LOS ANGELES — With just 23 days left until election day and voters already casting ballots, former President Donald Trump rallied supporters in the California desert while railing against the state’s Democratic leadership, notably his presidential rival, Vice President Kamala Harris.
Trump blasted California for having “the highest inflation, the highest taxes, the highest gas prices, the highest cost of living, the most regulations, the most expensive utilities, the most homelessness, the most crime, the most decay and the most illegal aliens.“
“Other than that, you’re doing quite well, actually,” Trump said. “We’re not going to let Kamala Harris do to America what she did to California.”
The president spoke shortly after 5 p.m. on a polo field at Calhoun Ranch, located just outside the city of Coachella, but supporters lined up hours earlier in the scorching desert heat to see the former president.
As they spent hours in temperatures that reached 100 degrees, they sought shade in the few spots they could and large tanks of ice quickly emptied as attendees grabbed fistfuls of cubes to put under their hats or fill water bottles. Multiple medical emergencies occurred during the rally.
“Welcome to Trumpchella!” said state GOP chairwoman Jessica Millan Patterson, one of the warm-up speakers for the former president.
Trump’s visit to the home state of Harris offers him another chance to bash the liberal policies of the Bay Area native as well as California itself — one of his favorite refrains on the campaign trail. Harris served as San Francisco’s district attorney before she was elected as California’s attorney general and to the U.S. Senate.
And the Coachella Valley, home to a thriving agricultural industry and a large population of Latino farmworkers, provides a backdrop for Trump to highlight the region’s water and agricultural needs, as well as immigration. Latinos comprise almost 98% of Coachella, according to the U.S. Census.
Deriding California as a “sanctuary state” as he spoke to thousands of supporters, Trump said, “The people of California are not going to take it any longer.”
He repeatedly tied immigrants — many of whom, he said, come from “dungeons of the third world” — to criminal activity, though studies show that immigrants commit crimes at lower levels than nonimmigrants. He blasted Harris, whom President Joe Biden tasked with addressing the root causes of immigration from three nations in Central America, as a failed “border czar.”
“Kamala Harris got you into this mess and only Trump will get you out of it,” Trump said.
Donning his red “Make America Great Again” hat to guard against the beating desert sun, Trump encouraged the crowd to vote in large numbers, to make the election “too big to rig.” He has repeatedly denied losing the 2020 election.“They are good at one thing, which one thing?” Trump asked the crowd.“Cheating!” the crowd roared back.
Rep. Raul Ruiz, D-Calif., said the “Coachella Valley is known for being a presidential playground,” noting that Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., campaigned in the valley, former President Barack Obama came to golf and Presidents Gerald Ford and Dwight Eisenhower retired in the region. Still, he called Trump’s decision to visit Coachella “baffling.”
“We are familiar with having presidents come and leave a mark here and we respect and love them… but ex-President Trump is different,” Ruiz said on a call from Coachella Valley, where he was spending the day talking to reporters. “There doesn’t seem to be a lot of respect for the demographics that live here — not just in his vile rhetoric but also in his policies.”
The rally venue is located just outside the 41st Congressional District, where Democrat Will Rollins, a former federal prosecutor, is challenging Republican Rep. Ken Calvert, who was expected to attend the rally. The race will be critical in determining which party wins control of Congress.
Calvert, who was endorsed by Trump in the 2022 congressional election and on Saturday for his current campaign, voted against certifying the 2020 election results in Arizona and Pennsylvania though he acknowledged that Democrat Joe Biden won the presidency.
“Welcome Trump,” said Calvert, speaking at the rally. “Show him some sanity still exists in California, and it’s right here in Riverside County.”
Other speakers included the fiery Republican Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida and Dennis Quaid, the actor who recently portrayed President Ronald Reagan in his namesake movie.
Mary and Pete Venegas drove more than an hour from their Hemet home to see Trump, whom they plan to vote for the first time in November.
Mary Venegas, a former Democrat who sat out the 2020 election because she was unenthusiastic about Biden, said Trump deserves “a second chance.” Wearing a red Trump T-shirt, she said she is now a registered Republican.