Eric Trump campaigned for his father, Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, on Monday afternoon in a cramped State College campaign office to energize volunteers.
The event marks the only high profile Donald Trump surrogate to visit the State College area throughout the entire election cycle. It was open to individuals who have spent time volunteering and advocating for Trump, some of whom were making calls to local residents and listening to “God Bless The USA” until Eric Trump’s arrival.
Supporters shouted and cheered, “Trump, Trump, Trump” as he entered the Republican Victory Center on South Burrowes Street. Trump jokingly started his speech by asking, “I thought they said millennials don’t like Trump?” He said he’s a millennial and he likes his father a lot.
“We’re going to win this thing and I’ll say for the sake of this generation we’re going to take back this country — we need to. Our politicians are flushing our country down the tubes,” Trump said.
Trump used his father’s increasingly popular phrase of “drain the swamp,” referring to taking Washington D.C. back from establishment politicians. “Our politicians are totally reckless with the way they spend, and guys, it’s going to stop. It’s going to stop really, really quickly,” Trump said. “We’re going to win this thing. We’re going to take back this country.”
Trump went on to address the loss of manufacturing jobs since the North American Free Trade Agreement, which was signed by Bill Clinton in 1994. “Since Bill Clinton signed NAFTA, we’ve lost 70,000 factories. We’ve lost one in three manufacturing jobs,” Trump said. “It’s totally unacceptable.”
He concluded his short speech with a litany of problems he said are plaguing Americans, from unemployment to taxes to Obamacare.
‘We deserve so much better from the leadership and the nonsense ends tomorrow,” Trump said.
Trump took selfies and spoke with his father’s supporters after the speech.
“I think we’re pretty confident,” Trump told the crowd. “We want our country back. People want our country back. What our politicians are doing to millennials in this country is horrible. Our educational system is broken. They’re saddling our generation with hundreds of billions of dollars worth of debt…It’s not right and millennials, myself, deserve a lot better.”
Outside, Trump was greeted by more supporters who were unable to see him speak and a few protesters supporting Hillary Clinton. After he left, protester Shakiera Franklin, who was walking by with a “Students for Hillary” poster and filming the event, got into a minor altercation with a Trump supporter when an elderly woman attempted to grab her phone and stop her from filming. The incident didn’t escalate further.
