Trumph hit Denver Yesterday Here's what he said

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Former President Donald Trump hosted a campaign rally Friday at the Gaylord Rockies Resort and Convention Center in Aurora. Colorado officials, candidates and other figures were among the early speakers, and Trump took the stage about 1:45 p.m. See video of his remarks above (beginning about 48 minutes in).

3:05 p.m.: Trump finished his remarks a moment ago, about 80 minutes after he began — slightly on the shorter side for his recent speeches.

“We will make America proud again. We will make American safe again. And we will make America great again. Thank you, Colorado,” he said, signing off.

Much of his speech revolved around immigration, and he returned to it repeatedly. But he also touched on other favorite topics — like 2016 Democratic opponent Hillary Clinton (which sparked a brief “Lock her up!” chant).

Trump also criticized Democratic nominee Kamala Harris’ running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, for his recent debate performance against Trump’s running mate, Ohio Sen. JD Vance. He promised to “drill, baby, drill,” and played a video contrasting clips of Marine training from the film “Full Metal Jacket” with members of the military dressed in drag.

Long lines forming for attendees to get into Trump's rally in Aurora
2:57 p.m. update: Trump, on stage, promised to invoke the Alien Enemies Act to send federal officers into Aurora to “expedite the removal of the savage gangs.”

“We will send elite squads of ICE, border patrol, and federal enforcement officers to hunt down, arrest, and deport every last illegal alien gang member until there is not a single one left,” Trump said.

The Alien Enemies Act was last invoked during World War II, most notably to create Japanese internment camps, including the Granada Relocation Center in southeastern Colorado. More than 10,000 people were incarcerated there between 1942 and 1945.

2:52 p.m. update: A little fact-checking on Trump’s rhetoric — which uses real but isolated episodes of migrant violence to portray a large population of migrants and other immigrants negatively, as the Associated Press reported Thursday. He’s seized at his rally Friday not only on Aurora’s challenges but on crimes and incidents in other places that have involved migrants, including in the death of Laken Riley, a nursing student in Georgia.

Trump is channeling real concerns that many voters have about immigration and border security. But his exaggerated characterizations of what has happened in Aurora in recent months has been met with pushback by Mayor Mike Coffman and others.

Local officials have described the transnational Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua as having a “limited” presence in the city of 400,000 — with problems most apparent at a handful of run-down apartment complexes owned entities associated with a group called CBZ Management. The gang has a violent reputation, and the Colorado city isn’t the only one where a presence has been reported.

In Aurora, police have arrested at least nine men with connections to the gang, for alleged crimes that range from shootings to domestic violence. But Chief Todd Chamberlain said the TdA gang was not the “biggest, baddest gang in Aurora,” which last year tracked 36 gangs in the city.

2:41 p.m.: Trump brought onto stage Cindy Romero, whose doorbell camera caught the now-viral video at the heart of the narrative that the Aurora apartments were taken over by gang members. He called her “very brave.”

“With Trump’s help, we can take this state back over,” Romero said. “We can make a difference.”

While the Venezuelan gang has been the uniting thread of the rally, Trump also singled out Africa, the Middle East and Asia as the source of the country’s woes — naming every inhabited continent that’s not predominantly of European descent.

“Our criminals are like babies compared to these people. These people are the most violent people on Earth,” Trump said.

2:22 p.m. update: Trump has repeatedly referenced the unsuccessful 14th Amendment lawsuit aiming to keep him off the ballot that came out of Colorado last year — including falsely accusing Gov. Jared Polis of leading the effort. The lawsuit was filed by current and former Colorado Republicans and others who argued Trump was disqualified from office under the U.S. Constitution’s insurrection clause.

The Colorado Supreme Court, late last year, sided with the plaintiffs and found Trump ineligible for Colorado’s ballot this year because of his actions around the Jan. 6, 2021, U.S. Capitol breach and riot by his supports. The U.S. Supreme Court, by a 9-0 decision, overruled the state court in March.

“When you get the three very liberal votes in the Supreme Court voting — when they vote for Trump — it’s got to be pretty off the wall, right?” Trump said. “But they did. I respect them for doing it.”

2:15 p.m. update: The former president came to Colorado to seize on the issue of migrant crime. When he mentioned Tren de Aragua, the transnational Venezuelan gang that has had some presence at a handful of Aurora apartment buildings, there were shouts from some in the crowd of “Send them back!”

On the screen, several minutes of news clips about crimes committed by migrants — first in Aurora, then around the country — played.

“I make this vow to you: Nov. 5, 2024, will be liberation day in America — liberation day,” Trump said afterward.

He also speculated about his own political fortunes in Colorado, which has strongly favored Democrats in statewide votes since he took office.

“This state has to flip Republican — it has to,” Trump said, later adding that “we want to win this state so badly.”

2:10 p.m. update: Trump tore into Vice President Kamala Harris — stretching the vowels of her first name to Ka-ma-la — and Colorado Gov. Jared Polis. He called Polis “weak and ineffective” — prompting a large wave of boos — and “a coward and fraud” while saying, without elaborating, that Polis fears indictment if Democrats lose the White House.

