Washington, Nov 2 (IANS) US President Donald Trump wrapped up his midterm campaign at a rally in Salina, Kansas, telling supporters the United States could shut Iran down whenever it chose and claiming that no one had entered the country illegally for 17 months.
“This is actually, this is our last stop. We close it down tonight,” Trump said, describing the Salina event as his 30th rally of the campaign. He said he had come to Kansas to help Senator Roger Marshall win re-election. “I didn’t want to take a chance,” he said.
The rally went ahead after Trump had earlier this week called off in-person events in Kansas and Iowa in favour of tele-rallies. He spoke in Iowa earlier on Sunday before flying to Kansas.
On Iran, Trump said the US had overwhelmed Tehran. “We can we can close them down any time we want. We’re trying to be nice,” he said. “But I think it’s going to be very close. We’re just going to close them down. That’s going to be the end of it.”
He contrasted his approach with the 2015 nuclear deal signed under former President Barack Obama. “You know, that JCPOA was a path to a nuclear weapon. We did the opposite,” Trump said, adding that Iran “never will have a nuclear weapon.”
Trump also said US oil prices were “much lower than Sleepy Joe Biden and Barack Hussein Obama.”
US Energy Information Administration figures show the national average price of regular gasoline at about $4.27 a gallon on October 26, about $1.23 higher than a year earlier, while West Texas Intermediate crude averaged about $107 a barrel in the week ended October 23, compared with about $73 to $79 a barrel in January 2025, when Biden left office.
On immigration, Trump repeated a claim that the southern border had been sealed. “And now we’ve gone 17 months, think of it, with zero people coming into our country illegally,” he said.
He said Democrats were “openly promising to abolish your borders” and accused them of wanting to “raise your taxes by trillions and trillions of dollars.”
Much of the speech targeted Marshall’s Democratic opponent, Methodist pastor Adam Hamilton, whom Trump called “a radical left lunatic.” He also urged voters to back Republican Ty Masterson for governor.
Trump urged supporters to vote in person on Tuesday rather than mail in ballots. “I really want you to pretend I’m on the ballot,” he said, adding that if Republicans matched turnout from his own elections, “we win in a landslide.”
–IANS
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