Former President Donald Trump focused on the economic failures of the Biden administration during his campaign stop in Waukesha, Wisconsin, on Wednesday.
It was his first campaign appearance on a weekday outside of New York since his criminal trial over allegedly falsifying business records to cover a $130,00 payment to porn star Stormy Daniels began April 15.
"When I'm in the White House, the Biden economic bust will quickly be replaced by the Trump economic boom," Trump said to a raucous crowd at the Waukesha County Expo Center. "When I left office, we handed Crooked Joe the fastest economic recovery ever recorded.
"The stock market was at a record high. The price of gasoline was $2 and even less than that a gallon. Think of that. We had periods of time where it was $1.57, $1.87; how does that sound to you? The 30-year mortgage rate was at a record low, the lowest ever recorded. Think of this, 2.65%, that's what your mortgage rates were. Now you can't get a mortgage. If you want to pay 8 or 9%, you still can't get ‘em. And we had no inflation."
Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee, took aim at Biden's latest budget proposal that includes a $5 trillion tax hike, according to Forbes, with increasing the capital gains tax to 44.5%, the highest in U.S. history.
"Biden has just declared if he gets four more years he will drench the middle class in the largest tax increases in the history of our country," Trump said. "Vowing repeatedly that he will ensure that the Trump tax cuts, the biggest tax cuts in history — you know he says, oh, it's for the rich. No, it's for the companies that employ people, it's for the middle class, and the people that benefited the most are lower-income people. And he wants them to expire. He never will replace them. I don't think we're going to let it happen."
Between January 2010 and January 2021, the price index for food consumed at home increased by less than 18% percent in 11 years, the libertarian CATO Institute reported in March. Since Biden became president, it has increased by 21% percent in just three years. Consumer prices overall are up at least 17% since Biden became president.
"Today, your inflation is so high it doesn't matter," Trump said. "If you make money it doesn't matter. It eats you alive."
Trump said Biden came in and unleashed mayhem on the U.S. economy like he unleashed mayhem on the border.
"Using COVID as an excuse, Crooked Joe Biden launched the greatest confiscation of middle-class wealth in the history of our country," he said. "In three years, Joe Biden and his party stole trillions of dollars from hard-working Americans, and he gave it all to their cronies in Washington.
"They spent $2 trillion on the American Rescue Plan that didn't rescue our country. … They spent another trillion dollars on their misnamed Inflation Reduction Act, and then they admitted it really wasn't meant to reduce inflation. Joe Biden's economic plan is to make China rich and America poor. My economic plan is to make America richer than ever before. That's what we're going to do."
Trump had a light moment where he called to the podium a man dressed as Uncle Sam, who then asked Trump to autograph his hat. Trump asked the crowd for a pen, and one was thrown at him but hit a prompter and fell to the floor. Trump bent down to pick it up, and before signing the hat said, "You think Biden can bend down like that? I don't think so."
"The Secret Service doesn't love that stuff, you understand," Trump said, smiling. "They're looking like, what's he doing? Don't do this. But it's Uncle Sam, right? He looked good to me."