GREEN BAY, Wis.—On the day of the Wisconsin primary, former President Donald J. Trump challenged President Joe Biden to a debate using a dramatic visual prop.
Soon after he began speaking, he gestured to an empty podium near where he stood.
“You know what that is? That’s for Joe Biden,” he said. “I'll do it anywhere you want, Joe!”
Ahead of President Trump’s speech, media received a printout of a Truth Social post from President Trump in which he voiced his willingness to have the debates overseen by the “corrupt” Democratic National Committee or the Commission on Presidential Debates.
“Let’s go have a good, solid, friendly debate,” President Trump said on stage before asserting that America is “going to hell” under the Biden administration.
The Epoch Times has reached out to the Biden campaign for comment.
President Trump also endorsed financier Eric Hovde, who is running in the Republican primary for the U.S. Senate.
Mr. Hovde, the son of late Reagan administration official Donald Hovde, would face incumbent Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.) in the fall.
As in Michigan, where he delivered remarks earlier in the day, President Trump spoke at length of illegal immigration and the “border bloodbath” he attributes to President Biden.
“This is an invasion of our country,” he said, calling it “bigger than a war,” and describing incoming migrants as “country-changing, country-threatening, and … country-wrecking.”
‘America First’ Veterans Gather for Trump
The weather outside of the Hyatt Regency Green Bay was frightful: cold, wet, and, by the end of President Trump’s speech, slushy.The long line of Trump supporters waiting to enter were, if not delighted, then certainly determined.
The home of the Green Bay Packers, America’s football team, has hosted tougher outdoor events. And similar lines formed outside of Trump rallies in Iowa and New Hampshire back in January, ahead of the crucial primary season contests in those states.
Inside, the large crowd of “MAGA” enthusiasts included a knot of men wearing Veterans of Foreign Wars hats. They had come from branches of the organization in Florence and Denmark—places in Wisconsin, not the city and country in Europe, respectively.
“I served in the United States Navy from ‘90 to ’94,” one of the veterans, Steven Levine, told The Epoch Times.
Like other veterans who have spoken with The Epoch Times, he voiced support for a foreign policy that’s less interventionist (or, to some, more isolationist) than the norm.
“Some can perceive that us not being involved in the Ukrainian civil war is beneficial for our country, or the world, for that matter—and the same can probably be said about Israel and the Palestinian conflict,” he said, adding that he believed the United States should not be sending aid to Israel.
He had a different perspective on China and Taiwan.
“That’' a sticky one,” he said, noting the United States’ reliance on chips produced in Taiwan.
He stressed that the United States should retain a leadership role in the world.
When asked if they were “America First,” Mr. Levine and two other veterans uttered a word in unison: “Absolutely!”
“We swore an oath to defend the Constitution,” said Richard Verheyen, one of the two other veterans who chimed in. He told The Epoch Times he served in Desert Storm.
Brian Christian, a younger veteran from the Global War on Terror, rejected the notion, popular in Washington, that President Trump’s foreign policy would ultimately weaken the United States on the international stage.
“We don’t need to be everybody’s friend and everybody’s crutch to lean on. We need to handle our own,” he said, adding that the United States should return to being “respected and feared,” as it was when he first enlisted.
