Former President Donald Trump praised his supporters Wednesday, calling them the “heart and soul of America,” one day after President Biden likened them to floating “garbage.”
“Kamala [Harris] and Joe [Biden] call us garbage. I call you the heart and soul of America,” Trump told the crowd at a lively rally in Green Bay, Wis.
“You are the heart and soul,” he reiterated. “You built our country. … far more than they built it.”
“My supporters are far higher quality than Crooked Joe or Lyin’ Kamala,” Trump said, arguing that “you can’t lead America if you don’t love Americans.”
Trump, 78, took the stage at the Resch Center – just across the street from Lambeau Field, the iconic home of the NFL’s Green Bay Packers – donning the same orange safety vest that he wore inside a MAGA-themed garbage truck unveiled hours earlier, when the former president landed in the Badger State.
The former president revealed that the plan to seize on Biden’s attack came together quickly, and that he was asked only 30 minutes before landing in Green Bay if he wanted to sit inside the sanitation vehicle.
“One of my people came in and said, ‘Sir, you know, the word garbage is the hottest thing right now. Would you like to drive a garbage truck?” Trump said.
“And they pulled up this garbage truck – I don’t know how the hell they did it so fast,” he marveled.
Biden, 81, set off a firestorm Tuesday night after his comments on a Harris campaign call came to light.
“The only garbage I see floating out there is his supporters,” the president said, later claiming that he was only referring to the comedian that made a crude joke about Puerto Rico at Trump’s Madison Square Garden rally Sunday.
The Republican nominee for president noted that Biden’s “garbage” remark is just the latest in a long list of Democratic attacks against his supporters.
“For the past nine years, Kamala and her party have called us racist bigots, fascist, deplorables, irredeemable Nazis and they called me Hitler,” Trump fumed.
“They’ve belittled you. They’ve demonized us. They’ve censored us. They’ve deplatformed us, and they’ve weaponized the power of our own government against all of us,” the 45th president continued. “They’ve taken your money. They’ve thrown open your borders to criminals and terrorists. They’ve flooded your towns with deadly drugs and death – they’re incompetent people. They’ve given your jobs to illegal migrants and sent our blood and treasure to fight in stupid foreign wars where the countries don’t even know who we are and where we’ve never heard of that country.”
“This Tuesday is your chance to stand up and declare you are not going to take it anymore,” Trump said to cheers.
The former president argued that Harris, 60, is running a campaign on “hate, anger and retribution” and for the last four years or so, she and Biden have treated “the whole country like garbage.”
Ahead of his remarks, Trump received a ringing endorsement from Green Bay Packers legend Brett Favre.
The Hall of Famer declared that “it’s time to bench Kamala and put in the star quarterback” – meaning Trump.
“It would be insane to give Kamala four more years in office,” Favre argued.
Current Packers running back AJ Dillon was also seen in the front row at the rally but did not speak at the event.
The latest RealClearPolitics average of polls shows Harris leading Trump in the Badger State by 0.2 percentage points.
Wisconsin has 10 Electoral College votes up for grabs on Election Day.