washingtontimes.com Don Jr. pumps up conservative base: ‘Left hates Trump more than they love America’
Valerie Richardson
DENVER — Donald Trump Jr. pumped up the activist conservative base Friday night in Colorado with a pull-no-punches speech touting his father’s accomplishments in office and blasting the Democratic opposition, declaring that “the left hates Trump much more than they love America.”
In a 30-minute speech at the Western Conservative Summit, Mr. Trump offered a taste of things to come on the 2020 presidential campaign trail, insisting President Trump isn’t getting the credit in the media he deserves for his job performance and repeatedly calling Democrats and their policies “nuts.”
“The reality is, the left hates Trump much more than they love America,” Donald Trump Jr. told a packed house at the Colorado Convention Center. “Because they would much rather see America fail with him at the helm than it succeed. It’s crazy.”
Citing the Mueller investigation into foreign campaign interference, the president’s son accused Democrats of being disappointed that the report found no collusion between the Trump camp and Russia.
“Think about again the Russia hoax,” he said. “When in your lifetimes could you imagine that either party would be incredibly upset that the President of the United States did not in fact collude with the enemy? Think about that. The outrage when that went away — it’s nuts.”
The pro- Trump crowd broke into applause repeatedly as Mr. Trump ticked off his father’s achievements, citing record low unemployment and economic growth, as well as exiting of the Iran nuclear deal, moving the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem, and opening doors with North Korea.
If the press coverage were fair, the 2020 presidential race would be “over,” but the reporting isn’t fair, he said.
“We’ve seen the level of insanity,” said Mr. Trump. “We’ve seen it grow and grow and grow to the point that you have an American president with greatest economic track record in modern history that gets 97% negative coverage from the press.”
Several studies have shown that press coverage of the president is more than 90% negative. In October, the conservative Media Research Center found that 92% of such stories were negative, as were 97% of reports related to Russian collusion.
“Think about that,” Mr. Trump said. “If you were a rational being, which I think many of you are, you would say, 2020’s over. 2020 should be over by any reasonable standard.”
He also said that Republicans have underestimated the grassroots outrage over the apparent political bias of powerful online platforms like Facebook and Google, saying it’s “a top 3 issue with a lot of the conservative base, and a lot of the leadership doesn’t even realize it.”
Top tech companies have denied being biased against conservatives despite evidence to the contrary, such as last month’s Project Veritas undercover sting showing a Google executive saying that breaking up the tech giants would make it harder to prevent “the next Trump situation.”
“If big tech is doing it to me — kind of a loudmouth — imagine what they’re doing to you,” Mr. Trump said. “Imagine that power. To me it just seems like a dry run for 2020. What can they do to minimize the efficacy of what we were able to do in 2016? What can they do to suppress our voice? Because they’re doing it.”
The two-day annual summit, held by the Centennial Institute at Colorado Christian University, marked this year its 10th anniversary with a host of conservative luminaries, including Housing Secretary Ben Carson, Sen. Cory Gardner and the MRC’s Brent Bozell. |
