Mark Landler

Trump’s rally, his first since an acrimonious debate over funding of the wall shut down the government, comes as negotiations in Washington to head off another shutdown are in danger of collapse. His words could inflame the national debate over immigration, which is already a powerful rallying cry for Democrats hoping to challenge Trump in 2020.

Among those potential challengers is Beto O’Rourke, the rising Democratic star and former congressman from El Paso. In a bit of political theater that could be a foretaste of the 2020 campaign, O’Rourke was scheduled to speak at a rally less than a mile away from the El Paso County Coliseum, where Trump was scheduled to address 6,000 supporters.

The president’s choice of El Paso to make his argument is curious on several grounds. Violent crime actually declined for years in this vibrant immigrant city across the river from Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, before the Army Corps of Engineers began building a fence in 2008. It rose during the two years before and after the barrier was constructed.

A Democratic stronghold in an otherwise Republican state, El Paso has long been one of the safer cities of its size in the United States — a trend that local law enforcement officials attribute to the residents and community policing, not to the border fence.

Still, if Trump wants to force the debate with Democrats, he could hardly have chosen a better place. The presence of O’Rourke, who represented the city in Congress before he gave up his House seat to run unsuccessfully for the Senate last year, guarantees the president the kind of confrontation he relishes, even if the two men will not come face to face.

The president has insisted that El Paso was an example of why a wall is necessary.

“The border city of El Paso, Texas, used to have extremely high rates of violent crime — one of the highest in the country,” Trump claimed last week during his State of the Union address. “Now, with a powerful barrier in place, El Paso is one of our safest cities.”

O’Rourke debunked that claim Friday in a lengthy post on the website Medium, in which he also attempted to set out an alternative blueprint for overhauling the nation’s immigration laws. El Paso’s success, he said, repudiated Trump’s call for a border wall.

“He will promise a wall and repeat his lies about the dangers that immigrants pose,” O’Rourke said of the president.

O’Rourke has spotlighted his heavily Latino hometown on Facebook and on other social media sites as an example of what works in immigration policy. He plans to join a “March for Truth” on Monday that will be a counterpoint to Trump’s “Make America Great Again” rally.

“We will welcome the president to one of the safest cities in the United States,” he wrote on Medium. “Safe not because of walls, and not in spite of the fact that we are a city of immigrants. Safe because we are a city of immigrants and because we treat each other with dignity and respect.”

Trump got the idea to focus on El Paso from an exchange with Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, who told him the wall drastically reduced the city’s crime rate and therefore served as a persuasive argument for building a wall along more of the southwestern border.

“After that fence went up and separated Juárez, which still has an extremely high crime rate, the crime rates in El Paso are now some of the lowest in the country,” Paxton said. “So we know it works.”

While it is true that Juárez has a much higher crime rate than El Paso — and while the fence did cut down on illegal crossings — the rest of his statement is, at best, highly misleading.

The El Paso Times, which analyzed three decades of statistics from the FBI and local police, found that crime peaked in 1993, with more than 6,500 violent crimes recorded. It then dropped by 34 percent over the next 13 years.

The crime rate then increased by 17 percent from 2006 to 2011. Construction of the wall began in 2008, under President George W. Bush, and was completed in mid-2009, during the Obama administration. Crime has ebbed and flowed within a fairly narrow band since then.

Local officials, including Mayor Dee Margo, a Republican, have spoken out against Trump’s claims. Rep. Veronica Escobar, a Democrat who recently won O’Rourke’s former seat, has demanded that the president apologize and meet with migrant families seeking asylum in the United States.

Among lawmakers who represent border districts, there is remarkably little support for a wall, and Democrats in Washington have stuck to their refusal to give Trump the $5.7 billion he is requesting for it. The latest numbers floated by Democrats in their negotiations with their Republican counterparts are between $1.3 billion and $2 billion.

Yet Trump has been undeterred. During his State of the Union address, he repeated grisly stories of violent crimes committed by immigrants without legal authorization — never mind that the crime rate among immigrants is no higher than among native-born residents. He said a wall would stem the flow of deadly opioids and other illicit drugs into the United States — another dubious assertion, given that most drugs arrive at legal ports of entry.

Trump’s aides are trying to build a momentum after what they believe was a speech well received by his political base. Unlike some of his predecessors, the president did not immediately leave on a road trip to sell the messages in the address. But he has been eager to return to rallies, which energize him and filled up his calendar before the midterm elections.

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/11/us/politics/donald-trump-el-paso.html" id="4770f2ec-1892-3374-a4d6-4d6661f86fd6">The New York Times</a>.

Trump to Champion Border Wall at Rally in El Paso, While Opponents There March in Protest

EL PASO, Texas — President Donald Trump went to this city Monday for a rally to champion his border wall with Mexico even as a demonstration was planned by angry residents and Democratic lawmakers who denounce his claim that walls reduce violent crime.

