Thousands of people gathered at an airplane hangar in Albuquerque yesterday to hear Donald Trump make his case to be president for a second time.
Scheduled just a few days ago, the rally at CSI Aviation drew an energetic crowd of Trump supporters.
The former president touched on a number of his typical rally topics, emphasizing attacks on the immigration policies of president Joe Biden and vice president Kamala Harris.
He also repeated what many have called the Big Lie—that is, claiming that he defeated Biden in the 2020 election due to what he called cheating, though dozens of court rulings investigated the claims and none found any evidence of widespread voter fraud.
He announced to the Albuquerque crowd that he believes he won the New Mexico count in both 2016 against Hillary Clinton and in 2020, even though he lost both by wide margins.
Clinton bested Trump in New Mexico in 2016 by about 65,000 votes and eight percentage points while Biden defeated Trump in 2020 by about 100,000 votes, or 11 percentage points.
He also said he visited New Mexico yesterday because of what some polls say is increasing support among the Latino community. New Mexico has the highest percentage of Hispanic residents in the U.S. at just under 50 percent.
“ And with your support, New Mexico, look, don't make me waste a whole damn half a day here," Trump said.
"Okay. I came here. You know, we could be nice to each other, or we could talk Turkey. Let's talk Turkey. Okay. First of all, Hispanics love Trump. They do.”
Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham issued a statement in response to Trump’s visit, calling his speech “rambling and incoherent.”
The governor also called him out for attacking the Affordable Care Act, claiming that he would kick 324,000 New Mexicans off of their health coverage.
The latest average of polls for New Mexico has Harris leading Trump by about seven percentage points.
During his speech, Trump endorsed the campaigns of Nella Domenici—who’s challenging incumbent Democratic U.S. Senator Martin Heinrich—and Yvette Herrell, who is aiming to reclaim the U.S. House seat in the second district that she lost to Gabe Vasquez two years ago.
The most recent polls have Heinrich and Vasquez leading their GOP challengers by 11 and 4 points, respectively.
