Donald Trump took a trip to the West Coast on Saturday, where he campaigned in Coachella Valley to rally voters on issues of immigration and crime, and blasted the state’s Democratic leadership.
California is a “paradise lost,” Trump said, and has “the highest inflation, the highest taxes, the highest gas prices, the highest cost of living, the most regulations, the most expensive utilities, the most homelessness, the most crime, the most decay and the most illegal aliens.”
“Other than that, you’re doing quite well, actually,” Trump said. “We’re not going to let Kamala Harris do to America what she did to California.”
Democratic leadership, including former California senator and attorney general Harris, allowed California to become a “sanctuary state” for illegal immigrants, Trump added. Only he can get Californians out of “this mess,” he said.
“We are known all throughout the world now as an occupied country,” Trump said. “We’re like an occupied country. We got people taking over parts of Colorado, we have people taking over other states, a lot of states don’t want to talk about it, because they’re embarrassed . . . but it’s no different really than if we lost a war.”
Trump held the rally near California’s 41st Congressional District, where Republican Representative Ken Calvert is facing a tight rematch against Democrat Will Rollins. Speaking at the event, Calvert told the crowd to welcome the former president by showing him that “some sanity still exists in California, and it’s right here in Riverside County.” The rally was “a get-out-the-vote type of thing that motivates and energizes Republicans in California, when they are not as close to what is going on in the national campaign,” Republican consultant Tim Rosales said.
Actor Dennis Quaid, who played Ronald Reagan in the recently released Reagan biopic, addressed the crowd alongside Trump. It’s time for Americans to “pick a side,” he said.
“God bless you. God bless America. I’m here today to tell you that it’s time to pick a side,” Quaid said. “Are we going to be a nation that stands for the Constitution? Or for TikTok? Are we going to be a nation of law and order? Or wide open borders? Which is it? Because it’s time to pick a side.”
Issues that were forefront in the 1980 election, which Reagan won in a landslide, are “similar to what they are today,” Quaid added.
“We were a nation in decline. That’s what they told us. Ronald Reagan came along and said, no, we’re not a nation in decline. We’re going there. And we followed him,” Quaid said. “The same with Trump, with President Trump. My favorite president of the 21st century.”
“I’m gonna ask you a question that Reagan asked America back then, and I think it’s the question that got him elected: Are you better off than you were four years ago?” he asked.