Speakers at a pro-Trump rally hosted by far-right entrepreneur Clay Clark suggested that the Make America Great Again (MAGA) movement is at war with the rest of the country and said that God is telling Americans to "raise an army."
ReAwaken America, a far-right and Christian nationalist political movement launched by former Trump adviser Michael Flynn, is holding a two-day conference in Las Vegas, Nevada, this weekend with guests including human rights attorney and anti-vaccine activist Leigh Dundas and Latinos for Trump President Bianca Garcia.
Dundas and Garcia delivered speeches on Friday, using the military rhetoric that ReAwaken America often uses to draw parallels between the political and spiritual war that the movement sees as emerging in the U.S.
"If you gave money to a non-profit and they fired at the enemy and they missed, proverbially speaking, you need to recalibrate," Dundas told the crowd.
"When you are facing enemy attack, the wrong thing to do is nothing. Do you hear me?!" she shouted. "When you are facing war and enemy oppression and tyranny, what do you do?! You stand up and you fight!"
During Dundas' speech, she repeatedly asked the crowd, "Are we at war?" to which rally goers responded, "Yes!"
"Is it a kinetic, bombs-going-off sort of war, or an information, or fifth-generation as General Flynn calls it, a psyops kind of war?" she asked as audience members cheered.
Garcia opened her speech with: "When God tells you to be a light in the dark, to raise an army and to hold pastors accountable, that's what happens. It's a movement that no one can understand.
"Everybody said, 'No, you're not going to get [the] Latino vote, [former President Donald] Trump in 2016. You're not going to get anything. You'll get 9, 11 percent," Garcia said. "I said, 'No he's not, he's going to get about 30 percent.' They laughed at me.
"I plead and plead and screamed as loud as I could. I said, 'If you could just give Latinos a platform, if you just get us out on the airways, if you just get us on TV, we will get him 60 percent of the vote," she said. "People didn't think it was possible, but about three weeks ago, a poll was released and the one ethnic group that came out [for] 'If you'd vote for Trump today,' 68 percent [of] Hispanics said they were voting for Trump today!"
It is unclear what poll Garcia referred to, but the New York Times/Siena College poll released last month found that 68 percent of GOP voters would support Trump as the Republican 2024 nominee if the primary election were held today. Comparably, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis received 13 percent support from Hispanics and entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy had 4 percent.
Newsweek reached out to the Trump campaign via email for comment.
