Photo: Abbie Parr Associated Press Former President of the United States and Republican candidate Donald Trump in Minnesota, May 17, 2024
Andrew Caballero-Reynolds – Agence France-Presse and Daniel Stublen – Agence France-Presse respectively in Atlanta and in Washington
Posted at 6:13 p.m. Updated at 9:56 p.m.
- United States
Donald Trump once again called Joe Biden a “crook” on Saturday in Texas in front of gun supporters, at a time when the current president was calling his Republican rival “deranged” for Georgia, where he campaigned among the African-American electorate.
Between two hearings at his criminal trial in New York, the former president of the United States Donald Trump and Republican candidate campaigns in front of the most fervent supporters of the right to own firearms, enshrined in the 2nd Amendment to the American Constitution.
Traveling to Dallas, Texas, Mr. Trump received the support of the National Rifle Association (NRA), a powerful lobby which held its annual meeting and with which the 77-year-old Republican billionaire maintains special relations. The NRA actually paid him tens of millions of dollars for his successful 2016 campaign.
In front of thousands of NRA members, Mr. Trump said that Biden was “by far the worst president in the history of our country” and “unspeakably stupid.”
“You’re fired, get out Joe ! », he said to the laughter of the audience, telling them that Mr. Biden was going to attack their firearms.
He called Joe Biden “Trickster Joe,” his favorite epithet for the president, saying he is a “threat to democracy.”
L The current American president is in Georgia, a state he narrowly won in 2020, notably to campaign with African-American voters.
« My opponent is not a good loser. But he's a loser,” said Joe Biden, campaigning in a restaurant in that state, in Atlanta, adding that “our democracy is really in danger.”
On Friday in Minnesota, Mr. Trump reaffirmed his never-proven theory that the 2020 presidential election, won by rival Joe Biden, was rigged.
The Democrat reacted on Saturday, declaring that his opponent “is not only obsessed with his 2020 defeat. He is clearly disturbed.”
“We cannot let this man become president. Our children’s future is at stake,” he told the audience gathered at Mary Mac’s Tea Room, a restaurant in Atlanta’s black community.
Sunday, Joe Biden is scheduled to speak to students at Morehouse College, a famous university in the African-American community where civil rights hero Martin Luther King studied.
49,000 gunshot deaths in 2021
Mr. Trump has already promised that if he returned to power, he would unravel the gun regulation measures put in place during his mandate by current President Joe Biden, and which are considered timid by supporters of stricter control.
While Joe Biden promises to act to ban semi-automatic rifles, used in the deadliest killings, Donald Trump promises the status quo and wants to be the candidate of gun owners. “The Democrats want to take their guns, and they will take them,” he assured Friday in Minnesota.
“President Biden and I will continue “to take on the gun lobby to keep Americans safe, while Donald Trump continues to sacrifice the safety of our children and our communities to satisfy his special interests,” Vice President Kamala Harris responded, in a declaration on Saturday.
Donald Trump spoke to the NRA in a troubled context for the association. It lost its iconic president Wayne LaPierre, who resigned in January before his civil trial in New York, where he was found guilty by a jury of corruption and mismanagement, with a financial compensation of more than $4.3 million to the key.
The United States has more individual weapons in circulation than inhabitants, a proliferation which results in a very high rate of deaths by firearms. fire in the United States, without comparison with that of other developed countries.
Approximately 49,000 people died from gunshots in 2021, compared to 45,000 in 2020, already a year record, more than 130 deaths per day, more than half of which are suicides.