Trump at Arizona rally: U.S. becoming 'large-scale version of Venezuela' under Biden

At a "Save America" rally in Arizona Saturday night, former President Donald Trump treated  a raucous crowd of followers stretching "as far as the eye can see" to a blistering indictment of President Joe Biden, who, he said, has caused "more destruction ... than the last five presidents put together in the last year."

Trump, who has fueled speculation that he may mount another run for the White House in 2024, told the crowd that "our country is going to hell" and "the American people must take their lives and future back."

The Republican politician, who enjoyed a meteoric rise to the White House in 2016 and who left office in 2020 still very popular among GOP voters, has continued to criticize President Joe Biden in the year since the latter was inaugurated. 

In the lead-up to Saturday's rally, Trump had promised to discuss "the Rigged Presidential Election of 2020, the fake Big Lie, the corrupt LameStream Media, the Afghanistan disaster, Inflation, the sudden lack of respect for our Nation and its leaders, and much more."

As promised, the former president took shots at his successor for an expansive range of alleged failures, including: surging inflation, squandering the Trump administration's hard-won achievement of energy independence, empty store shelves, an explosion of violent crime in Democrat-run cities, a porous southern border flooded with illegal immigrants and drugs, foreign adversaries like Russia and China who "are toying with us," vaccine mandates and "rationing life-saving therapeutics based on race."

Summing up the rapid decline of the country under Biden, Trump said America is on its way to becoming "a large-scale version of Venezuela."

Trump's seemingly indomitable bully pulpit took a hit last January when he was banned permanently from most major social media platforms, with tech leaders claiming that the president constituted a significant danger to the security of the United States in the wake of the Jan. 6 Capitol riot. 

The former president has managed to maintain a relatively high profile in the year since, appearing at several rallies and issuing regular scorching press releases slamming the current administration as well as the U.S. mainstream media.