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MISSOULA, Mont. – President Trump hailed the killing of a journalist by a Republican candidate last year and criticized his Democratic opponents on Thursday night in a free rally intended to mobilize grassroots support for the upcoming mid-term elections.
In urging the crowd to vote for re-election candidate Greg Gianforte and sentenced to anger management and community service for assaulting a journalist last spring, Trump warned jokingly at the crowd. never fight him.
"I had heard that his body had been criticized by a journalist," said Trump, noting that he initially feared that Mr. Gianforte would be eliminated during a special election held in November. May last. "I said," Wait a minute. I know Montana pretty well; I think that could help him. 'And that's what happened."
"Anyone who can do a body slam," added the president, "it's my kind of guy".
Mr. Trump made no mention at the rally of Jamal Khashoggi, dissident journalist and Saudi editorialist for the Washington Post, who disappeared this month after visiting the Saudi consulate in Istanbul. US intelligence officials said Khashoggi was most likely killed by Saudi officials.
The reprisals against the president over his attacks on the media and his government's moderate response to allegations that the Saudi government orchestrated the killing were swift.
The Guardian US, which employs the reporter that Mr. Gianforte slammed, issued a statement Thursday night after Trump had finished speaking.
"Celebrating the attack of a journalist who was simply doing his job is a First Amendment attack by someone who has taken an oath to defend it," said John Mulholland, editor of The Guardian. US. "In the aftermath of the murder, Jamal Khashoggi is likely to invite further attacks on journalists, here or around the world, where they often face much more serious threats."
Mr. Trump's recent campaign blitz is part of a broader effort to build support for Republican candidates in mid-term. At the rally, the president depicted votes for Mr. Gianforte; Matt Rosendale, Senate candidate; and other candidates here in a referendum on his first 21 months in office and to ensure that his policies can continue unhindered.
But Mr Trump has frequently deviated from the subject: he has put up a defense against the inquiry of the special council on Russian interference in the elections; he reiterated his electoral victory and the bitter struggle to confirm Judge Brett M. Kavanaugh in the Supreme Court; and he rejected the idea that Russia had been ingested in the 2016 election to help his campaign. (Intelligence officials have indicted a number of Russian officials and companies.)
"Can you imagine me saying," Gee, let's call the Russians "?" Said Mr. Trump, as the sun set on the Minuteman Aviation hangar here in Missoula. "If I call the Russians, the first to know it would be the state of Montana and they would not be too happy about that."
But Mr. Trump has finally returned to the message he is likely to use as he spends the rest of the week campaigning for western Republicans.
"This is an election of Kavanaugh, the caravan, public order and common sense," the president told the crowd, highlighting the battle for President Kavanaugh's nomination and caravan of migrants heading to Mexico and the United States.
The Senate elections here in Montana, a state he won comfortably in 2016, he said, also serve as revenge for his personal vendetta against Senator Jon Tester, a Democrat, who was one of the most first to express their concerns about Trump's April candidate. Secretary of Veterans Affairs, Dr. Ronny L. Jackson.
"I'm here because I can never forget what Jon Tester did to a man of the highest quality," said Trump. He was again targeting Mr. Tester as a catalyst for Jackson's failed appointment. "So, I have to come, and I have to help, because what he did was unfair."
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