Anaheim Welcomes Trump for the Crucial 2024 Election

Addressing the California GOP’s fall summit in Anaheim, former President Donald Trump emphasized that next year’s election was the most important in United States history.

“I’ll tell you: the election of ’24 is the single most important election in the history of our country,” Trump told a  crowd as part of his campaign for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination.

“I used to say it about ’16 as ‘the most important,’ and it was,” he continued. “But this is more important because we’re going to lose our country. Our country has gone to hell. Our country is being destroyed.”

California is the biggest prize for any candidate in the Republican primaries, boasting 169 delegates. And any candidate with over 50% of the state’s vote on March 5 comes home with every one of them.

Trump’s speech primarily focused on the importance of the state in the upcoming general election, specifically regarding early voting laws like mail-in and absentee ballots.

“We have to get rid of mail-in ballots — we have to do it,” Trump stressed, citing a report from a commission established by former President Jimmy Carter that found mail-in ballots were open to fraud.

Trump currently has a 41-percentage-point lead over his next-highest Republican contender, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, according to FiveThirtyEight.

Trump also slammed the career Democratic politicians running the state, including Gov. Gavin Newsom and Reps. Nancy Pelosi, a California Democrat who was once House speaker, Adam Schiff; and Maxine Waters.

“We will defeat their corrupt California political machine,” Trump pledged, adding that “they’re all disasters.”

DeSantis, Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina, and entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy are also scheduled to speak at the two-day convention held at a hotel near Disneyland.

Information from The Associated Press was used in this report.