Trump's Las Vegas speech will be his first big rally following his New York conviction
Donald Trump will hold his first post-criminal conviction rally in Las Vegas on Sunday.
His audience at the event and on television, tablet and phone screens is likely to be immense given the midday speech comes fewer than two weeks after a New York jury pronounced him guilty on all 34 felony counts. He will deliver remarks as polls show a majority of Americans have concluded the verdict and trial were correct and fair.
Since then, Trump has done interviews on friendly networks and spoke at a town hall hosted by the conservative youth Turning Point USA organization.
So, what will Trump say in Las Vegas?
If past rally speeches are an indication, a lot about the New York trial as well as the other three felony cases plus the $500 million-plus in penalties against him in two other civil cases he has lost. Plus, a lot more.
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Here are 10 staples from previous Trump rally speeches.
1. Showmanship
Trump rallies have always been a political mix of Wrestlemania hyperbole and Rocky Horror Picture Show audience engagement. But the performative aspect has gotten more off-Broadway, one man stage show-like since Trump returned to post-presidential rallies in 2021.
Trump now performs a series of what he himself has described as "routines."
Some are stand up-style soliloquies. In one, the Biden administration begs for help from Iran — "Please, please Mr. Ayatollah, sir" Trump says — and another is a "way, no way, way, no way" back-and-forth discussion he says took place with Russian leader Vladimir Putin in which Trump asserts he warned Moscow not to take action against Ukraine.
A more elaborate skit ridicules what he describes as a disoriented President Joe Biden by walking around the stage as he mumbles in search of an exit. Another mimics what he said is a transgender weightlifter in a competition against a female rival — an act he told an audience in West Palm Beach last year that former first lady Melania Trump does not like because she thinks it is not presidential.
Then there is a staple from previous years — the dramatic reading of "The Snake." The lyrics are actually from a 1963 song written by civil rights activist and singer Oscar Brown. But Trump has repurposed it into an allegory decrying undocumented immigrants in America.
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2. Policy
Trump speeches are not for policy wonks. They are heavy on generalizations, place a premium on entertainment value and are light on details.
Trump, for example, has repeatedly vowed to launch the "largest ever" deportation of undocumented immigrants in America, at times referring to the early 1950s Eisenhower administration "Operation Wetback," though not by its ethnic slur name.
But he has not fine print language-detailed to his audiences how he would deport what he says are between 15 million to 20 million undocumented immigrants that have entered the country under the Biden administration, a figure more than twice the number reported by border patrol. Would he use the military? Local and state police forces? National guards? He hasn't said.
Trump has also promised rallygoers that he will reverse the inflationary spiral of the past three years with a "drill, baby, drill" policy to lower fuel and energy prices. He has signaled he would open up the pristine Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, one of the few remaining wild areas in the United States, to oil exploration.
As for an energy policy heavy on carbon, Trump has dismissed climate change and derisively called the progressive Democrats' "Green New Deal" the "Green New Scam."
More on that below ...
3. R-rated language
If you have small children, you may not want them watching or listening with you. The vulgar words "sh--" and "bull----" have become part of the Make America Great Again lexicon.
Speaking of which ...
4. Chants
The audience chants remain a staple of a Trump rally. You are likely to still hear "Drain the swamp" and "Build the wall."
But there is also now "Bull----" and "Turn around" — a call for the assembled broadcast media to pan the sizeable crowd and to prove, as Trump desires, the outpouring of support.
5. Dystopia
Trump has taken to depicting American life today in starker and darker tones.
He says the "country is going to hell" — and cities especially. He has intimated some sort of federal control of or action in urban areas, specifically Washington, D.C.
Trump rails from the podium about undocumented immigrants saying they are sent to America from prisons and insane asylums. He highlights specific murders committed by them although federal crime reports show, overall, criminality by immigrants in the United States is at much lower levels than that of native-born citizens.
In his South Bronx speech last month, Trump decried New York City's decline into violence and chaos even though the Big Apple's murder rate stood at 6.3 per 100,000 in 2022, ranking it among the country's safer municipalities, and 2023 data showed another 4.1% drop in crime.
In that speech, Trump drew such a bleak picture of the "city in decline," including "filthy encampments of drugged out homeless people," that the crowd reaction forced Trump to sooth and comfort.
"Don't worry, it gets positive, don't worry. It gets so positive," he said.
6. Name-dropping
Do you know who Alphonse Capone is? Hannibal Lecter?
If not, you might want to read up on early 20th Century crime figures and 1990s movies about serial murders.
Trump may ask.
7. Tangents
Pay attention because Trump tends to jump through tangents as he winds through his speeches.
He may start orating on an issue and then transition to a conversation he had with an unnamed acquaintance, or mention something a world leader once remarked to him, or how he was told something was impossible but he accomplished it anyway, before returning to his initial thought.
Trump always closes the circle on the matter, but in one speech last month he did not. He started telling his version of how he cajoled Mexico's government to send 28,000 troops to the border but, then, after passing through a series of tangents never finished the tale.
If that should happen again, Trump's version concludes with him threatening Mexico's president, presumably Andrés Manuel López Obrador, with tariffs only to have him capitulate and accede to the demands, according to Trump of course.
8. Truth-stretching
Trump is arguably the most fact-checked political figure of modern times — critics will say facts-challenged — and those who sparse his words will be busy again on Sunday.
You may hear that offshore wind turbines kill whales even though NOAA Fisheries has stated there is "no scientific evidence that noise resulting from" offshore wind sites "could potentially cause whale deaths" nor any "known links between large whale deaths and ongoing offshore wind activities."
Trump may also again slam electric-powered automobiles as poor alternatives because of their short ranges — only to the supermarket he may say — despite industry data shows they can travel 250 miles before a plug-in is needed.
9. Grievances
Trump has seethed at the judges and prosecutors in his New York cases, again raging that the proceedings were "rigged" and insisting that his persecutors are backed by political donor George Soros or somehow beholden to Democrats. He may claim that federal special counsel Jack Smith is "deranged."
He has alternately claimed that "Crooked Joe" Biden is senile but also the mastermind of a "weaponized" legal system, dubbed "lawfare," in which the incumbent president controls even the minds of anonymous people who served in the grand juries that indicted him.
In an interview with Sean Hannity, Trump said he had every "right to go after them" in retribution and vengeance if he is president again in reference to Biden and presumably the judges and prosecutors involved in the legal cases against him.
Trump may paint himself as a combo messianic sentinel and sacrificial lamb for the MAGA movement by saying "they" are coming after me to "get to you." He may also promise to be a Marvel-like Avenger who is MAGA's "retribution" for the wrongs of the country's governing elites and political ruling class — again, according to Trump.
"I am just in the way," he has said.
10. Music
You may recall Trump dancing into or out of a rally speech to the Village People's "YMCA" mega-hit.
The arrival music these days is the song adopted years ago as MAGA's anthem — Lee Greenwood's "God Bless the USA." But you may also hear "Justice for All" by the so-called J6 Prison Choir. It is a rendition of the "The Star-Spangled Banner" by people convicted of crimes related to the attack on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, with Trump's narration of the Pledge of Allegiance interspersed throughout.
Trump extols those convicted of crimes in what many Americans believe is one of the darkest days in U.S. history. He has also vowed to pardon many of those convicted and charged for Jan. 6 offenses if he wins another term.
Antonio Fins is a politics and business editor at The Palm Beach Post, part of the USA TODAY Florida Network. You can reach him at [email protected]. Help support our journalism. Subscribe today.
This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Post: What will he say in first post-trial rally? 10 things Trump might say.