Ahead of Trump’s visit, Polis defended Aurora and pushed back on the narrative that it’s been taken over by gangs. (See earlier update below.)

But Trump also is weaving the threat of immigration throughout. He showed a graph of immigration into the country and how it fell during his time in office, saying: “I take it home every night and I sleep with it and I kiss it.”

“Illegal immigration saved my life,” Trump said, highlighting it as a motivating factor for his 2016 run. “I’m the only one. Usually it’s the opposite.”

Before getting into the substance of his remarks, Trump thanked a litany of Colorado politicians and those who came from Wyoming, Texas and other places, including former GOP vice presidential candidate and Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin — and former Denver Broncos great Derek Wolfe.

1:45 p.m. update: Trump walks on stage to applause, waving Trump-Vance signs and chants of “USA!”, soundtracked by Lee Greenwood’s song “God Bless the U.S.A.” His entrance came a short time after his adviser Stephen Miller spoke about the need to stem migration and deport immigrants in the country illegally — aligning with the theme of this rally.

“What the hell is happening with our country? What are they doing?” Trump says in his opening remarks. “What are they doing to Colorado? They are ruining your state. Ruining your state.”

As of 1:15 p.m., the last of the Trump supporters planning to attend the rally still waited in a line that ended on East 64th Avenue, across from North Kirk Street — much shorter than the line was an hour earlier. Some attendees who didn’t make it into the building were resigning themselves to watching the rally on a screen.

When Trump took the stage, they cheered, whistled and sung along to Greenwood’s song.

12:49 p.m. update: The program is on pause as the crowd waits for Trump’s arrival at the Gaylord Rockies.

Outside the venue this afternoon, Dena McClung stood among a group of Harris-Walz campaign supporters at the corner of East 64th Avenue and Gaylord Rockies Boulevard. Four police officers were on hand nearby as interactions between Trump and Harris supporters have hit intermittent boiling points.

One man, holding a Trump flag, yelled homophobic slurs at the counter-protesters.

McClung has lived in Aurora for 29 years. She decided to come out several days ago with her roommate to protest, she said, observing: “It is a much bigger turnout than I expected it to be. … Some of them (Trump supporters) — they don’t really say anything. Some of them are a little bit friendly. But honestly, a lot of them are hostile.”

Ahead of the election, she said, “I’m really hopeful that we have enough people who are not like this to sway it, so that Kamala Harris will win.”

12:30 p.m. update: Outside the Gaylord, David Leach, 18, was among vendors selling items to attendees. He drove to Denver from Salida in the central mountains on Friday morning, coming to sell Trump flags through his business, Fly Your Own Flag LLC.

“I’ve never seen so many people in my life,” he said as he held a flag picturing Trump in the moments after the assassination attempt on him at a July rally in Butler, Pennsylvania.

Leach said he’s the son of two liberals and used to identify as liberal, too. He said “a lot” of his friends aren’t politically active yet. “There’s a lot of shaming if you’re interested in Trump,” he said. “I’ve definitely gotten a lot of people yelling at me while I’m selling flags.”

12:25 p.m. update: A woman who said she’d previously lived in Aurora apartments that drew local and national scrutiny said she was “run out of our home” of four years by gunshots, crime and destruction.

“We were overrun. The police were overwhelmed,” she said. The woman spoke after Danielle Jurinsky, an Aurora city councilwoman who elevated the gang-takeover claims in recent months.

Read more about those claims here. The Denver Post also has reported on problems with management of several apartment complexes that predated the arrival of Venezuelan migrants and problems with a gang’s activity.

12:07 p.m. update: As of just before noon, the line of hopefuls trying to enter the rally wound its way down from the Gaylord Rockies entrance to East 64th Avenue — and then down Lisbon Street, a queue that measured a mile or more in length.

At the corner of Lisbon and 64th Avenue, Kim West said, when asked if she was surprised by the massive turnout for the rally in Colorado: “I am. I don’t know why I’m surprised.” But she added that it’s probably because she lives in Denver, where “you have a couple (Trump supporters) here and there.”

Inside, a standing crowd filled up half the ballroom and spilled around the press pen in the center of the room. Behind the media area, another group sat on the floor, watching a giant screen of the stage, as a Colorado Springs mom led the crowd in a “Polis sucks” chant, referring to Gov. Jared Polis.

9News reported that Trump’s plane has landed at Denver International Airport nearby.

11:49 a.m. update: U.S. Rep. Lauren Boebert asked the crowd if they were ready “to position yourself for the good fight of faith?”

Flanked by two TV screens displaying her speech, Boebert cracked jokes about Hunter Biden “scurrying out of a laptop repair shop” and said “our backyards are looking like ‘Narcos,’ ” a reference to the Netflix show about Colombian drug cartels. She also called out 9News anchor Kyle Clark, which sparked a wave of boos from the crowd.

She referred to Vice President Kamala Harris as “Cacklin’ Kamala” and said undocumented immigrants should be deported.

