US President Donald Trump has told an audience of conservatives that he will win re-election in 2020 by a bigger margin than his 2016 victory.
In a wide-ranging speech on Saturday at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Maryland, he mocked Democrats for their framework to combat climate change and said House lawmakers pushing to expand their investigations of him are “sick”.
Trump rehashed his outsider campaign from 2016 that overcame long odds and a crowded field of established politicians to claim the White House over Democrat Hillary Clinton.
“What we’ve done together has never been done in the history, may be of beyond our country. Maybe in the history of the world … And what we did in 2016, the election we call it with a capital E. It’s never been done before and we’re going to do it. I think again in 2020. And the numbers are going to be even bigger,” he said.
Trump praised the conservative movement, saying, “Our movement and our future in our country is unlimited”.
Al Jazeera’s Andy Gallacher, reporting from Oxon Hill, Maryland said the conference “is really about Donald Trump energising his base”.
“He’s been talking for almost two hours, one of the longest speeches I’ve ever heard the president make, certainly longer than the rallies I have been to,” Gallacher said.
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“He’s talked about his relationship with China, the economy, immigration. [But] very little has been said about that meeting in Vietnam over North Korea or what Michael Cohen, his former fixer was saying in Congress last week.”
On Thursday, Trump said North Korea’s demand that the US lift economic sanctions in their entirety forced the US to walk away from reaching an agreement at a summit in Vietnam.
Speaking at CPAC, Trump commented that North Korea had a bright economic future if the two countries made a deal, but did not have any economic future with nuclear weapons.
He added that the relationship with North Korea seemed to be “very, very strong”.
‘Collusion delusion’
With special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation seemingly approaching its end, Trump spoke of the “collusion delusion” and lashed out at newly empowered House Democrats, who are opening new inquiries involving him.
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“This phony thing,” Trump said of the Russia probe, “looks like it’s dying, so they don’t have anything with Russia there, no collusion. So now they go in and morph into ‘Let’s inspect every deal he’s ever done. We’re going to go into his finances. We’re going to check his deals. We’re going to check’ – these people are sick.”
House Democrats are undertaking several broad investigations that reach far beyond Mueller’s focus on Russian interference in the 2016 election and possible collusion between Russians and the Trump campaign.
So far, Mueller has not brought any public charges alleging a criminal conspiracy between the campaign and Russia.
Their efforts increased in the past week after Trump’s former personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, appeared before two House committees and a Senate committee.
In his public testimony before the House Oversight and Reform Committee, Cohen called the president a “con man” and a “cheat” and gave Democrats several new leads for inquiry.
Green New Deal
Trump also took aim at the Democrats’ Green New Deal, a policy proposal floated by some liberal Democrats in Congress and backed to varying degrees by several of the party’s 2020 presidential candidates.
“I think the New Green Deal or whatever the hell they call it – the Green New Deal – I encourage it,” Trump said mockingly as he wound up for a round of exaggeration.
“I think it’s really something that they should promote. They should work hard on it … No planes, no energy. When the wind stops blowing, that’s the end of your electric. Let’s hurry up. Darling, is the wind blowing today? I’d like to watch television, darling.”
The Democratic plan calls for a drastic drop in greenhouse-gas emissions from fossil fuels such as oil, coal and natural gas, but in no way grounds airplanes or pivots the country to renewable energy only.
SOURCE:
Al Jazeera and news agencies
