In Coachella, Trump returns to a favorite theme: Bashing California

With just 23 days left until election day and voters already casting ballots, former President Trump rallied supporters in the California desert while railing against the state's Democratic leadership, notably his presidential rival, Vice President Kamala Harris.

Trump blasted California as having “the highest inflation, the highest taxes, the highest gas prices, the highest cost of living, the most regulations, the most expensive utilities, the most homelessness, the most crime, the most decay and the most illegal aliens."

“Other than that, you’re doing quite well, actually,” Trump said. “We’re not going to let Kamala Harris do to America what she did to California.”

Trump painted California as a lawless, dystopian state, and at times correctly touched on the economic struggles faced by many residents. But his comments also were peppered with distortions and falsehoods, including his claim that California has brownouts and blackouts "every day," presumably because of power shortages.

The former president spoke shortly after 5 p.m. on a polo field at Calhoun Ranch, just outside the city of Coachella, but supporters lined up hours earlier in the scorching desert heat to attend.

As they spent hours in temperatures that reached 100 degrees, they sought shade in the few spots they could, and large tanks of ice quickly emptied as attendees grabbed fistfuls of cubes to put under their hats or fill water bottles. Multiple medical emergencies occurred during the rally.

"Welcome to Trumpchella!" said state GOP Chairwoman Jessica Millan Patterson, one of the warm-up speakers for Trump.

Trump's visit to the home state of Harris offers him another chance to bash the liberal policies of the Bay Area native as well as California itself — one of his favorite refrains on the campaign trail. Harris served as San Francisco's district attorney before she was elected as California's attorney general and to the U.S. Senate.

And the Coachella Valley, home to a thriving agricultural industry and a large population of Latino farmworkers, provides a backdrop for Trump to highlight the region's water and agricultural needs, as well as immigration. Latinos constitute almost 98% of Coachella, according to U.S. Census Bureau data.

Deriding California as a “sanctuary state” for immigrants as he spoke to thousands of supporters, Trump said, “The people of California are not going to take it any longer.”

He repeatedly tied immigrants — many of whom, he said, come from “dungeons of the Third World” — to criminal activity, though studies show that immigrants commit crimes at lower levels than U.S.-born residents. He blasted Harris, whom President Biden tasked with addressing the root causes of immigration from three nations in Central America, as a failed “border czar.”

“Kamala Harris got you into this mess and only Trump will get you out of it,” he said.

Trump criticized California as being horribly mismanaged, primarily blaming Harris and Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom, especially when it comes to crime, the high cost of living and water policy. The former president also threatened to cut off federal disaster aid for the state’s devastating wildfires if California’s leaders don’t make more water available to farmers and homeowners.

“We're going to take care of your water situation, force it down his throat, and we'll say: Gavin, if you don't do it, we're not giving any of that fire money that we send you all the time for all the fire, forest fires that you have,” Trump said.

Donning his red “Make America Great Again” hat to guard against the beating desert sun, Trump encouraged the crowd to vote in large numbers, to make the election “too big to rig.” He has repeatedly denied losing the 2020 election. “They are good at one thing. Which one thing?” he asked the crowd. “Cheating!” the crowd roared back.

Trump also turned his ire against Rep. Adam B. Schiff (D-Burbank), the front-runner in California's U.S. Senate race who led a successful House impeachment of Trump , before the Senate acquitted him. Trump called him “one of the least attractive human beings” and insulted the size of Schiff’s neck and head.

Rep. Raul Ruiz (D-Indio) said that the “Coachella Valley is known for being a presidential playground,” noting that Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) campaigned in the valley, former President Obama came to golf, and Presidents Ford and Eisenhower retired in the region. Still, he called Trump’s decision to visit Coachella — in one of the bluest states in the country — “baffling.”

“We are familiar with having presidents come and leave a mark here, and we respect and love them. ... But ex-President Trump is different,” Ruiz said on a call from Coachella Valley, where he was spending the day talking to reporters. “There doesn’t seem to be a lot of respect for the demographics that live here — not just in his vile rhetoric but also in his policies.”

The rally venue is just outside the 41st Congressional District , where Democrat Will Rollins, a former federal prosecutor, is challenging Republican Rep. Ken Calvert, who spoke at the rally. The race will be crucial in determining which party wins control of the House.

