Donald Trump held his first rally since leaving the White House on Saturday night, addressing thousands of supporters in a freewheeling speech at a fairground in north-east Ohio that the former US president billed as the “very first rally of the 2022 election”.
“My fellow Americans, our movement is far from over,” Trump told throngs of his fans in Wellington, Ohio, a small, rural town 30 miles south-west of Cleveland. “In fact, our fight has only just begun.”
Trump, who has not ruled out running for president in 2024, repeated his false claims that the 2020 election was “stolen” in a rambling 90-minute speech in which he boasted about his administration’s achievements and tore into his successor Joe Biden.