Donald Trump used a Sunday morning speech at a rightwing convention in Phoenix, Arizona, as a victory lap, doubling down on the idea that his clear though relatively narrow victory was in fact a landslide – and impressing upon his base the idea that he enjoys an overwhelming mandate.
“Our movement not only won a mandate,” said Trump, who won the popular vote in November’s election by about half a percentage point while clinching the electoral college 312-226. “We’ve built majorities all over the place that will define our country’s future.”
He was addressing a crowd of supporters that had gathered for AmericaFest, an annual convention hosted by the organization Turning Point USA, the political group that mobilized ahead of the 2024 election to turn out swing state voters for Trump and win him control of both congressional chambers at the start of his second presidency in January.
In the last five years, Turning Point has become a rightwing juggernaut in the conservative movement and a home for activists who reject the old guard of the Republican party as it was before Trump’s rise. Since 2018 the group has grown by more than 650%, bringing in more than $81m in revenue last year. During the group’s weekend event, which fell just days before Christmas, Turning Point drew out about 20,000 attendees – a little under half the turnout of the Republican national convention in Milwaukee this year.
Trump’s keynote speech at the event underscored the group’s dramatic ascendance.
“Turning Point has been amazing,” said Trump, who called out the group’s director, Charlie Kirk, by name. “He’s a really amazing guy.”
During his speech, Trump basked in his win and doubled down on his anti-immigration campaign promises. He even dwelled a little on the 2020 election, which Joe Biden narrowly won and Trump falsely claimed had been stolen from him. This year, Trump claimed he won in “a landslide” though his win was tight but decisive as well.
He lauded historically Democratic-leaning demographic groups that turned out in lower numbers during the 2024 presidential election, claiming young people and Latinos as a new bloc in his base.
The effect of his remarks, however exaggerated, was to impress upon his base the idea that the election conferred an unprecedented mandate to roll out his campaign promises, no matter how controversial. He even brought his former foe, Ted Cruz – the Canadian-born US senator from Texas – onstage to speak about Trump’s mandate.
“That was an amazing moment,” a laughing Trump said after Cruz exited the stage, with personal attacks that the president-elect once directed at Cruz’s wife, Heidi, during Trump’s successful 2016 White House campaign now a distant memory for the Texan.
Trump also emphasized the role of big businesses in backing him – or at least capitulating to him. “Great business leaders called – a lot of them – and some of them weren’t exactly on my side,” Trump said.
“But they’re on my side now.” (Trump reportedly dined recently with the billionaire owner of Amazon and the Washington Post, Jeff Bezos, at Mar-a-Lago.)
During his speech, Trump spoke at length about the Panama Canal, doubling down on his threat Saturday to reclaim the trade passage if Panama does not manage the route in accordance with his preferences. “We will demand that the Panama Canal be now returned to the United States,” said Trump, to raucous applause.
Trump also campaigned for his top cabinet picks, including defense department nominee, Pete Hegseth; his intelligence pick, Tulsi Gabbard; health department nominee Robert F Kennedy Jr; and the ultraconservative Trump loyalist Kash Patel, who he has floated as a replacement for Chris Wray as head of the FBI. All have been mired in assorted controversies.
Then he turned to immigration.
“My administration will live by the motto ‘promises made, promises kept,’” said Trump, who during his first presidency failed to deliver on some of his most memorable 2016 campaign pledges, including building a wall on the US-Mexico border paid for by the Mexican government.
Walking through his campaign promise to launch mass deportations of undocumented immigrants, Trump said: “We will begin the largest deportation operation in American history, larger even than that of president Dwight D Eisenhower.”
The Eisenhower reference alluded to cold war-era mass deportations conducted by that president’s administration. Carrying the racist name “operation wetback,” that program resulted in the mass expulsion of nearly 2 million Mexican-Americans without due process in an event that has been widely characterized as a form of ethnic cleansing.
Tom Homan, who Trump has appointed to strategize his promised mass deportation, warmed up for the president-elect, mocking critics of his anti-immigrant rhetoric. “‘Tom Homan’s a racist, Tom Homan’s an asshole,’” Homan said. “Say whatever you want, I don’t give a shit.”
He promised the president-elect would be a “badass” and warned the liberal mayors of certain US cities that have promised to resist the mass deportation plan. “If you’re not gonna do it, president Trump and Ice will,” Homan said, invoking the abbreviation for immigration and customs enforcement. “Guess where Tom Homan is going to be on day one? Chicago, Illinois.”
Inauguration day, Trump declared, would be dedicated to implementing his hardline immigration policy: “January 20 will truly be Liberation Day in America.”