Calvert, who was endorsed by Trump in the 2022 congressional election and on Saturday for his current campaign, voted against certifying the 2020 election results in Arizona and Pennsylvania though he acknowledged that Democrat Joe Biden won the presidency.

“Welcome Trump,” Calvert told the rally crowd. “Show him some sanity still exists in California, and it’s right here in Riverside County.”

Other speakers included Republican Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida, an ardent Trump ally, and Dennis Quaid, the actor who recently portrayed President Reagan in his namesake movie.

Mary and Pete Venegas drove more than an hour from their Hemet home to see Trump, for whom they both plan to vote for the first time in November.

Mary Venegas, a former Democrat who sat out the 2020 election because she was unenthusiastic about Biden, said Trump deserves “a second chance.” Wearing a red Trump T-shirt, she said she is now a registered Republican.

“He made me do it,” she said, laughing, as she poked her husband, who runs a construction and landscaping business and said he supports Trump because of his business acumen.

The visit marks Trump's second trip to the Golden State in a month, after making a stop to talk to reporters at his Rancho Palos Verdes golf course in September sandwiched between two high-dollar fundraisers in Beverly Hills and the Bay Area.

California GOP strategists granted anonymity to discuss the former president's motivation said it included the notion that he wanted to increase his share of the popular vote — and despite California's Democratic tilt, it is home to more than 5 million registered Republicans.

Trump has announced that he will hold an Oct. 27 rally at Madison Square Garden in New York, another deeply Democratic state.

At Saturday's rally, mentions of Harris and Newsom from Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco, who was a delegate at the Republican National Committee, drew boos from the audience.

“The downfall of public safety in California began over a decade ago with Gavin Newsom's policies, and ideas under the watch of Atty. Gen. Kamala Harris,” Bianco said, mentioning Proposition 47, a state ballot initiative that reduced certain thefts and crimes to misdemeanors.

Though Proposition 47 was put in place under Harris’ watch, she declined to wade into the political debate as attorney general. California voters will decide whether to roll back some of the 2014 measure when voting on Proposition 36 next month.

Trump held a rally in Aurora, Colo., on Friday — a state he lost by more than 13 points in 2020. He has falsely claimed that Aurora had been taken over by Venezuelan gang members. He also paid a visit Friday night to Nevada.

During Saturday's rally, Trump mentioned a new immigration policy, dubbed “Operation Aurora,” that he announced during Friday’s visit to expedite deportation of immigrant gang members. He also called for the death penalty for any immigrant who kills an American citizen or law enforcement officer, a proposal that drew chants of “USA!” from the audience.

On Thursday, while speaking at the Detroit Economic Club, he insulted the city and warned that the situation in Detroit foreshadowed what would happen to the nation if Harris is elected president.

"Our whole country will end up being like Detroit if she's elected president,” Trump said. “We're not going to let her do that to this country. We're not gonna let it happen."

Democrats in Michigan — one of the states likely to determine which party wins the White House — were apoplectic.

“Detroit is the epitome of ‘grit,’ defined by winners willing to get their hands dirty to build up their city and create their communities — something Donald Trump could never understand,” Gov. Gretchen Whitmer wrote on X, the social media site formerly known as Twitter. “So keep Detroit out of your mouth. And you better believe Detroiters won’t forget this in November.”

Republicans from the state were stunned by Trump’s remarks as well.

“Michiganders haven’t been this proud of the city of Detroit since Henry Ford put the world on wheels. The Lions and Tigers are flying high, the city has come back to life, and in comes Donald Trump to crap all over that progress,” said an exasperated GOP strategist who reached out to a Times reporter after hearing the remarks, and was granted anonymity to speak candidly. “I think he shouldn’t be surprised when they reward his comments by giving Kamala Harris their votes. And it won’t just be Detroit residents. It will be hundreds of thousands of voters who are deeply proud of their city.”

Harris said Trump’s remarks about Detroit represent a trend.

“My opponent, Donald Trump, yet again, has trashed another great American city when he was in Detroit, which is just a further piece of evidence on a very long list of why he is unfit to be president of the United States,” Harris told reporters Thursday in Las Vegas.

Trump similarly criticized Milwaukee in a meeting with House Republicans shortly before the Republican National Convention was held there, in the battleground state of Wisconsin, earlier this year. He has also disparaged Philadelphia and Atlanta, both of which are in states that will determine which party wins the White House.

This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times .