Five key takeaways from Trump’s South Carolina rally

Former President Donald Trump said “all bets were off” in his battle against the Department of Justice (DOJ), pledging to launch investigations against federal prosecutors as well as main political opponent, Joe Biden, during a speech Saturday at a campaign rally in Pickens, South Carolina.

The former president’s comments came as part of his first major campaign rally since his federal indictment last month on charges stemming from his alleged removal of classified documents from the White House and relocating them to Mar-a-Lago, his resort residence in Florida, after leaving office in January 2021. The federal charges, which he has claimed is without merit and pleaded not guilty to, was tantamount to efforts by the Biden administration to interfere with his 2024 candidacy, Trump claimed, in a reprisal of claims of rampant election fraud he’d baselessly raised throughout previous presidential campaigns.

Trump warns ‘all bets are off’ after federal indictment

“They rigged the election of 2020,” he said on Saturday. “But we’re not going to let them rig the election of 2024.”

If elected president, Trump said he plans to undertake a campaign of retribution, including launching inquiries into progressive district attorneys and prosecutors he claimed are soft on crime and the appointment of a special prosecutor committed solely to the prosecution of Biden and his family over claims of an alleged influence-peddling scheme.

“When they indicted me for nothing, I said all bets are off,” he told an enthusiastic crowd of nearly 10,000 people at his rally.

Here are some other takeaways from Saturday’s event.

Trump is still very focused on his indictments

While much of the content in Trump’s near-80 minute speech on Saturday was derived from his stump speech—stronger immigration laws, a country in decline, banning transgender athletes from women’s sports—Saturday’s remarks showed that the former president was still intently focused on a series of criminal charges against him stemming from actions taken at the end of his presidency.

In addition to a currently on-pause indictment in New York on fraud charges, which Trump also plead not guilty to earlier this year, he also touted his innocence in the Mar-a-Lago classified documents case on Saturday.

The former president revived previous claims his possession of the classified documents was protected by statutes under the Presidential Records Act (PRA) of 1978, which he claimed attorneys for former President Bill Clinton invoked in a 2012 lawsuit pursuing recordings of sensitive phone calls Clinton made that were discovered in his sock drawer. Legal experts, however, have already disputed Trump’s interpretation of the case, saying it bore no resemblance to the current charges against him.

While Clinton did keep recordings he later used to write his autobiography in his sock drawer at the White House, none of them were deemed classified or top secret.

Meanwhile, Trump also alluded to looming charges by Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis for alleged attempts to coerce Georgia election officials to swing his 2020 loss there in his favor, criticizing Atlanta as “more dangerous than Chicago” before defending the legitimacy of his phone calls as “perfect.” He also claimed the phone calls could not be used against him due to a Florida statute requiring both parties’ consent to record phone calls.

“They’re letting them get away with murder [in Georgia], but the only one they go after is Trump,” he said.

A plan to stop Russia from committing a nuclear holocaust

The former president has regularly faced criticisms by opponents for being seemingly too deferential toward Russian President Vladimir Putin when he was in the Oval Office.

But while he has been less critical of Putin than his opponents have on the campaign trail amid Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Trump has also leaned into rhetoric of working to broker an immediate peace deal between the two countries, even as Ukraine has refused to accept any terms surrendering contested territory to the Russians.

Anything short, he suggested, could lead to Russia potentially using the types of weapons “nobody likes to think about.” The Russian leader has repeatedly emphasized that he was prepared to use nuclear weapons in the defense of his country as the Russia-Ukraine war continues to rage on for more than a year.

Biden, Trump said on Saturday, was “leading us to the brink of World War Three.”

Tariffs and tax cuts

In one of his few attacks on his GOP primary opponents on Saturday, Trump slammed his closest-Republican competitor in Ron DeSantis, claiming the Florida governor and Republican presidential hopeful opposed the high tariffs he’d imposed against countries like China during his presidency.

He also called for additional tax cuts on top of those he’d imposed during his administration’s Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, which researchers found benefitted individual corporations more than the working class. Those tax provisions, however, are scheduled to expire in 2025.

In his most popular claim of the day, Trump also railed against efforts to cut spending for programs like Social Security and Medicare, while claiming candidates like DeSantis supported raising the retirement age to 70. DeSantis’ camp has contested those claims as “misleading.” The Florida governor supported raising the “full retirement age” under Paul Ryan’s 2012 Social Security proposal, which is different than a minimum retirement age, which Trump is claiming.

“I have your back,” the former president told the crowd.

Big praise for packing the Supreme Court—few words on abortion

Trump’s remarks also came after a series of recent Supreme Court decisions overturned a number of longstanding legal precedents in the country regarding affirmative action, LGBTQ+ discrimination laws, and executive power to cancel student loan debts.

While he cheered those decisions as the result of a conservative majority he helped build when he was president—the overturn of longstanding protections for abortion under the Court’s 1973 Roe v. Wade decision went without elaboration—a glaring omission. Meanwhile other candidates in the 2024 presidential race, particularly former Vice President Mike Pence, have recently called for a federal 15-week ban at minimum for the medical procedure.