Former President Donald Trump thanked Ginni Thomas, wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, for professing to the Jan. 6 committee her belief the election was stolen. “I’d like to thank a great woman, Ginni Thomas, for her courage in saying … that she still believes the 2020 election was stolen,” Trump said during a rally in Michigan on Saturday night. “She didn’t wilt under pressure like so many others who are weak people, stupid people. She said what she thought, what she believed.”
Trump’s words came off like a mafia boss thanking an underling for not ratting to police. According to CNN reporter Annie Grayer, committee Chair Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.) said that Thomas answered “some questions” from the committee this week and stated her belief that the 2020 election was stolen from Trump.
“Too many Republicans are too afraid… and you’re not going to have a country any more,” Trump told the crowd in Warren, Mich., echoing the words he said during his Jan. 6 speech that preceded the insurrection — “You have to fight like hell. If you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore.”
The former president promised if Republicans are victorious in the elections this November, “We will save the day.” But Democrats are cheaters, he said, so his supporters need to vote in unprecedented numbers. “They cheat like hell, these people, they cheat like hell,” he said. “I don’t believe we’ll ever have a fair election again.” Just a minute or so later, Trump promised a “colossal red Republican wave” in the midterms.
Speaking again of Jan. 6, Trump claimed prosecutors are “persecuting” the rioters. “You know what they were protesting? Primarily the election results. Persecuting people who just happened to be there. Many of them didn’t even go in [to the Capitol],” he said.
Moving onto the subject of himself, Trump said, “Let’s talk about the persecution of Donald Trump and the Republican Party.” He then complained that “perhaps one million people” attended his speech preceding the insurrection, but “Nobody talks about it… Pictures of the crowd have disappeared.”
“The unselect committee is a complete and total scam… We have no due process whatsoever. It’s a runaway freight train that frankly no people are watching,” Trump said before claiming the committee’s TV ratings had tanked. Eighteen million Americans watched the committee’s most recent hearing in July, just two million fewer than watched the first.
Trump also paused his speech briefly to air an attack ad against New York Attorney General Letitia James, who he called a “racist AG… whose state is falling apart from murders, rapes, robberies, and every other form of record-breaking crime.”
Trump made a number of additional wild claims during his speech, including that:
- The federal government “illegally broke into my home [at Mar-a-Lago] in Florida in violation of the 4th amendment, also violating the Presidential Records Act.”
- Kamala Harris is a “North Korea sympathizer.”
- Truth Social is “hot as a pistol” but is “being targeted” by financial investigators.
- He “had a perfect call” with Georgia’s secretary of state after the 2020 election where he asked him to find more Trump votes. That call, Trump said, was “as good as the perfect phone call” between Trump and Ukraine President Volodomyr Zelensky that led to his first impeachment.
- “Our country is going to hell faster than ever before.”
Trump comes to Michigan to support a slate of candidates he endorsed who back his false claims that he won the 2020 election. His pick for governor, Tudor Dixon, currently trails the incumbent Democrat, Gretchen Whitmer, by nearly 12 points according to FiveThirtyEight’s poll averages. Mentions of Whitmer in speeches by both Dixon and Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) elicited “Lock her up!” chants from the crowd.
In her speech, Greene accused Democrats “want Republicans dead.” “I am not going to mince words with you all,” Greene said. “Democrats want Republicans dead, and they have already started the killings.” She then spoke about an incident in North Dakota, covered by Fox News, where a man allegedly admitted to fatally striking a man with his car after they had “a political argument.”
Greene also told rally goers that Whitmer “abused your children with lockdowns,” while Dixon complained that Michigan’s Covid restrictions made it difficult to get a haircut. Dixon, a former steel executive, helped create Lumen Student News, whose mission is to fight “indoctrination” in schools with educational videos. She has called for a ban on transgender participation in school sports. Slightly more than two months before the election, Dixon is trailing Whitmer in campaign cash on hand by a ratio of more than 25:1.
Just like his September rally in Ohio, Trump closed his speech as dramatic strings music that is frequently associated with QAnon played in the background.
