Former President Donald Trump has argued that he – not President Joe Biden – will protect Social Security and warned of a “bloodbath” if he loses in November as he campaigned for Senate candidate Bernie Moreno in Ohio.
Trump, speaking at an airport outside Dayton on Saturday, praised his running mate as a “champion of America” and “a political outsider who has spent his entire life building Ohio communities.”
“He’s going to be a warrior in Washington,” Trump said, days after securing enough delegates to win the 2024 Republican nomination.
Moreno faces Secretary of State Frank LaRose and Sen. Matt Dolan in Tuesday’s GOP primary. LaRose and Moreno have aligned themselves with the party’s pro-Trump faction, while Dolan is backed by more establishment Republicans, including Gov. Mike DeWine and former Sen. Rob Portman.
Saturday’s rally was hosted by Buckeye Values PAC, a group supporting Moreno’s candidacy. But Trump used the stage to deliver a profanity-laced version of his usual rally speech, which again painted an apocalyptic picture of the country if Biden wins a second term.
“If I’m not elected, it’s going to be a bloodbath… It’s going to be a bloodbath for the country,” he warned of the impact of offshoring on the country’s auto industry and his plans to raise tariffs on foreign-made cars.
Trump later asserted that “if this election is not won, I’m not sure you’ll ever have another election in this country.”
Trump repeatedly noted his difficulty getting a read from his teleporters, who could be seen visibly flapping in 35 mph wind gusts.
A one-time critic of Trump, Moreno, a wealthy Cleveland businessman, endorsed Marco Rubio for president in the 2016 Republican primary and once tweeted that listening to Trump was “like watching a car accident that makes you sick , but you can stop looking. In 2021, NBC News reported on an email exchange around the time of Trump’s first presidential run in which Moreno referred to Trump as “crazy” and “maniac”.
On Saturday, however, Moreno praised Trump as a “great American” and criticized those in his party who criticized the former president, who this week became his party’s presumptive candidate for a third consecutive election.
“I’m so sick and tired of Republicans saying, ‘I support President Trump’s policies, but I don’t like the man,'” he said as he joined Trump on stage.
Trump also dismissed the recent allegations against Moreno, comparing them to attacks he has faced over the years, including his criminal charges. Trump has been indicted in four separate cases ranging from his handling of classified documents to his efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election.
“He’s getting a very harsh fake treatment from the Democrats right now,” Trump said. “And we’re not going to stand for it.”
The Associated Press reported Thursday that in 2008, someone with access to Moreno’s work email account created a profile on an adult website seeking “Men for 1-on-1 sex.” The AP could not definitively confirm that it was created by Moreno himself. Moreno’s attorney said a former intern created the account and provided a statement from the intern, Dan Ricci, who said he created the account as “part of a youth prank.”
Questions about the profile circulated in GOP circles last month, causing frustration among senior Republican operatives about Moreno’s potential vulnerability in a general election, according to seven people directly familiar with discussions about how to handle the matter. . They asked to remain anonymous to avoid conflict with Trump and his allies.
Trump, in his remarks, also accused Biden of posing a threat to Social Security as he continued to clean up comments from an interview earlier this week in which he appeared to openly voice the cuts.
“Your Social Security is going to disappear,” he warned of a second Biden term, even as Biden has pledged to protect and strengthen Social Security as he faces a projected budget shortfall. “You won’t be able to have Social Security with this guy in office because he’s destroying our country’s finances. And that includes Medicare, by the way, and American seniors are going to be in big trouble.”
“I have promised that I will always keep Social Security, Medicare. We will always keep it. We will never cut it,” he said.
The comments came after Trump, in an interview with CNBC, responded to a question about Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid by saying that “there’s a lot you can do about entitlements and cut and steal. and the mismanagement of rights, the terrible mismanagement of rights. There are so many things and so many things you can do.”
Trump also continued to criticize Biden for his handling of the border and immigration crisis. And he took on Dolan, calling him a “weak RINO” — a Republican in name only — and accusing him of “trying to be the next Mitt Romney.” He also criticized the Dolan family, which owns the Cleveland baseball team, for changing its name from the Cleveland Indians to the Cleveland Guardians.
Trump was joined at the rally by Ohio Sen. JD Vance and South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem, both of whom have stuck with Moreno and are considered potential vice presidential contenders.
Trump’s decision to endorse Moreno marked a major blow to LaRose, who had gone to great lengths to curry favor with him. Days after entering the Senate race, LaRose endorsed Trump for president — reversing a previous stance that the state’s chief election officer should remain politically neutral. The following month, he fired a longtime trusted aide after old tweets in which the staffer criticized Trump surfaced.
The winner of Tuesday’s primary will face third-term Sen. Sherrod Brown, considered among the nation’s most vulnerable Democrats, in November.
Brown, first elected in 2006 and unchallenged in his primary this year, has managed to hold on to his seat even as the state has shifted to the right. In his most recent re-election in 2018, he defeated then-Rep. Jim Renacci by almost 7 percentage points. Two years later, Ohio voted for then-President Trump by 8 points.