PHOENIX – Donald Trump resumed his campaign on Thursday with a trip to Arizona, his first appearance in a state without a clear political preference since he was convicted of improper payments to silence damaging news.
The former president reiterated that the case against him was politically motivated and demanded that his conviction be overturned on appeal.
“Those appeals courts have to step up and fix things or we’re going to be left without a country,” Trump said during an event in Phoenix organized by Turning Point, a conservative youth organization whose influence has been growing since Trump took control of the Republican Party.
Trump is scheduled to appeal last month’s verdict on all 34 counts in his New York improper payments trial, in which he became the first former US president to be convicted of serious crimes.
The former president responded defiantly to the verdict against him a day after a New York jury convicted him last week of developing a plan to illegally influence the 2016 elections through a payment to silence a porn actress.
But it was not until Thursday that he addressed directly the voters of a state with no clear political preference, who will decide the November elections, using profanity to denounce a “false” and politically motivated case. Thousands of attendees inside a megachurch chanted the same profanity in response.
The Phoenix Police Department reported that 11 attendees were hospitalized for heat stroke. The temperature outside was 107 degrees Fahrenheit at the time Trump began his speech, and many of the former president’s supporters were unable to enter the venue.
Trump’s conviction infuriated his supporters, who pumped tens of millions of dollars into his campaign immediately after the ruling was announced. Trump blames President Joe Biden for his conviction, although the case was brought by the locally elected New York district attorney and many of his allies are demanding revenge.
“What are they going to campaign with?” Juan Arredondo, a resident of Peoria, Arizona, asked himself while waiting to enter the Trump rally. “They can’t campaign on the border. “They can’t campaign on the economy,” he added.
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