President Trump already has 2020 vision.
“We will continue to win, win, win,” he told supporters at a campaign-style Florida rally Saturday.
“I am here because I want to be among my friends and among the people,” he said, after a day spent mulling over possible replacements for the ousted Mike Flynn as national security adviser.
Trump’s message was a reminder to Beltway insiders that his voters still have his back — and a continuation of his blistering attacks on the mainstream media.
“I also want to speak to you without the filter of the fake news,” he said. “The dishonest media which has published one false story after another with no sources, even though they pretend to have them. They make them up in many cases.”
Wife Melania introduced her husband with a short statement, after leading the crowd in a recitation of the Lord’s Prayer.
She called for “a nation committed to greater civility and unity between people from all sides of the political divide. I will always stay true to myself and be truthful to you, no matter whatever the opposition is saying about me.”
His festive, flag-draped supporters, who formed a three-mile line outside as they waited to clear security, were poles apart from the staffing turmoil, Congressional foot-dragging, and press hostility Trump faces back in Washington.
“President Trump wants to speak to the public his way, on his own terms,” said GOP consultant Susan Del Percio before the rally.
“This is the way he won the primary, this is the way he became president,” Del Percio said. “A Trump rally will get a lot more viewers and get a lot more people pumped up than a press briefing.”
Flynn’s Monday resignation, after leaked phone calls led to accusations of illegal contacts with Russian officials, opened what was to become a rough week for the outsider president.
Trump’s Labor Secretary nominee, Andy Puzder, bowed out Wednesday after GOP support for him collapsed, and the president’s signature travel ban on immigrants from seven mostly Muslim countries remained on hold.
At an incendiary press conference Thursday, Trump lacerated the media and seethed about leaks from Obama-administration holdovers within the government.
Trump’s Orlando speech backburnered such controversies as he staged what his aides called “a campaign rally for America.” His campaign organization — not the government — paid for the event.
He filed an official statement of candidacy for the 2020 election with the Federal Elections Commission on Inauguration Day, far earlier than any past president, and has already trademarked a possible campaign slogan: “Keep America Great!”
But presidential historians called the rally an unusual departure from tradition this early in an administration.
“I can’t think of another campaign-style rally in a non-election year,” Bruce Miroff, a SUNY Albany political scientist told The Post. “Presidents have sometimes held rallies to campaign for prominent agenda items, but this is not related to any particular policy.”
“It’s pretty obvious that Trump is eager to get out of Washington to connect to his base,” Miroff said.
The White House announced Saturday that John Bolton, the former US ambassador to the UN, and Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster will interview for the NSA position Sunday, along with Lt. Gen. Keith Kellogg, currently filling in as Flynn’s temporary replacement, and West Point superintendent Lt. Col. Robert Caslen.
Former CIA director David Petraeus is no longer being considered, the White House said.
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