The president has rehashed themes from his 2024 campaign, including musing on a transgender weightlifter and resurrecting a political opponent’s nickname.
President Donald Trump arrives in Palm Beach County
President Donald Trump will be staying at his Mar-a-Lago mansion in Palm Beach from Halloween until November 2nd.
- President Donald Trump, speaking at a summit in Miami, said Americans’ political choice is between “communism and common sense.”
- President Trump threatened to boycott the G20 summit in South Africa and touted the economic achievements of his second term.
- Venezuelan opposition leader Maria Colina Machado supported the Trump administration’s aggressive stance against the Maduro regime.
- The speech came amid a record-long government shutdown, for which polls show the public places the blame primarily on Trump and the Republican Party.
MIAMI — A day after the Republican’s election loss, President Donald Trump hammered home the themes of the midterm elections in a more than hour-long speech at a business and culture summit.
“Following last night’s results, the decision facing all Americans could not be clearer,” the president said. “A choice between communism and common sense.”
Trump’s speech to commemorate his return victory in the presidential election did not reveal any new initiatives, other than threatening to boycott the G20 meeting in South Africa in December over disagreements with the country’s government’s policies.
Beyond that, President Trump praised the stock market’s record returns, promised trillions of dollars in overseas investment, and promised another historic tax cut as part of “One Big, Beautiful Bill” he signed this summer.
President Trump also declared victory on border security and defended military attacks on ships leaving Venezuela, again claiming they are smuggling drugs that kill Americans.
“I think we can honestly say this is America’s Golden Age, and I think we’ll be able to say even more so over the next 12 months,” Trump said.
The president also rehashed themes from his 2024 campaign, including musings about transgender weightlifters and reviving nicknames for his political opponents, from former president “Sleepy Joe Biden” to Senate Minority Leader “Cry Chuck Schumer.” He again condemned the 2020 “rigged” election despite evidence to the contrary.
And he added more than a little bragging.
“People say it’s been the best nine months of any president,” President Trump said of the start of his second term in the White House. “And I truly believe that. If you just give it another nine months of this, you’ll be very happy and very content.”
Trump addressed a friendly audience of several thousand people. Many identified themselves as business owners, and some wore their trademark red “MAGA” hats. Miami Mayor Francis Suarez presented President Trump with the keys to the presidential library’s “real estate.” This is a nod to a parcel of land near the Caseya Center in downtown Miami that was offered to President Trump.
The president’s appearance was sandwiched between speeches by two other world figures, Nobel Peace Prize winner Maria Colina Machado and soccer player Lionel Messi, at an eclectic two-day conference on politics, business and culture.
President Trump’s remarks came just hours after Venezuelan opposition leaders wholeheartedly endorsed the administration’s hardline stance against Maduro’s regime. Messi was scheduled to give his final speech on the evening of the first day of the summit.
Nobel Peace Prize Winner Says President Trump’s Aggression Against Maduro Is ‘Absolutely Right’
Machado spoke via video as hostilities between the Trump administration and Venezuela’s Nicolas Maduro government intensify.
“President Trump’s strategy against this criminal narco-terrorist organization is absolutely correct because Nicolás Maduro is not the legitimate head of state,” Machado said.
A U.S. military operation that began in the southern Caribbean in September has resulted in some 15 deadly attacks on boats that Washington claims are smuggling deadly drugs from the Venezuelan coastline. News outlets have reported that Trump’s team is poised to launch attacks on Venezuelan military facilities within South America’s borders, but Trump himself has publicly given mixed signals.
In a Nov. 2 network interview, President Trump said he believed the Maduro regime was nearing its end, but when asked if the United States and Venezuela were headed for military conflict, he answered, “I don’t think so.”
President Maduro has turned to Moscow and China for support amid rising tensions with the United States. On November 4, a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson said that China “opposes any attempt to undermine peace and stability in Latin America and the Caribbean region, as well as unilateral coercive actions against foreign vessels beyond reasonable and necessary limits.”
Machado praised the Trump administration’s actions, saying they target Machado’s illicit sources of funding, including drug trafficking, gold smuggling, arms and weapons trafficking, and human trafficking.
“We need to cut those cash flows, and that’s exactly what President Trump is doing to protect the lives of millions of Americans, Latin Americans, and of course Venezuelans,” she said. “Maduro started this war, and President Trump is trying to end it.”
President Trump speaks in Miami on Victory Day 2024
Trump arrived in Miami on the anniversary of his return to the presidency in 2024. But a year later, the president and his party suffered a political setback, with Democrats and leftists winning races in Virginia, New Jersey, New York City, and a statewide redistricting proposal in California.
“America’s voters just signaled the resurgence of the Democratic Party. The liquidation of the Republican Party. The blue sweep. And it happened because Democratic candidates, no matter where they are or how they fit into our big tent parties, are meeting voters at kitchen tables, not gilded banquet halls,” Democratic National Committee Chairman Ken Martin wrote.
In an election night post, the president boasted that 10 months after returning to the Oval Office, the result was an ambitious and tumultuous referendum on himself.
“According to pollsters, the two reasons Republicans lost tonight’s election were ‘Trump wasn’t on the ballot and the government shutdown,'” the president said in a social media post.
President Trump took to the stage on the day he marked the disgrace and presided over the longest government shutdown in U.S. history at 36 days.
The previous 35-day shutdown in 2018-2019 occurred during the president’s first term in the Oval Office. Taken together, both episodes are questionable accomplishments for a man who has frequently said in pre-presidential interviews that the commander-in-chief would bear the brunt of the blame if the government were to shut down because White House figures were unable to reach a deal and reached an impasse.
In a 2013 interview during the Obama administration, President Trump said, “If the government shuts down, the president will be blamed.” “I think that would be a very negative assessment of the president of the United States. He is the person who has to bring people together.”
Trump blamed the stalemate on his rivals, claiming they were “crazy Democratic lunatics” who could “stop everything by withholding votes.” Surveys show that Americans are more likely to criticize the president and the Republican majority in Congress than the Democratic minority.
Record-long government shutdown is straining Republicans and the public.
In a mid-October poll conducted by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research, nearly 60% of respondents said President Trump and the Republican Congress bear “a lot” or “a lot” of responsibility for the shutdown, and 54% said the same about Democrats. In an NBC News poll released at the end of the month, 52% of respondents blamed Trump and the Republican Party, but only 42% blamed Congressional Democrats.
Throughout the ordeal, the president at times stumbled on his message. On November 4, President Trump claimed in a social media post that food assistance benefits would only be reinstated “when the radical left Democrats open up the government,” a statement later corrected by the White House Press Office, which said the administration was following a court order to continue providing payments.
The president also advised Senate Republicans not to be “weak and stupid” and vote to abolish the filibuster rule, which would clear the way for government funding bills to pass with a simple majority. Senate leaders ignored this request.
He has not publicly commented on a bipartisan House initiative seeking a compromise on extending Obamacare tax credits, the core issue of the government shutdown.
Antonio Fins is the politics and business editor for The Palm Beach Post, part of the USA TODAY Florida Network. Please contact us at afins@pbpost.com. Please support our journalism. Subscribe now.
