to cut your taxes, and the other day, Nancy Pelosi said we have to raise your taxes. What’s that all about? She wants to raise your taxes.’
Late-term abortions, sanctuary cities and his travel ban were also among the positions he hit her over.
‘You need a senator who doesn’t just talk like their North Dakota, but votes like their from North Dakota. That’s what you need. And that is Kevin Cramer.
‘So a vote for any Democrat in November, is a vote for Schumer, Pelosi and Maxine,’ he stated.
Trump said the travel ban ruling is a prime reason why it’s important to take into account the Senate’s power to confirm judges.
‘Justice Anthony Kennedy, a very special guy, also, just announced a little while ago his retirement from the United States Supreme Court,’ Trump said. ‘Great man. And I’m very honored that he chose to do it during my term in office, because he felt confident in me to make the right choice and carry on his great legacy. That’s why he did it.’
The president used Kennedy’s retirement as a swivel to again hit Heitkamp.
‘We must elect more Republicans,’ he said. ‘We have to do that.’
Trump said that if one Republican in the Senate ‘gets a bad cold – or let’s assume it’s worse than that’ -the GOP doesn’t have the heft to pass legislation.
The remark came off as another backhanded swipe at McCain, who has been absent from the Senate since the end of last year. He is at home in Arizona battling brain cancer.
His illness puts the GOP just shy of the 51 votes they will need to confirm a Supreme Court justice, unless he recovers quickly enough to return to Washington.
Cramer, in brief remarks at the top of the rally, thanked Trump for cutting taxes and being pro-life, and promised always to support the Republican president’s agenda.
‘And on these important North Dakota values, you never have to wonder where I’ll be, because I’ll always be with them and with you – 100 percent of the time.’
Trump impressed upon the crowd the importance of electing more Republicans in the House and the Senate in order to push forward his immigration agenda, including the building of a wall and merit-based migration.
The president said he wants the most qualified immigrants coming to the country ‘not picked out of a jar’ in reference to the diversity visa lottery system that he says he wants to do away with.
That program involves the State Department picking applicants at random and heavily vetting them. It does not weight based on their perceived value-add to the U.S. economy.
As he spoke about immigration, Trump completely side-stepped his administration’s policy on family separation as he lit into Democrats launching ‘vicious smears’ and ‘shameless attacks’ on Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Some activists are posting ICE officers’ home addresses online, he said, putting them in danger.
‘It would be overrun with the worst criminal elements you have ever seen,’ he said. ‘These radical Democrat protesters. They really want anarchy. But the only response they will find from our government is law and order.’
Trump at the rally also touched on his steel and aluminium tariffs, for which he has been taking a bruising, putting the dispute with many of America’s allies in the context of a future need for self-defense.
‘If something ever happened,’ Trump began,’ if something ever happened, you know what I’m talking about, and we needed steel to make that something, we wouldn’t be able to make steel.’
Trump also claimed that some European countries totally reject certain American products, citing it as another reason he had to hit back at their markets.
If he doesn’t get more favorable trade for the U.S., the president threatened to tax all of the Mercedes-Benz’ and BMWs that are being imported.
Both car companies have their headquarters in Germany.