In Missouri, Trump Labels McCaskill ‘Far-Left’ and Dems ‘Loco’
Barnstorming president trying to put state AG Josh Hawley in Senate
President Donald Trump on Thursday returned to Missouri, a Senate battleground, to label Democratic Sen. Claire McCaskill a “far-left” lawmaker — and her party “crazy.”
Moments before declaring he would “stay nice,” he said the Democratic Party’s agenda is the “agenda of the extreme far-left.”
“They’ve gone crazy, folks,” he added.
“They’ve gone loco,” he said. The audience, packed in an airport Hangar in Columbia, laughed and applauded. They did so again when he said of Republicans, “we’re sane.”
Trump declared the state’s voters on Tuesday will “retire far-left Democrat Claire McCaskill.”
“She’ll never vote with me,” Trump said, calling that “the problem” with her holding a Senate seat.
[Trump Warns Rock-Throwing Migrants, Plans Asylum-Ending Order Next Week]
“She’s been saying nice things. I said, ‘I didn’t know she was a Republican.’ … She did even vote for Justice [Brett] Kavanaugh,” Trump said. The crowd booed loudly at the mention of the incumbent’s vote against the now-Supreme Court jurist.
Trump declared her opponent, GOP state Attorney General Josh Hawley, once in office, “will be a star.”
And he used the rally’s opening minutes, when he wasn’t listing his perceived accomplishments since taking office, to mock the Antifa movement.
He described its members as “lucky” law enforcement uses restraint rather than force when they protest, saying its members have “weak little faces” who, when confronted, “run back to their mommy’s basement.”
The crowd booed.
When Trump criticized the media, he paused and said some journalists are “fine people.” But the microphones in the hangar picked up one angry audience member declaring “all” media as the opposite.
[Midterm Barnstorming: Trump Channels Reagan]
Trump was in Columbia mostly to try to fire up the conservative base to turn out Tuesday in big numbers for Republican state Attorney General Josh Hawley, who has opened a lead over incumbent Democratic Sen. Claire McCaskill.
Inside Elections with Nathan Gonzales rates the race as Tilt Republican. A Fox News poll found a tie, while a Missouri Scout survey shows the state’s top attorney with a four percentage point lead.
Trump is in the second day of a six-day final midterms barnstorming push that will take him to eight battleground states, from Florida to Montana. He took the stage in Columbia just hours after saying he plans to sign an executive order next week aimed at ending asylum for undocumented migrants to stop them from getting a “free pass” into the United States with “meritless claims.”
He also warned members of two migrant groups to put down their rocks — or else, saying he has ordered thousands of U.S. military troops and law enforcement and military personnel at the southern border will treat rocks that might be thrown by members of two migrant caravans approaching the U.S.-Mexico border as “a firearm.” (He never, however, said he has or plans to give a fire-at-will order if the stones start flying.)
Trump has settled on immigration as the foundation of his closing pitch to voters. In recent weeks, he has told reporters he sees the issue as a winning one for his party. He has ratcheted up his rhetoric about the caravans this week, saying they contain dangerous criminals — his campaign issued an ad depicted some migrants as cop-killers.
Trump described the midterms as a “choice between jobs and mobs,” again saying Democrats have gone “crazy.”
The president, as he does for GOP candidates who need a boost, invited Hawley to the microphone. He falsely claimed McCaskill is sponsoring an “open borders” immigration reform bill. And when he noted her worries about whether Russia affected the 2016 election, the crowd angrily booed.
Hawley, no newcomer to politics, seemed to know what he was doing when he tried to link McCaskill to Hillary Clinton. “Lock her up,” the crowd chanted — right on cue.
Using Trump’s signature catch phrase from his former television show “The Apprentice,” Hawley said Missouri voters should tell his opponent, “You’re fired.”
The crowed roared its approval.
Trump, who earlier this week denied he has been fear-mongering on the campaign trail, warned Democrats with more power would equal “giant caravans” of migrants pouring into the country.
Trump described female voters across the board voting for him in 2016; he excluded that his female support was mostly from white women. And he predicted he would do better with that key voting bloc on Tuesday than experts are predicting — though he offered no polling data or supporting evidence beyond saying, “Women want security.”
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