In his first rally since the end of the 22-month investigation, Trump is likely to lash out at a familiar list of targets: Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., chairman of the House Intelligence Committee; James Comey, the FBI director whom he fired in 2017; John O. Brennan, the former CIA director; and, of course, the “fake news media,” which he accuses of propagating the “hoax” of his collusion with Russia.

In vilifying his opponents, Trump has not been troubled by the fact that the 300-plus-page report by Robert Mueller, the special counsel, has yet to be released, or that Attorney General William Barr, in his summary of Mueller’s findings, stipulated that the report did not exonerate the president, even if it did not find him guilty of conspiracy or of obstructing justice.

Grand Rapids holds special meaning for Trump, as the site of his final campaign rally before his upset victory in 2016. He won Michigan by fewer than 11,000 votes — two-tenths of 1 percent — the first Republican to do since 1984. It was one of three Midwestern states — along with Pennsylvania and Wisconsin — that cemented his victory over his Democratic opponent, Hillary Clinton.

Grand Rapids is also the birthplace of another president, Gerald Ford, whose presidential museum sits across the river from the arena where Trump is to speak — a monument to the moderate Republicanism that the president has banished and the Washington establishment that he has upended.

The timing of the rally so soon after Barr’s disclosures has prompted greater-than-usual concerns about security, given Trump’s habit of stirring up the crowd and heaping abuse on reporters. At his last rally in El Paso, Texas, a member of the audience assaulted a BBC cameraman.

The signs of tighter security in Grand Rapids included more visible security personnel and sturdier barriers between the press and the audience. In El Paso, reporters were seated in the stands, unprotected from the crowd.

On Sunday evening, after Barr delivered his summary of the Mueller report, Trump, who was in Palm Beach, Florida, was urged by his aides to avoid a tone of triumphalism in his reaction. That lasted for about an hour, until he delivered an angry denunciation of those behind the investigation before he returned to Washington.

As the days wore on, Trump vilified news organizations, ridiculed the ratings of cable networks like MSNBC and CNN, and demanded the resignation of Democrats like Schiff, whom he accused of lying repeatedly in discussing potential collusion between Trump and the Russians.

In a warm-up rally more than an hour before Trump arrived, Laura Cox, the chairwoman of the Michigan Republican Party, led the crowd in chants of “No Collusion! No Obstruction!” The crowd also chanted “Lock her up!” after Cox denounced Clinton for counting Harvey Weinstein as one of her supporters.

Trump has long savored his victory in Michigan. But the state could be more of an uphill struggle in 2020. Democrats made significant gains in the 2018 midterm elections, including winning the governorship.

General Motors, one of Michigan’s key employers, has laid off workers, despite Trump’s efforts to pressure the carmaker to expand manufacturing in the United States. He also face headwinds in winning congressional passage of the retooled version of the North American Free Trade Agreement, which he has promoted as benefiting workers in Michigan.

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/28/us/politics/trump-rally-grand-rapids.html" id="d0986cdb-6d48-30c5-ad7e-fbac02bd169a">The New York Times</a>.

GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. — President Donald Trump, fresh off what he claims was vindication in the special counsel’s Russia investigation, will offer a first glimpse Thursday night of how he plans to use the findings to demonize his enemies and galvanize his political base.

Trump to Speak in Michigan at First Rally Since Mueller Report

“After two years, nothing — no collusion,” Trump told a crowd of several thousand supporters. “Now the Democrats are saying, ‘We want more.’” The congressional investigations of his ties to Russia and the subpoenas of administration officials, he said, were a disgrace.

“It’s time to stop this nonsense,” the president said.

Drawing out investigations after the release of the special counsel’s report, Trump said, was the only way Democrats could hope to beat him in the 2020 election.

The president seemed to relish the coming campaign, describing the Democratic primary race as a likely “choice between Sleepy Joe and Crazy Bernie,” referring to Biden, the former vice president, and Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont. And Trump took aim at Buttigieg, a rising star in the early days of the campaign, drawing out the pronunciation of his name (“Boot-edge-edge”) and predicting that Buttigieg, the 37-year-old mayor of South Bend, Indiana, would be a poor match for the president of China, Xi Jinping.

“By the way, you see the tariffs we’re doing?” Trump said, abruptly changing the subject to his suddenly stalled trade negotiations with China. “Because they broke the deal.”

The president cycled through a familiar list of rally topics, like a border wall with Mexico and the support of Democrats for late-term abortions. But it was a discursive performance, even by Trump’s standards, and the mood was notably less electric than at some of his other rallies. The crowd began straggling out during the latter half of the speech, to the sound of helicopter engines being warmed up in a nearby field.

