US president-elect Donald Trump on Saturday wrapped up his post-election “thank you” tour with celebratory geysers from water cannons, greetings from hoop-skirted Southern belles and some gloating over the TV newscasters who had expected him to lose.
In the last in a series of rallies Trump has staged during the past three weeks — mainly in battleground states that gave him the margin of victory in the Nov. 8 election — Trump came back to where it all began for his improbable presidential campaign.
It was in Mobile, Alabama, last year where Trump, a real-estate magnate and reality television star with no previous political experience, drew a huge crowd that gave notice to his rivals that he was a threat for the Republican US presidential nomination.
When his plane landed at the Mobile airport on Saturday, it taxied beneath blasts from two water cannon trucks. Stepping off the plane, a half dozen young women wearing Old South hoop skirts in a panoply of pastel colors were on hand to greet him.
Speaking at Ladd-Peebles Stadium, Trump relived his tense election night when he went from big underdog to eking out a victory over heavily favored Democrat Hillary Rodham Clinton.
Faced with predictions that he would lose, Trump said he told his wife, Melania Trump, that he was at peace with his campaign because he had worked so hard.
“I went to my wife and I said: ‘You know what, I don’t feel badly about this,’” Trump said.
Trump said the faces of the newscasters seemed to sink as his fortunes improved, part of his running diatribe against the US mainstream news media that he claims is stacked against him.
Trump, who is to be sworn into office on Jan. 20, took swings at a few other favorite targets from his campaign: corporations that outsource jobs, Islamic State militants, drug dealers, illegal immigrants and the political culture in Washington.
However, he pulled his punches when it came to first lady Michelle Obama, who in excerpts from an interview with Oprah Winfrey set to air on CBS today, said: “We feel the difference now. See, now, we’re feeling what not having hope feels like.”
“I honestly believe she meant that statement in a different way than it came out,” Trump said.
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