Donald Trump’s former lawyer Rudy Giuliani speaks at the ReAwaken America Tour in Sterling Heights on June 7, 2024. (Photo:Anna Liz Nichols)
Thousands of people armed with bibles, “Let’s Go Brandon” shirts and glittery red, white and blue cowboy hats on Friday poured into Grace Christian Church in Sterling Heights for the controversial, far-right ReAwaken America Tour.
The event in Macomb County — a stronghold for former President Donald Trump in both 2016 and 2020 — was organized by Trump’s national security advisor, Michael Flynn. The tour, which continues Saturday, featured Trump’s son, Eric Trump, and former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, a former Trump lawyer.
Eric Trump thanked Flynn for his commitment to the Trump presidential campaign. Flynn was convicted on criminal charges after he admitted to lying to the FBI about his communications with Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak. He was later pardoned by Trump.
“What they’ve done since then they went after him [Flynn] — they tried to destroy his life. They tried to destroy his family, they tried to keep him down,” Trump said. “The guy is still standing on this stage and I can’t tell you how much courage that takes.”
The event featured dozens of other speakers including pastors, anti-vaccination advocates and individuals supporting QAnon conspiracy theories and selling books of prophecy.
The Christian organization Faithful America said it has sponsored a mobile billboard near the conference “calling attention to the dangers of the tour and its Christian nationalism.” The group has also done so at other ReAwaken America events since 2022.
Faithful America’s mobile billboard against the Reawaken America Tour in Virginia Beach | Courtesy photo
“Jesus teaches us a path of love, truth and peace, yet unholy Christian nationalism hijacks his name for bigotry, disinformation, and political violence,” said the Rev. Nathan Empsall, executive director of Faithful America. “The ReAwaken America Tour might feature baptisms and praise music, but don’t let that fool you: The event’s real goal is spreading conspiracy theories, election denial and even political violence throughout Michigan and beyond in order to elect Donald Trump and other MAGA Republicans, no matter how much they have to drag the church through the mud to make that happen.”
Hands were raised and hymns were sung at the revival meeting-style event calling for donations for conservative causes. Speakers said Democrats had declared “war on God” and called for bringing back Donald Trump, who they said was God’s chosen president, to the White House.
Last month, a New York jury found him guilty of 34 felonies related to a scheme during the 2016 election to cover up hush money payments to a porn star who had publicly said the two had an affair.
Democrats are grasping at straws, making a farce of the legal system, indicting a billionaire for a $130,000 payment made to a lawyer as a legal expense years ago, Eric Trump said at the event.
“I was in that courtroom almost every single day and guys, you wouldn’t believe the corruption that we have in this country?” said Trump, who attended some of the trial. “I’m in that courtroom and you want to talk about a rigged system? A judge that’s just sitting there, his daughter’s apparently making an absolute fortune. So many people have looked into her life, she raises a fortune for the Democrats in New York right. So this is the daughter of the judge. The judge isn’t allowing any witness on the stand. Literally like denying every witness.”
The judge presiding over Trump’s New York indictment, Juan Merchan, placed a gag order in Trump’s case after he went after his daughter, Loren Merchan, who has done fundraising for Democratic political candidates. CNN reports that a screenshot asserting to be from her LinkedIn page said she had been “the director of digital persuasion for now-Vice President Kamala Harris’ 2020 presidential campaign.”
Eric Trump speaks at the ReAwaken America Tour in Sterling Heights on June 7, 2024. (Photo:Anna Liz Nichols)
Trump’s attempts to disqualify the judge due to his daughter’s political affiliation were unsuccessful.
The vitriol and weaponization of the legal system has been “torture” for the whole Trump family. And the case in New York, one of four total criminal indictments Trump is facing, is illustrating how rigged the judicial system has become, Eric Trump said.
“You would end the suffering and the torture and the weaponization of government ao damn quickly, if he just said, ‘I’m not going to run,’” Trump said. “… The problem is that’s exactly what these crooked people want. … If we let them get away with this stuff, this is going to be their game plan for the rest of eternity — it probably is anyway. What they’re gonna do is they’re just going to politically crucify every single person that isn’t a part of their little establishment, that’s not part of their little ecosystem. And thank God that he [Donald Trump] had the backbone. … He’s created the greatest political movement this country has ever seen. There’s no question about it.”
Both of Donald Trump’s impeachments while he was president are “badges of honor,” Eric Trump asserted. His father is flicking “the hornets nest” in Washington, D.C., and is challenging government.
“Just the positive attitude that he kept, I mean, unbelievable. The guy’s unbelievable. He’s got backbone of absolute steel … didn’t faze him,” Trump said.
After the guilty verdict, Donald Trump raised $34.2 million by the end of the day, Eric Trump said.
“Sometimes when they kick you the hardest — and I’ve seen this time and time again and time and time again — it’s the law of unintended consequences,” Trump said. “Who would have ever thought that out of 34 indictments, you could raise [a total of] over $300 million, which is more money than we raised in all of the 2016 campaign … if you don’t believe that that is God looking down?”
ReAwaken America Tour in Sterling Heights on June 7, 2024. (Photo:Anna Liz Nichols)
Another speaker was Giuliani, who ran a Michigan House Oversight hearing in December 2020 in which he told lawmakers they could overturn the presidential election that Donald Trump lost to President Joe Biden. Giuliani has been in hot water in numerous cases ranging from sexual assault to interfering with the 2020 election.
But despite his own legal troubles, notably being ordered by a judge to pay $150 million to Georgia election workers he defamed, Giuliani still is calling attention to what he sees are injustices in Trump’s indictments.
Giuliani zeroed in on the judge’s instruction to the jury in the New York case that the jury didn’t have to unanimously agree on how the crime was committed. There has been rhetoric that the judge instructed the jury that they did not have to be unanimous in their decision to convict. This is not true, as the jury was instructed that they didn’t have to agree on some of the details of the case, but the verdict had to be unanimous.
“I’ve tried and been involved in over 100 criminal cases; it was unthinkable to me that you could have not a unanimous verdict. Things have happened in the last four or five years, where I wake up in the morning, and I say, ‘What do you mean?’” Giuliani said.
Biden and Democrats are borrowing from communist philosopher Karl Marx on how to take over a nation, Giuliani said.
“First, Biden took God out of schools and government to establish loyalty to only him,” Giuliani said. And now, in Biden’s quest for a “dictatorship,” he’s trying to keep parents out of medical decisions for minor children, referring to gender-affirming care for kids, Giuliani said.
“The next thing you got to do is you got to get those kids early. Hitler and Stalin preferred about two years old, because you want to make them property of the state. And haven’t they done that? When you can mutilate a minor child and the teacher and the doctor and the politician can decide, and the parent doesn’t even get told,” Giuliani said.
Eric Trump and Giuliani both talked about America needing a fighter and a cheerleader. Giuliani said former President Barack Obama didn’t love America, but Donald Trump is bringing back pride in America.
“To be a great president, even to be a good president, who has a hard job, you have to love America. You have to love the whole idea of America, the whole concept of America,” Giuliani said.
SUPPORT NEWS YOU TRUST.
The post In Macomb County, Giuliani and Eric Trump slam Donald Trump’s guilty verdict appeared first on Michigan Advance.