Donald Trump holds rally in Florida during third GOP debate

Former President Donald Trump spoke in Hialeah, Florida, Wednesday night while five other Republican presidential candidates attended the third primary debate in Miami.

Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the White House press secretary from 2017 to 2019, introduced Trump. She said, “A lot of people may complain Donald Trump was too loud, too direct. But to me, that’s the very best thing about this president. He tells it like it is.”

She continued, “When I worked under President Trump in the White House, I saw first hand a side to him that a lot of people didn’t: a great boss, mentor, outstanding father.”

Former President Trump criticized the Biden Administration for the war between Israel and Hamas. Trump said that if he had been in office, the tragedy in Israel never would have happened. He said, “I kept America safe, I kept Israel safe, I kept Ukraine safe, I kept the world safe.”

He also referred to foreign policy with Cuba during the Trump Administration, saying, “Nobody ever did more for Americans who love Cuba than a gentleman named Donald J. Trump when he was president. And then they blew it.” The crowd interrupted him chanting, “We want Trump.”

Trump accused the Democratic Party of not caring about religious freedom and criticized Catholics and Christians who vote for Democrats. “I have to say, you’re fools if you do that,” he said. “But we’re here tonight to declare that crooked Joe Biden’s banana republic ends on November 5, 2024. It ends.”

“This race is not just about beating crooked Joe,” Trump said. “It’s about defeating the entire rotten, corrupt, and tyrannical establishment you have right now in Washington D.C.”

In light of the House’s censorship of Rep. Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich., on Tuesday, Trump said, “In times like these, you can’t afford to have a president who’s politically correct, we have to do things properly. We cannot have an administration that takes foreign policy advice from Ilhan Omar or Rashida Tlaib.”

Regarding border policy, Trump said, “We will begin the largest deportation operation in American history.” He continued, “On day one I will stop the invasion of our Southern border. We will stop it.”

The former president raised the issue of the increasing number of migrants who cross the Southern border, and used highly critical language of immigrants, saying, without evidence, they were coming from “prisons,” and “insane asylums.”

Trump referenced the movie “The Sound of Freedom.” Trump said he would “end the child trafficking crisis by returning all trafficked children to their families in their home countries immediately to their parents.”

Trump alluded to the third GOP debate, saying it was the lowest rated debate to ever happen. He said, “I’m standing in front of tens of thousands of people right now.”