ATLANTA – Former President Donald Trump Tuesday night pledged to defeat inflation, lower taxes, and deport illegal immigrants at a campaign rally in Cobb County.
“The American standard of living is in a free fall,” Trump told sign-waving supporters at the Cobb Energy Center. “Cities aren’t safe. Illegal aliens are pouring in by the millions. … We’re going to take back our country, turn it around.”
Trump, the Republican nominee for president for the third consecutive time, said Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee, would raise taxes on American families by allowing the tax cuts a then-Republican Congress passed during Trump’s first year in office to expire. He also reiterated his call for ending taxes on tips and overtime.
He also accused his opponent of being soft on crime during stints as district attorney in San Francisco and as California’s attorney general.
“She destroyed San Francisco,” he said. “It’s not even livable.”
As he did during a previous rally in Atlanta in August, Trump cited the murder last February of Laken Riley, a 22-year-old nursing student who was killed while jogging on the University of Georgia campus in Athens. A 26-year-old Venezuelan man allegedly in the country illegally has been charged with the crime.
But Trump said illegal immigration is the top issue in this year’s election. He drew loud applause from the crowd when he promised to launch the largest deportation initiative in the nation’s history.
“Illegal immigration is a bigger thing than inflation,” he said. “We don’t want them in this country.”
As he did during a rally in Atlanta in August, Trump cited the murder last February of Laken Riley, a 22-year-old nursing student who was killed while jogging on the University of Georgia campus in Athens. A 26-year-old Venezuelan man allegedly in the country illegally has been charged with the crime.
If he’s elected, Trump said he would bring manufacturing jobs back to the U.S. by imposing tariffs on a host of imported goods. He also pledged to make America energy independent through more aggressive drilling – including fracking, which he accused Harris of opposing.
Trump praised Gov. Brian Kemp’s mustering of state and federal resources to respond to the damage caused by Hurricane Helene late last month. He and Kemp had a falling out when the governor refused to help his efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election results in Georgia, but Kemp has endorsed Trump this year.
Trump didn’t mention the abortion issue on Tuesday night, which Democrats see as an opportunity to win a large majority of the women’s vote. Harris is calling for Congress to restore the 1973 Roe v. Wade U.S. Supreme Court ruling that legalized abortion and has criticized Trump for appointing three of the justices who overturned Roe in 2022.
“We know what Trump wants to do because it’s in his Project 2025 playbook: a nationwide abortion ban, restrictions on access to contraception and threats to IVF,” said Porsha White, Georgia state director for the Harris campaign. “Georgians have seen the damage Trump inflicted, and we’re not going back.”
Trump said the stakes in this year’s election couldn’t be higher.
“If we’re not successful, we’re going to lose our country,” he said. “[But] we have a mission. … America will be confident again. We’ll have a rebirth of the American dream.”