The former president said his criminal trial had been “rigged” and took aim at President Biden’s handling of the border, saying the influx of migrants had turned Arizona into a “dumping ground.”
In his first campaign event since he became the first American president to be convicted on felony charges, Donald J. Trump on Thursday tried to turn the focus on President Biden by likening his border policy to a criminal enterprise.
Broadly denouncing the migrants crossing the border illegally of being violent criminals and terrorists, Mr. Trump criticized Mr. Biden’s recent executive order meant to curb crossings, saying it would be ineffective after Mr. Biden had taken little action for months.
“With his actions on the border, Joe Biden is the ringleader of one the most vile criminal conspiracies of all time,” Mr. Trump said at a town hall in Phoenix hosted by Turning Point Action, a conservative group.
Mr. Trump, whom prosecutors in Manhattan accused of a criminal conspiracy, and who is also facing felony conspiracy counts in a federal election-interference case, often defends himself from criticisms by dismissing the claims against him, then pointing fingers at his opponents and accusing them of worse transgressions.
His speech in Phoenix previewed how Mr. Trump will most likely downplay the guilty verdict in his Manhattan trial by keeping immigration at the center of his efforts to persuade voters in battleground states to restore him to the White House in November, while defeating the man who thwarted his re-election in 2020.
That strategy may prove particularly potent in Arizona, a border state that Mr. Trump had not visited since 2022. Republican lawmakers voted this week to put a measure on the ballot in November that would make unlawfully crossing the border from Mexico a state crime, part of an effort to harness anti-immigration sentiment at the polls.
