Only a few hours after signing an executive order supposedly ending his policy of splitting children from their families at the Mexican border, Donald Trump headed to Duluth, Minnesota, for a campaign-style rally in a state that, as Politico recounted, has not voted for a Republican presidential candidate since Richard Nixon in 1972.
A video to watch a live stream of the Trump Minnesota rally can be found below on this page. But what will Trump tell his supporters after what political experts are calling his “embarrassing surrender,” in the words of the Washington Post , after refusing to back down from the shocking policy for weeks?
Trump had repeatedly and falsely blamed the Democratic Party for creating the “law,” which does not exist — as the Huffington Post reported — that caused children to be ripped from their parents at the border. He also said in a Twitter post that immigrants “infest” the United States.
Trump’s supporters echoed his support of the family separation policy, and in one case, former Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski ridiculed a 10-year-old girl with Down syndrome who was taken away from her parents by making a “womp womp” sound in a Fox News interview, as the Inquisitr reported.
Trump’s rally at 9,000-seat Amsoil Arena is scheduled to begin at 6:30 p.m. Central Daylight Time, 7:30 p.m. Eastern, and 4:30 p.m. Pacific. Watch a live stream of the rally in the video below.
Trump’s rallies are known for their over-the-top, unhinged moments, with Trump making outrageous and inflammatory statements. The Inquis i tr reported on the most insane moments from his recent rally in Michigan, in which Trump pledged to “shut down the country,” exhorted the crowd to boo Republican Senator John McCain who is suffering from terminal brain cancer, and brought Lewandowski on stage with him, where the former campaign manager proceeded to scream.
But Minnesota, unusually, has not just one of its United States Senate seats on the ballot in the 2018 midterm elections, as CNBC reported. Both seats are currently held by Democrats, and Trump will likely target both incumbents in his rally speech on Wednesday.
One of those seats is held by two-term incumbent Amy Klobuchar , while the other belongs to former Lieutenant Governor Tina Smith, who as NPR reported was appointed to fill the seat in January after incumbent Al Franken was forced to step down over a sexual misconduct scandal. Smith will be facing election for the Senate seat for the first time.
But most suspense around the rally revolves around what Trump will say about the family separation policy that earlier on Wednesday he moved to rescind, as NBC News reported. The new Trump executive order keeps in place his “zero tolerance” policy for individuals and families that come to the border without documentation, but would place parents into detention centers together with their children.
The executive order allows families to be held in the detention centers together for an indefinite period of time, in defiance of a 1997 ruling that prohibits government authorities from detaining children for more than 20 days. According to Talking Points Memo editor Josh Marshall, the order appears deliberately designed to fail.
“What will almost inevitably happen is that a court will step in, say you can’t do that and then Trump will announce that the judge is forcing him to keep separating families,” Marshall wrote.