Trump twice complained about the stage — where he stood under a giant banner that read “Make America Great Again” — saying that the floor was so slippery that he wondered if it had been set up by the Democrats.

The setting, an amphitheater bathed in the Coppertone glow of a setting sun, seemed more fitting for a gathering of Jimmy Buffett’s Parrotheads than a rally of Trump’s red-baseball-cap-wearing legions. When the president riffed on familiar themes like the “fake news media” and Hillary Clinton, the crowd responded with the same dependable whoops as the Parrotheads when Buffett segues into “Margaritaville.”

“In six years, they’re all going to be out of business, folks,” Trump said of the news media. “If we want to drive them crazy, I’ll say in 10 years. They’ll go crazy. ‘See, he is a despot. He is a despot.’”

For Trump, the rally was a return to a beach resort he toured in October after Hurricane Michael, a Category 5 storm that left a path of wanton destruction, ripping roofs from houses, splintering trees, scattering tractor-trailers and twisting giant hangars at the nearby Tyndall Air Force Base.

The president promised to send more disaster aid, including $448 million from the Department of Housing and Urban Development. And he took a swipe at Puerto Rico for being ungrateful to him despite receiving what he claimed falsely was $91 billion in disaster aid after Hurricane Maria.

“You’re getting your money, one way or the other,” Trump declared.

Panama City Beach and Panama City next door have struggled to recover, with some residents still living in temporary housing seven months after the storm. Officials there are deeply frustrated by the sluggish pace of federal disaster funding, which has been tied up in a dispute between the White House and congressional Democrats over Trump’s refusal to send more disaster aid to hurricane-ravaged Puerto Rico.

“This funding has to be shook loose,” said Mayor Greg Brudnicki of Panama City, a Democrat, who traveled to Washington recently to lobby lawmakers. “I’m tired of it being tied to other issues — partisan politics, Puerto Rico, whatever. We’re north of 200 days since the storm without getting what we need.”

Few blame Trump himself: Panama City and the surrounding Bay County is resoundingly Trump Country. But Brudnicki said he hoped the president would come with more than comforting words. The mayor is seeking millions to repair Tyndall Air Force Base, which accounts for about a third of the city’s economic activity.

Trump responded to two of his pleas, saying that the federal government would increase its share of the burden of rebuilding to 90%, from 75%, as it has for other areas recovering from major natural disasters. And the president’s promise of additional emergency funds from HUD will help the mayor ease the city’s housing shortage.

“The people here love Trump, there’s no doubt about it,” Brudnicki said. “They believe he’s trying to do everything he can. But people are holding us hostage from the other side of the aisle on certain issues.”

Signs of Bay County’s affection for the president, but also the desperation of its storm-tossed residents, abounded during his tour there in the fall. On the wall of a ruined storefront that sat on the route of his motorcade, someone had spray-painted “Uncle Trump” and “Help Us — Trump.”

On Wednesday, the road from Panama City’s airport to the beach was lined with signs beseeching Trump to rebuild Tyndall Air Force Base. With the Air Force mulling whether to consolidate its widely dispersed fleet of fighter jets at other bases, Tyndall’s survival has been uncertain.

When Trump landed at the base, he took a 15-minute tour of the damage, driving past buildings that still had boarded-up windows and battered facades. The motorcade stopped in front of a hangar with a badly damaged roof, where he stepped out to take credit for keeping the base open.

“They were going to close the base, and I said, ‘No,’” the president said, flanked by Florida lawmakers, including the state’s Republican senators, Marco Rubio and Rick Scott. “Now we’re rebuilding.”

At the rally, Trump took note of the tensions between him and Rubio during the 2016 campaign but noted that he had thrown his support behind one of the senator’s favorite causes: removing President Nicolás Maduro in Venezuela. The president suggested that he was carefully watching the fitful effort to oust Maduro.

“How we doing in Venezuela?” Trump asked Rubio. “Step by step.”

This article originally appeared in <a id="94118d38-a93e-3f9c-a243-a404d5200194" href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/08/us/politics/trump-panama-city-beach-rally.html">The New York Times</a>.

At Florida Rally, Trump Denounces Democrats' 'Nonsense' as He Looks to 2020

PANAMA CITY BEACH, Fla. — President Donald Trump on Wednesday brought his amped-up roadshow to this spring break playground on the Florida gulf coast, demanding that Democrats stop the “nonsense” of investigating him, mocking Democratic presidential candidates like Joe Biden and Pete Buttigieg, and joking about staying in the White House for another decade.

At Florida rally, Trump denounces Democrats' 'nonsense' as he looks to 2020

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Mark Landler

Articles written by the author

Trump to Champion Border Wall at Rally in El Paso, While Opponents There March in Protest

Trump to Speak in Michigan at First Rally Since Mueller Report

At Florida rally, Trump denounces Democrats' 'nonsense' as he looks to 2020