11:42 a.m. update: State Rep. Gabe Evans, who’s running a tight race in the 8th Congressional District in the north Denver suburbs, spoke to the crowd.

“We are going to flip this seat,” Evans said; the 8th District is currently held by Democratic U.S. Rep. Yadira Caraveo. “And we can make sure that Donald Trump has a Republican majority in the U.S. House of Representatives.”

Evans was followed by Jeff Crank, the likely favored candidate for the 5th Congressional District, which covers most of El Paso County. Crank blasted the “failed policies of Joe Biden, an economy that makes it harder for working class Americans to get by.”

When he called Colorado a “sanctuary state,” the crowd booed. “Unfortunately,” Crank said, “it’s a sanctuary for crime and drugs, and we need to take back Colorado.”

11:39 a.m. update: Aron Weinstock, who lives in Littleton, was excited about the rally’s turnout as he waited to enter the Gaylord building.

“In the city, you’re there by yourself,” he said. “You come to a rally like this and you see how many actually do support (Trump).”

Weinstock is a Colorado native and said he wished it was more of a red state. “Everything that’s going on in our country right now is because of the Democratic side of government,” he said. “The Democratic Party is full of lies.”

11:34 update: Luke Bollwerk, an Aurora resident, stood in line for the rally with a sign that read: “Aurora is a shining light and a beautiful place to live.” He said he was trying to rebut the rumors voiced about Aurora in recent weeks.

“Trump has been talking about (Aurora) being a war zone, and that’s not the city I woke up in,” Bollwerk said. “That hurts us.”

He plans to vote for Vice President Kamala Harris in the presidential election and said he would bring the sign into the Trump rally if he was allowed.

11:26 a.m. update: The rally’s program began shortly after 11 a.m., with Colorado Republican Party chair Dave Williams taking the stage. On either side of the stage were large mugshots of suspected gang members and two signs advocating for deportation and reading, “End migrant crime.”

People were still filing into the Gaylord’s 10,000-capacity ballroom as Williams was followed by a pastor and John “Tig” Tiegen, who survived the 2012 Benghazi terror attack on two U.S. government sites in Libya. He led the room in the Pledge of Allegiance.

11:24 a.m. update: Two hours before the rally began Friday morning, Colorado Gov. Jared Polis and four members of Colorado’s U.S. congressional delegation spoke at a brewery in Aurora and criticized what Sen. Michael Bennett described as Trump’s decision to visit the city and “demonize immigrants, lie and to serve his own political purposes.”

The event was a short drive from the Edge of Lowry apartments, the troubled and dilapidated complex that drew national attention — including from Trump — amid reports that the buildings had been overrun by a Venezuelan gang. U.S. Sen John Hickenlooper and U.S. Reps. Jason Crow and Diana DeGette also spoke at Cheluna Brewing at the Stanley Marketplace.

Crow said he wanted to “stand in solidarity, to send a very strong message about what this community really is, what we really mean and what we really represent.”

“Donald Trump invited himself to tell lies, to twist and distort (the apartment issues) for his own terrible purposes,” Crow added. “We will not tolerate it.”

10:53 a.m. update: Police have established a heavy presence around the Gaylord Rockies. A small group of four people stood near Jericho Street and Gaylord Rockies Boulevard, holding signs and a flag supporting the Democrats’ Harris-Walz campaign. But a sea of Trump supporters crowded the sidewalk leading to the resort, chanting and wearing Trump’s trademark red “Make America Great Again” hats.

Original reporting: Former President Donald Trump is coming to Aurora on Friday, and supporters began lining up outside the Gaylord Rockies Resort and Convention Center before dawn, hours before his really is set to begin.

Roads near the venue were experiencing heavy traffic mid-morning, especially on East 64th Avenue and on Peña Boulevard, the primary access route to Denver International Airport. Travelers should also expect some delays in coming hours as police make accommodations for Trump’s motorcade between DIA and the Gaylord. (Tip for travelers heading to DIA: Take E-470, a toll road, to access Peña from the north or south. Or take RTD’s A-Line train to bypass roads.)

Doors were expected to open at 9 a.m, and Trump’s remarks are set to begin at 1 p.m., barring any delays.

The Republican presidential nominee’s visit is motivated by the Denver suburb’s challenges with Venezuelan migrants and gang activity this summer at a handful of apartment complexes. He has seized on the problems in recent weeks, calling Aurora a “war zone” and employing rhetoric that has drawn pushback from Mayor Mike Coffman and other local officials, who contend Trump is exaggerating the issues.

Trump’s campaign says the rally has sold out of free tickets. Though the campaign didn’t disclose how many attendees are expected, the Gaylord’s front desk told The Denver Post on Thursday that the event would be in a space with a capacity of 10,000.

He is set to depart sometime later in the afternoon for a Friday evening rally in Reno, Nevada, that’s set to begin at 6:30 p.m. mountain time.

Updated at 2:27 p.m.: A previous update misidentified one of the earlier rally speakers at Cindy Romero, the woman who filmed armed men in the hallways of the Edge of Lowry apartments.

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