ANCHORAGE — By noon Saturday, a sea of red, white and blue surrounded the Alaska Airlines Center in Anchorage as conservative Republicans from across the state gathered to see former President Donald Trump speak at his latest “Save America" rally.
While teasing the raucous audience by refraining from confirming plans to seek a return in January 2025 to the Oval Office he occupied for four years — “because of the great people of Alaska we may have to do it again“ — his appeals late Saturday afternoon were focused on endorsing former Gov. Sarah Palin and Kelly Tshibaka. Palin is on the Aug. 16 special election ballot against fellow Republican Nick Begich and Democrat Mary Petola for the Congressional seat vacated by the death of Rep. Don Young.
Tshibaka is hoping to upset incumbent Lisa Murkowski in the Republican primary for U.S. Senate that same day.
A victory would no doubt embolden Trump as to the power he continues to have within the party, pitting his conservative wing against Murkowski’s more moderate base.
Trump made clear his disdain for Murkowski — who voted to convict the president in his second impeachment trial following the Jan. 6 incursion at the U.S. Capitol. He mentioned her early (45 seconds into) his speech — “You have such a beautiful state, and such a horrible senator“ — and often: Her name came up at least 40 times in the speech by unofficial count.
“She is the biggest RINO in the party and is a complete fraud,” he said, running down a list that included allegations of her voting against ANWAR, for taxpayer-funded late-term abortions, for amnesty for undocumented immigrants, against the border wall, against the Second Amendment, against Brett Kavanaugh’s nomination to the Supreme Court, and for the formation of the “unselect” Jan. 6 committee.
He also warned the crowd — both the 4,829 fans inside and hundreds watching outside on closed circuit TV — that Murkowski was behind Alaska’s new voting system.
“She knew she couldn’t win a straight-up election, so she went to this ranked-choice crap,” he said. “She could finish in fifth place but win because of that crazy system.”
A Monmouth University poll released Tuesday showed only 12 percent of Americans are happy with the direction the country is going, and that sentiment echoed throughout the arena as the crowd applauded time and time again.
“I got gasoline down to $1.87 per gallon,” Trump boasted. “I gave you the largest middle-class tax cut in American history. … And we had the greatest economy in history of the world before a certain virus from China.”
Even with regard to the pandemic — to which many critics claim his mishandling led to the end of his presidency — Trump brazenly noted that more Americans have died under Biden (620,000) than during his nine months of combatting the epidemic (392,000). Biden has held office for just shy of 18 months.
On the international stage, the former president drew the sharpest contrasts with Joe Biden’s administration with regard to his border control policies and his planned withdrawal from Afghanistan.
“As bad as they were doing on the U.S. border — no country has ever done worse — but when the Afghanistan thing happened [the deaths of 13 U.S. servicemembers at the hand of a suicide bomber and abandonment of 200 to 400 American citizens and $85 billion worth of military equipment],” Trump argued. “I would have withdrawn with strength and dignity, and I would have taken the military out last, not first.”
And, of course, as he has done since election night 20 months ago, he revisited his claims of fraud in the 2020 election. This time, his claim was bolstered by the Wisconsin state Supreme Court’s ruling Friday that unmanned, unsecured drop boxes being placed around the city to collect ballots was illegal.
There has been no evidence of widespread voter fraud.
“These radical Democrat judges and election officials systematically violated the law to rig the 2020 election” he said to roaring applause. “I ran twice; I won twice; I did better the second time than I did the first. But the vote counter is way more important than the candidate,” he concluded on the topic, referencing but not naming former Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev.
He revisited that topic in his final remarks, calling for voter reform laws, including the exclusive use of paper ballots, Voter ID, banning non-citizens from voting, the end of drop boxes, and an end to ranked-choice voting.
Attendees came from across the state, including Fairbanks resident Bonnie Rounds, who flew down Saturday morning with plans to fulfill a bucket list item and see Trump. She took a flight back home after the rally.
“I am one of We The People,” she said. “I believe in American values, and I feel like the current administration is failing the people.”
She was undeterred by the line stretching more than a mile around the Alaska Airlines Center when she arrived just before noon, hoping she would be among the thousands in line to be admitted.
Others drove to Anchorage, including Arnold and Joan Mason. They left their home on the Kenai Peninsula at 2 a.m., arrived on the University of Alaska at Anchorage campus at 5:30 a.m. and waited in line for six hours.
Having moved here five years ago from upstate New York, Mason thought it was unlikely that the former president would ever make it to Alaska.
“It was important for us to do something,” Arnold Mason said in evaluating both the controversial election of 2020 and the current political climate. “If we don’t fight this time [in November], it’s over.”
And as for Trump as a presidential candidate in 2024: “If he quit because of all the hassle this has caused him, I wouldn’t blame him,” Mason said. “But I hope he doesn’t.”
