Former President Donald Trump speaks at a rally in Tucson, Ariz., on Thursday, Sept. 12, 2024.
Starting early Thursday morning, thousands of people lined up outside of the Linda Ronstadt Music Hall in Downtown Tucson to see Donald Trump’s first rally since debating Vice President Kamala Harris.
The former president’s talking points ranged from his debate performance to criticisms of ABC’s moderators, abortion, results of the 2020 election, and transgender attacks, but in a city just 60 miles from Mexico, he made a point of talking about immigration.
Trump took the stage at about 2:20 p.m., after short speeches from Republican Senate candidate Kari Lake and Art Del Cueto, Vice President of the National Border Patrol Council. The audience was also led in prayer.
In front of a backdrop that read “Make Housing Affordable Again,” Trump claimed the rising cost was due to an “invasion” of undocumented migrants encouraged by the Biden-Harris Administration.
“As the people of Arizona understand better than anyone else, under Kamala Harris, our country is under a thing called invasion. We’re being conquered and we’re being occupied by a foreign element,” he said.
Trump said migrants are disproportionately occupying low-income rental properties, and given a second term, he would make companies offering subsidized housing to require proof of citizenship of their tenants and ban mortgages for undocumented migrants.
“None of them are paying a lot of rent, I can tell you that, because a lot of those people are people that shouldn't be here,” he said.
Trump also repeated that Haitian migrants are eating people’s pets in Springfield, Ohio, a claim debunked by Springfield’s own city manager, but has continued to spread online following Tuesday’s debate.
He also promised to start “the biggest deportation operation in the history of our country” if given a second term.
The crowd was lively and engaged, frequently chanting “USA” and “Trump,” and tossing heckles and insults about Harris.
Earlier in the day, Trump posted on Truth Social that there will not be another debate between him and Harris before the November general election, a point he reiterated in Tucson.
“When a prize fighter loses a fight, you've seen a lot of fights, right? The first words out of that fighter's mouth is, ‘I want to rematch.’ And that's what she said. Polls clearly show that I won the debate against comrade Kamala Harris,” he said.
This was Trump’s second stop in Arizona in the last month as part of a series of events in battleground states.
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