Facing a grand total of 91 charges across four criminal cases, former president Donald Trump was in South Dakota Friday for his first big event after having his mugshot taken in Georgia. “They’re just destroying our country,” Trump said to a crowd of about 7,000 gathered in Rapid City. “And if we don’t take it back — if we don’t take it back in ’24, I really believe we’re not going to have a country left.”
“I’m being indicted for you,” Trump added. “That’s not part of the job description.”
Trump spent parts of his rambling, 110-minute speech singling out competitors in the 2024 presidential race. “You know a guy who was very disloyal ’cause I got him elected, so I call him Ron DeSanctimonious,” he said, non-sequitur style, of his chief rival for the GOP nomination, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis. President Joe Biden, Trump’s likely counterpart in the general election, was both “grossly incompetent and very dangerous”—a puzzling combination of attributes—and “the most crooked president in history.”
Trump bragged that he is the “only person in the history of politics who has been indicted whose poll numbers went up.” While it’s certainly true that Trump’s stranglehold on the GOP primary has only grown stronger in the last six months despite two federal indictments and two state indictments, polling about his criminal cases is more of a mixed bag. Most Americans believe the criminal cases brought against him are warranted, and Trump’s conduct in the criminal cases is rated far less favorably than that of Biden and DOJ officials.
Trump was also in South Dakota Friday to accept the endorsement of the state’s governor, Kristi Noem, who has long been a staunch Trump ally. “I will do everything I can to help him win and save this country,” Noem said before the former president took the stage. She added that other GOP candidates, including Vivek Ramaswamy and Tim Scott, had been invited to Friday’s event, but “all of them told us that they had better things to do.” Noem’s endorsement makes her just one of a handful of the country’s 26 Republican governors who have endorsed so far.
The early endorsement is stirring more speculation that Noem is angling to be Trump’s running mate. Several rally attendees sitting behind Trump held up Trump/Noem 2024 signs, and a Trump/Noem graphic momentarily appeared on the screen behind the stage during Noem’s address.
Two Republican insiders familiar with Noem’s thinking told the Associated Press she planned the event to increase face-time with Trump as he considers potential running mate and cabinet picks. The clock is ticking for Noem, who will be term-limited in 2026 and is eyeing her next move to maintain prominence in the GOP.
Trump continues to spend less time campaigning in early-voting states than most of his rivals, according to AP. But he will return to Iowa, the first state on the GOP nomination calendar, on Saturday to attend the college football game between Iowa and Iowa State.
Jack McCordick
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