‘Dumb has a B in it’: five key riffs from Trump’s set at his new ‘Trumpapalooza’

Donald Trump stepped up to the lectern at the American Airlines Center in downtown Dallas on Wednesday night to deliver a speech pitched as a political rescue mission for embattled Republicans. The headline promise was a “$5,000 dividend to every adult citizen”, which he described as “very much like a successful company will do a cash distribution to shareholders”, and would be paid if the party wins both the House of Representatives and Senate. The first ever GOP midterm convention has been dubbed “Trumpapalooza” by party chairman Joe Gruters, and was intended to motivate the party base with less than two months until the midterm elections. Shorts The Republicans are defending slim House and Senate majorities and face a challenging political climate of persistent inflation and an unpopular war. “I’m asking you to let us finish the job we began with the greatest two years in the history of the presidency,” the president began. “A president, Democrat or Republican, almost never wins the midterms. We’ve got to change that.” He vowed to visit 35 swing states during the midterms campaign. “I’m asking you to pretend that I’m on the ballot. Just one more time.” But Trump had another aim beyond the midterms: to cement his legacy. “I want you to remember me in four or five years when this country’s rocketing, remember, I’m the one that got it started,” he told the raucous crowd. What did Trump have to say? A surprise announcement, delivered about two-thirds of the way through the 110-minute-long speech, was “a dividend to every adult citizen in the United States of America for $5,000″. It would be paid if the Republicans win the House and Senate, and “must be spent in the United States of America”, Trump said. A major theme of the speech was warning about the consequences of a Democratic majority in the House or Senate. “They want to put the books of Lenin and Stalin in every library, for all our young children to read and study,” he said. “If they win the greatest legislative body in history will, for the first time ever, be controlled by a Communist caucus.” Trump defended his ballroom and war with Iran, and attacked his political opponents as ‘Dum-o-crats’ “If we lose, you’re going to lose your border,” Trump said. “You’re going to lose your tax cuts. You’re going to lose your safety and security. You’re going to lose your wealth… You will be going through hell.” He explained that “nobody knows that ‘dumb’ has a B at the end of it”, but if you “take out the E and replace it with a U they’re Dum-o-crats because their policy is so bad”. One example of such bad policies, he said was “men playing in women’s sports”, which he reckoned “will really hurt us”. He also boasted about his achievements: tax cuts, and the border wall. He made the inaccurate claim that “zero illegal aliens have entered our country from the southern border in the last 15 months”. On the economy, Trump said it was “the Golden Age of America“, with a boom in home-made cars and “our country is producing more oil and gas… than Russia and Saudi Arabia combined”. He boasted that Venezuela’s oil had also been “added to our little stockpile”. He defended putting big tariffs on imports, and boasted of forcing France’s president Emmanuel Macron into doubling drug prices in France by threatening a “150 per cent tariff on all wines”. Trump riffed on his penchant for renaming geographic features such as Lake Ontario and the Gulf of Mexico, again pushed the idea of renaming New Mexico, and toyed with the idea of more. “We could go into oceans like the Pacific Ocean or the Atlantic,” he said. The Strait of Hormuz should be renamed, too. “We’ll call it the Trump Strait, and I’m sure the Iranian leadership will be thrilled with that.” The president defended his war with Iran, saying “if we didn’t hit them with our beautiful B-2 bombers, they would have a nuclear weapon right now, and I would be addressing them as supreme leader. Mr. Supreme Leader, sir, how are you? And now I don’t have to do that.” He also defended his “drone proof, bulletproof, everything proof” ballroom under construction at the White House, but rued he’d not get to use it for long. “I’ll be there for a few months,” he said. “I’d love to have it for a long time.” What is a midterm convention? Traditionally, conventions are a feature of the presidential election, used to formally nominate a party’s candidate. In the case of the midterms, the party’s candidates have already been selected. The event, dubbed Trumpapalooza, was aimed at mobilising the party’s based to vote in the coming elections The event’s website spruiked it as being convened “to celebrate the accomplishments of President Donald J. Trump, showcase the strength of the Republican Party and its slate of candidates, and unite Americans around a bold vision for the future”. They are also trying to counter what’s known as the party’s “low-propensity problem”. Polls suggest Democratic voters are far more likely than Republicans to cast a vote this year. As Trump himself put it (in the third person) at a recent rally, “The problem that we have is they say that Trump does great when he’s on the ballot. But when he’s not on the ballot, his people don’t come and they don’t vote.” What did the warm-up acts say? Maverick Democratic Senator John Fetterman made a surprise appearance by video, telling the crowd “I’m a common sense Democrat, I’m always gonna stand with America, I’m always gonna reject the extremes of socialism, and that anti-American way of life”. Todd Blanche, the US attorney-general, praised the work of the administration’s Ice agents, crediting them for the “swift removal” of “2.6 million criminal aliens who entered the country illegally, and should never have been released into our neighbourhoods”. Celebrity physician Dr Oz claimed that “prescription drug prices just recorded their largest annual drop, decline, in more than 60 years”, including GLP-1 drugs which were “contributing to a historic American weight loss”. Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent warned against a Democratic “socialist hellscape” and said Trump had “rebalanced trade in favour of our working families… creating assets and expanding ownership”. UFC champion Justin Gaethje assured the crowd that Trump was a leader who “is fighting for us, who is passionate, who is resilient, and resilient he must be, because I must say, I think politics is a much nastier game than mixed martial arts”. Who’s appearing on Thursday? NPR has calculated that fewer than half of the Republican candidates in competitive House and Senate races were listed as convention speakers. Trump said he would return for a second appearance on Thursday night, “to say goodnight to you”, alongside Vice President JD Vance.