Trump accuses Biden of waging unprecedented 'political repression' that will backfire in election

Former President Donald Trump leveled a blistering attack Saturday night against the man who succeeded him in the White House, telling a rally in Ohio that Joe Biden's Justice Department was waging unprecedented "political repression" against MAGA supporters while his inflationary economic policies were "incinerating trillions of dollars of middle-class wealth."

"Our country is being ripped apart, and the American dream is being torn to shreds," Trump told thousands of cheering fans who attended the rally in blue-collar Youngstown, Ohio, to support GOP candidates like Senate nominee J.D. Vance. "Sad, sad, sad what's happening."

Trump mixed a withering assessment of Biden inflation with his most direct denunciation yet of a Justice Department and FBI that has raided his Mar-a-Lago estate as well as seized phones and evidence from scores of his supporters in connection with a probe into the Jan. 6 riots. He called the investigations "unhinged persecution."

"What they've done, the radical Democrats and the deep state, is a form of political repression unlike anything our nation has ever seen. It's a disgrace," he said, alleging some of his supporters have been threatened with up to 10 years in prison unless they provide evidence to help indict the former president.

"For six straight years I’ve been harassed, investigated, defamed, slandered, and persecuted like no other president, and probably like no one, in American history," he added. "Yet all I have ever wanted and all we’ve ever fought for is to simply, very simply, Make America Great Again."

Trump said the investigations and legal pressure won't deter him and are likely to boomerang in the fall elections. "The thugs and tyrants attacking our movement ... have no idea of the sleeping giant that they have awoken," he predicted.

As for himself, he added: "No matter what they do to me, I will endure their torment and oppression. And I will do it very willingly. They will never get me to stop fighting for you the American people."

The 45th president also roused the crowd with a relentless attack on Democrat policies, starting with Biden's economics which he said had just created "one of the worst seven day periods in history" for the stock market.

"How are you a 401ks doing?" he asked. "Not too good. They're probably getting wiped out. Wouldn't have happened, there was no reason for it. Inflation just reach another historic high ... surging food, energy and electricity prices are busting family budgets, crushing small businesses and causing shortages, suffering, mayhem, and despair.

"Yet Biden and the Democratic Congress keep spending us further and further into oblivion, pouring fuel on the inflation fire and incinerating trillions of dollars of middle class wealth."