Former President Donald Trump’s first appearance in Washington since leaving office earned applause from some Republican lawmakers for his tough-on-crime stance.
Several GOP House members told the Washington Examiner that Trump’s focus in his speech on rising crime rates and an unsecure southern border would resonate with working families feeling the brunt of the effects of illegal immigration and anti-police policies. Trump marked his first return to the capital as the keynote speaker at the America First Policy Institute’s summit on Tuesday, which several high-ranking Republican congressional leaders also attended.
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“The big thing is he took the appropriate amount of time to really deal [with] all of the issues affecting, frankly, every inner city in America and doing the thing that’s often hard to get across, which is tie bad Democrat policy to the issues that affect every inner city in the country,” said Rep. Byron Donalds (R-FL).
House Minority Whip Steve Scalise (R-LA) said the address “touched on a lot of issues that are important to families right now” and added that Trump left the country in a much better state than how it currently exists under President Joe Biden.
“He obviously talked a lot about national security and domestic security, which is a huge concern,” Scalise said. “He touched on some other issues like energy security, and when Donald Trump was in office, we were paying less than $2 a gallon for gasoline. We had literally no inflation, virtually no unemployment before COVID. And when he left office, he turned over a very healthy economy with a secure border to Joe Biden. And what we’ve seen is just failed policy after failed policy that’s left the country less secure.”
Rep. Ronny Jackson (R-TX), former White House physician to Trump, also said the tough-on-crime approach was helpful.
Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL), who ran against Trump during the 2016 Republican primary, said earlier Tuesday that the former president’s return to the nation’s capital wasn’t particularly notable due to his looming presence in national politics.
“I don’t think he’s really been gone,” Rubio said. “He hasn’t been here physically, but he’s been in the news a lot. He’s the most influential, popular Republican in the country.”
House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) spoke briefly before Trump’s address to outline his policy agenda for if Republicans take back the House during the midterm elections. He appeared with former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, who was behind a winning policy agenda in 1994 that helped the GOP win a majority in the House for the first time in 40 years.
“I believe in this next election, this is a 50-year election. Never before are we going to feel this type of opportunity in a year of redistricting,” McCarthy said. “We can lock in a conservative majority for the decade.”
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Trump kept his remarks tailored to some of the close-to-home issues that Republicans are hoping will launch them into the majority in November and railed against the homelessness crisis, drug abuse, and policies that have contributed to the uptick in crime rates in major cities. He also again heavily hinted that he will be running in 2024.
“I ran the first time and I won. Then, I ran a second time, and I did much better,” he said. “We got millions and millions more votes. … We may just have to do it again.”
