Former President Donald Trump speaks during a rally at the Mohegan Sun Arena in Wilkes-Barre Township, Pa., Saturday, Sept. 3, 2022.Sean McKeag/The Citizens' Voice via AP
Making his first public speech since Mar-a-Lago was raided by FBI agents, Donald Trump raged against President Joe Biden, the FBI, and Pennsylvania Democrat John Fetterman at a rally Friday night. The speech was, even by Trump’s standards, blunt and angry. Despite warnings from some fellow Republicans about the need to tone down his rhetoric about law enforcement, Trump seemingly intended to provoke anger from his supporters.
The former president was in Pennsylvania at a rally ostensibly to support Republican gubernatorial candidate Doug Mastriano and GOP Senate candidate Mehmet Oz, but most of the speech was pure rage from Trump about the FBI raid of his Florida home. Federal agents recovered more than 11,000 government documents, including 103 that had been marked with some high-level of secrecy, scattered around the estate where Trump lives in the winter, and where thousands of paying customers and club members wander the property. In his speech on Friday, Trump claimed that the raid wasn’t just on him—it was an intrusion upon all of his supporters and their “hopes and dreams.”
“You’re all enemies of the state,” Trump told them, and then turned on Biden, declaring, “He’s an enemy of the state, you want to know the truth.”
Without any hint of irony over tone of the speech he was given at that moment, Trump also complained about Biden’s speech earlier Wednesday night in which the president said “MAGA Republicans” are a threat to democracy.
“Joe Biden came to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, to give the most vicious, hateful and divisive speech ever delivered by an American president,” Trump said.
Since the raid, Trump has made angrier and angrier statements about the FBI—resulting in increasing threats against federal law enforcement, and Trump appeared to be in no mood to turn down the tension, seemingly trying to provoke his followers further, calling FBI agents “vicious monsters” who worked for “radical left scoundrels.”
