VANDALIA, Ohio -- Former President Donald Trump claimed that he -- not President Joe Biden -- will protect Social Security and warned of a "bloodbath" if he loses in November as he campaigned for Senate candidate Bernie Moreno in Ohio.
Trump, speaking on a wind-whipped airfield outside of Dayton on Saturday, praised his chosen candidate in the race as an "America first champion" and "political outsider who has spent his entire life building up Ohio communities."
"He's going to be a warrior in Washington," Trump said, days after securing enough delegates to clinch the 2024 Republican nomination.
Moreno faces Secretary of State Frank LaRose and state Sen. Matt Dolan in Tuesday's GOP primary. LaRose and Moreno have aligned themselves with the pro-Trump faction of the party, while Dolan is backed by more establishment Republicans, including Gov. Mike DeWine and former Sen. Rob Portman.
Saturday's rally was hosted by Buckeye Values PAC, a group backing Moreno's candidacy. But Trump used the stage to deliver a profanity-filled version of his usual rally speech that again painted an apocalyptic picture of the country if Biden wins a second term.
"If I don't get elected, it's going to be a bloodbath for the whole -- that's going to be the least of it. It's going to be a bloodbath for the country," he warned, while talking about the impact of offshoring on the country's auto industry and his plans to increase tariffs on foreign-made cars.
Biden campaign spokesperson James Singer accused Trump of doubling "down on his threats of political violence."
"He wants another January 6, but the American people are going to give him another electoral defeat this November because they continue to reject his extremism, his affection for violence, and his thirst for revenge," Singer charged in a statement.
Trump campaign spokesperson Steven Cheung said that Trump had clearly been talking about the impact of a second Biden term on the auto industry and broader economy.
"Crooked Joe Biden and his campaign are engaging in deceptively out-of-context editing," he said.
A one-time Trump critic, Moreno, a wealthy Cleveland businessman, supported Marco Rubio for president in the 2016 Republican primary, and once tweeted that listening to Trump was "like watching a car accident that makes you sick, but you can stop looking." In 2021, NBC News reported on an email exchange around the time of Trump's first presidential run in which Moreno referred to Trump as a "lunatic" and a "maniac."
On Saturday, however, Moreno praised Trump as a "great American" and railed against those in his party who have been critical of the former president.
"I am so sick and tired of Republicans that say, 'I support President Trump's policies but I don't like the man,'" he said as he joined Trump on stage.
Trump also dismissed recent allegations against Moreno, comparing them to attacks he has faced through the years, including his criminal indictments. Trump has been charged in four separate cases that span his handling of classified documents to his efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election.
"He's getting some very tough Democrat fake treatment right now," Trump said. "And we're not going to stand for it because I know this man. We all know this man. He's a hero, he's a winner. And we're not going to let these people -- these people are sick."
The Associated Press reported on Thursday that in 2008, someone with access to Moreno's work email account created a profile on an adult website seeking "Men for 1-on-1 sex."
The AP could not definitively confirm that it was created by Moreno himself. Moreno's lawyer said a former intern created the account and provided a statement from the intern, Dan Ricci, who said he created the account as "part of a juvenile prank."
Questions about the profile have circulated in GOP circles for the past month, sparking frustration among senior Republican operatives about Moreno's potential vulnerability in a general election, according to seven people who are directly familiar with conversations about how to address the matter.
They requested anonymity to avoid running afoul of Trump and his allies.
Trump, in his remarks, also accused Biden of posing a threat to Social Security as he continued trying to clean up comments from an interview last week in which he appeared to voice openness to cuts.
"You will not be able to have Social Security with this guy in office because he's destroying the economics of our country. And that includes Medicare, by the way, and American seniors are going to be in big trouble," he warned, even though Biden has pledged to protect and strengthen Social Security as it faces a projected budget shortfall.
Trump also continued to criticize Biden over his handling of the border as he cast some migrants as less than human. "In some cases, they're not people, in my opinion," he said.
In an interview broadcast Sunday, Trump doubled down on his description of immigrants as "poisoning the blood" of the country.
"Why do you use words like 'vermin' and 'poisoning of the blood'?" media critic and interviewer Howard Kurtz asked on Fox News. "The press, as you know, immediately reacts to that by saying, 'Well, that's the kind of language that Hitler and Mussolini used.'"
"Because our country is being poisoned," Trump responded.
He also repeated a claim he has made many times: that the migrants crossing the southern border are criminals flooding in from prisons and mental institutions.
According to border officials, most migrants are families fleeing violence and poverty, and despite a few high-profile cases, data shows no increase in crime attributable to immigration. Crime rates, including that of murder, declined last year.
"We can be nice about it, we can talk about, 'Oh, I want to be politically correct,'" Trump said. "But we have people coming in from prisons and jails, long-term murderers, people with sentences that the rest of their lives they're going to spend in some jail in some country that many people have never even heard of. They're all being released into our country."
He went on: "These are people at the highest level of crime, and then you have mental institutions and insane asylums -- I always say the difference is one is 'Silence of the Lambs,' you know, it's a mental institution on steroids, OK? -- and those mental institutions and insane asylums are being emptied out into the United States, and then you have terrorists pouring in at levels we have never seen before."
Information for this article was contributed by Meg Kinnard, Jill Colvin and Brian Slodysko of The Associated Press and by Maggie Astor of The New York Times.
Republican presidential candidate former President Donald Trump speaks at a campaign rally Saturday, March 16, 2024, in Vandalia, Ohio. (AP Photo/Jeff Dean)
Republican presidential candidate former President Donald Trump speaks at a Buckeye Values PAC rally on Saturday, March 16, 2024, in Vandalia, Ohio. (AP Photo/Meg Kinnard)
Republican presidential candidate former President Donald Trump, right, shakes hands with Bernie Moreno at a campaign rally Saturday, March 16, 2024, in Vandalia, Ohio. (AP Photo/Jeff Dean)
Republican presidential candidate former President Donald Trump gestures to the crowd at a campaign rally Saturday, March 16, 2024, in Vandalia, Ohio. (AP Photo/Jeff Dean)
Cleveland businessman and Republican Senate candidate Bernie Moreno gestures to the crowd at a campaign rally ahead of remarks from Republican presidential candidate former President Donald Trump Saturday, March 16, 2024, in Vandalia, Ohio. (AP Photo/Jeff Dean)
Republican presidential candidate and former President Donald Trump, left, embraces South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem at a campaign rally, Saturday, March 16, 2024, in Vandalia, Ohio. (AP Photo/Jeff Dean)
Republican presidential candidate former President Donald Trump speaks at a campaign rally Saturday, March 16, 2024, in Vandalia, Ohio. (AP Photo/Jeff Dean)
U.S. Sen. J.D. Vance, R-Ohio, right, points toward Republican presidential candidate and former President Donald Trump at a campaign rally, Saturday, March 16, 2024, in Vandalia, Ohio. (AP Photo/Jeff Dean)
Republican presidential candidate former President Donald Trump gestures to the crowd at a campaign rally Saturday, March 16, 2024, in Vandalia, Ohio. (AP Photo/Jeff Dean)