Former President Donald Trump spoke at the North Carolina Republican Party State Convention on Saturday and ripped Democrats for policies leading to lawlessness and disorder.
“As we gather tonight, our country is being destroyed before our very own eyes. Crime is exploding, police departments are being ripped apart and defunded,” the former president said. “Can you believe that? Defund? Is that good politics, defund our police? Number one, it’s bad for our country, but think of it, defund our police. You know, I’ve long said they’re vicious, they’re violent, they, in many cases, hate our country, and they have bad policy.”
The homicide rate surged last year, with a 41 percent increase in New York, 30 percent in Los Angeles, 55 percent in Chicago, and 59 percent in Phoenix, to name a few. According to the New York Times, the United States exceeded 20,000 murders in 2020, the first time in 25 years the country has experienced that many in a single year.
At least 47 people died amid the Black Lives Matter and Antifa rioting last summer, and cities burned. In Portland, where rioters set fire to a federal courthouse, there was an estimated $2.3 million in damage. The riot damage from only May 26 to June 20 in 20 states across the country amounted to the most expensive manmade damage in history at $1 to $2 billion — and in some cities, rioting continued through the summer. Meanwhile, the left backed proposals to defund police departments.
Trump also said Democrats “stick together,” but the GOP will succeed in the 2022 midterm elections. He noted how he received the most votes out of any incumbent in history, surpassing Barack Obama, who set the record in 2012 over Republican Utah Sen. Mitt Romney.
“Now, the bad news from our standpoint, they stick together,” Trump continued. “They don’t have some of the people like we have, where they go on their own and they do what they have to do. They stick together. And that’s the one thing they have. They stick together. But their policy is so bad and we’re going to have a tremendous 2022, just like we did, frankly, 2020. Think of it. More votes than any sitting president in the history of the United States by far. We had a great election. Bad things happened, but we had a great election.”
