Former President Donald Trump reappeared on Tuesday in Washington for the first time since he left office in January 2021, leveling harsh criticism at the country’s situation under his Democratic successor, Joe Biden, and saying that the United States has been “brought to its knees.”
Calling the US a “cesspool of crime” in his address before the America First Policy Institute, a conservative think-tank, Trump said that the US needs an “all-out effort to defeat violent crime.”
“Be tough, and be nasty and be mean if we have to,” he said, adding that “‘America first’ must mean safety first.”
Saying that the country had literally been “brought to its knees,” Trump asked rhetorically: “What’s happened to this great bastion?”