//
A day after the Democrats finished their convention, Republican Donald Trump declared during a trip to Colorado Friday he is “taking the gloves off” and will visit the state so often before election day that his supporters will tire of him.
Trump began a verbal take-down of Hillary Clinton in the afternoon in Colorado Springs and continued at an evening rally at Wings Over the Rockies museum in Denver.
He targeted Clinton’s speech at the Democratic National Convention saying she should have discussed police shootings and unemployment, among other topics.
“She didn’t talk about that house ownership is the lowest it’s been in 51 years,” Trump told the Denver crowd. “That’s a heck of a number. Who ever heard of that?”
Trump also made mention of immigration, treading on sensitive political subject in Colorado, which has a sizable Hispanic voting bloc.
“People are pouring across the border,” he said. “We have no idea who they are.”
Friday afternoon, the Republican nominee pledged to campaign in Colorado so much people will say they will vote for him so he doesn’t return.
“I have so many friends here,” Trump said. “We have to win this state.”
But there was no evidence of Trump fatigue among his supporters at the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs on Friday, as Trump hammered “Crooked Hillary Clinton” and bashed the media in a nearly one-hour speech.
With Clinton’s Thursday night acceptance speech still fresh, Trump called her performance “average,” and said the GOP convention had better TV ratings.
“After watching that performance last night, such lies, I don’t have to be so nice anymore,” Trump said to thunderous applause. “I’m taking the gloves off. Trump is gonna be ‘No more Mr. Nice Guy.”
He added, “If Hillary gets in, it’ll be four more years of Obama, and nobody wants that.”
Trump said Clinton was not classy for not congratulating Trump during her speech.
“We’re going to get a lot of Bernie (Sanders) supporters, I think,” Trump said, adding “Bernie sold his soul to the Devil,” for endorsing Clinton.
And Trump promised multiple visits to Colorado, a state he said he thinks he can win.
“There’s no reason we shouldn’t win Colorado. These are great people. Heavy military presence, respect for their police. Law and order, that’s me,” he said.
A traditional swing state, Colorado shows up as a “must win” for both candidates on many electoral maps. Clinton recently pulled back on her advertising in the state, an indication her campaign is comfortable with her numbers here. But there have been unconfirmed reports she will be in Colorado next week.
As usual for his events, Trump vowed Friday to build a wall on the U.S.-Mexico border, restrict Syrian refugees and to bring manufacturing jobs back to this country.
He touted his experience as a real estate builder and said he could make government work the same way.
“We have so much fat out there, we could make our country rich again,” he said.
Trump also bashed NATO and the member countries he said aren’t paying into it.
“We protect them, they’re not protecting us, so we protect them originally against the Soviet Union, now Russia, and they’re not paying,” Trump said.
He said he did not want to abandon NATO, however.
He also criticized the Veterans Administration, and by extension President Obama, for the VA hospital under construction in Aurora, which is more than $1 billion over budget and delayed by years.
Thousands waited in vain in a line that snaked hundreds of yards around the 1,500-seat Gallogly Events Center. More watched in an overflow room, as well.
Trump said it was not his fault and that the fire marshal must be a Clinton supporter.
Police divided protesters, one of whom held up a painting of Trump kissing Russian President Vladimir Putin on the lips.
Mark Pforr flew in from Pittsburgh to see Trump in Colorado. To him, Trump is the “only incorruptible politician” and the “only person I know who does not rely on anyone’s influence.”
Pforr, 42, said he was hoping to hear about Trump’s tax plans at the event.
John Willis of Colorado Springs, who came with his wife and daughter, would like Trump to make policy changes on trade agreements and on immigration.
Asked whether Trump can be considered a true believer who could succeed in conservative Colorado Springs, Willis paused and then said, “I really don’t know.” But, he added, the country has bigger issues to care about such as immigration.
The crowd inside chanted “Lock her up!” at the first mention of Clinton, the morning after she accepted her party’s nomination at the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia. Mark Geist, a security contractor in Benghazi, Libya, introduced Trump.
“A liar is the worst thing you can have,” Geist, whose account of the 2012 attack has been questioned, said of Clinton, citing her statements on Benghazi.
U.S. Rep. Doug Lamborn of Colorado Springs reassured the members of the conservative crowd that they did not want Clinton appointing Supreme Court justices.
“We don’t want someone who will carry on with Barack Obama’s policy of throwing Israel under the bus every chance they get,” Lamborn said.
The crowd cheered for an end to political correctness and blamed President Obama for the state of race relations.
The Republican nominee will attend a 7 p.m. rally at the Wings Over the Rockies Museum in Denver.
Trump also is expected to attend a private fundraiser in Colorado Springs.
Trump’s two stops Friday represented the third and fourth Colorado events of his presidential run. Trump attended the CNBC presidential debate in Boulder last October. He spoke, along with supporter Sarah Palin, at the July 1 opening of the Western Conservative Summit in Denver.
U.S. Senate candidate Darryl Glenn, spoke at Trump’s event in Colorado Springs, Glenn’s hometown.
“How about Bill Clinton’s speech?” he asked the crowd, referring to the former president’s DNC speech. “I was listening to it and I almost believed it for a minute, before I realized he was talking about Hillary Clinton.”
The state Democratic Party had a different view.
“Donald Trump’s incoherent ramblings in Denver and Colorado Springs were uninspiring, divisive, random, and wrong for Colorado,” said Chris Meagher, spokesman for the Colorado Democratic Party. .
“It was no surprise then that Darryl Glenn warmed the crowd up for Trump, who Glenn has called a ‘patriot.’ Glenn’s partisan, obstructionist politics would only add to the dysfunction in Washington, as he thinks the problem in Congress is too much bipartisanship. Neither Trump’s nor Glenn’s extreme politics have any place in Colorado.”
Staff writers Fabian Reinbold and Claire Cleveland contributed to this story.
