The Bold Promise Donald Trump Made In A Leaked Mar-A-Lago Video
Donald Trump is no stranger to making bigly baseless claims. Still, during a fundraiser speech for the far-right North Carolina gubernatorial hopeful, Mark Robinson, at Mar-a-Lago in December 2023, he managed to out-Trump, even himself. The former POTUS' oration ended up on social media after an onlooker caught Trump on camera, and it's eyebrow-raising, to say the least.
If there was a cent for every time Trump has been controversial, we could end global poverty. Trump's outrageous immigration comments played a significant role in his 2016 election platform. They helped him ride the wave to the White House. They are proving to be just as vehement and divisive in Trump's 2024 campaign. He would have to go pretty far to cause shock and awe with one of his speeches, as the world has become fairly immune to the rants. Still, Trump's latest immigration message to his supporters at a New Hampshire rally on December 16, 2023, had the non-MAGA world up in arms.
The Biden administration slammed Trump for claiming immigrants are "poisoning the blood of our country" and vowing to suppress opposition to his ideology. "Echoing the grotesque rhetoric of fascists and violent white supremacists and threatening to oppress those who disagree with the government are dangerous attacks on the dignity and rights of all Americans, on our democracy, and on public safety," White House spokesperson Andrew Bates said in a statement obtained by Bloomberg. However, the bold promise Trump made in a leaked Mar-a-Lago video blows his previous bluster out of the political water.
The one percenters
In a leaked Mar-a-Lago video, Donald Trump's bold promise showed his true political colors. "I know plenty of you, and you're rich as hell," Trump told a laughing crowd. "We're going to give you tax cuts; we're going to pay off our debt."
The Bulwark claims Trump's promise to throw money at the über wealthy makes him "vulnerable" as it hardly fits with his supposed "drain the swamp" bring down the elite populist candidate mandate. They hypothesized it would alienate his red-hatted blue-collar supporters in the Rust Belt. However, this is the man who told cheering supporters at an Iowa campaign rally in 2016 that he "could stand in the middle of 5th Avenue and shoot somebody, and I wouldn't lose any voters." He also has a gold-plated toilet and flies into rallies on a private jet, so that ship seems to have sailed.
Meanwhile, Trump continued to spout off bold ideals later in the video. "They're calling me a dictator," he said. "'Trump wants to be a dictator. Trump wants to be!' And you know how it started? [I was asked] a question. 'Tell me you don't want to be a dictator.' No, I won't say that." Since he was addressing the crowd during a Mark Robinson fundraiser, Trump was definitely playing to the audience. The gubernatorial candidate gives 45 a run for his money in the extreme far-right stakes.
More hate, less tolerance
It's hardly a surprise that Donald Trump hosted a fundraiser for Mark Robinson at Mar-a-Lago. Per The Guardian, the North Carolina gubernatorial hopeful is Islamaphobic and anti-semitic. Robinson says Muslim immigrants are here to invade. He asserts that a worldwide conspiracy of Jewish bankers represents a modern-day incarnation of the "four horsemen of the apocalypse." Robinson is also vehemently anti-LGBTQ+, branding gay and trans people "filth" and deeming homosexuality "an abominable sin."
Robinson's outspoken and bigoted views are firmly in line with Trump's. In a bid to firm up as many red-star votes as possible, the 2024 presidential candidate has tossed his hollow 2016 campaign promise to protect members of the LGBTQ+ community out of the window. "As your president, I will do everything in my power to protect our LGBTQ citizens from the violence and oppression of a hateful foreign ideology," he vowed in July 2016 following the Orlando nightclub shootings.
Seven years on, and Trump is now all in on anti-queer rhetoric. "These people are sick; they are deranged," Trump ranted about transgender athletes at the North Carolina Republican Convention in June 2023. The audience erupted in cheers as he vowed to cut federal funding to any schools that teach critical race theory, trans rights, and "other inappropriate racial, sexual or political content on our children." He remarked that whenever he addresses transgender issues, "the crowd goes crazy."