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Final Tally For NJ Rally Is 80-100,000 People, Rivals Franklin D. Roosevelt’s 1932 Speech In Sea Girt

The numbers are in for Trump’s rally in Wildwood, New Jersey, on Saturday.

Wildwood officials have reported that 80,000 to 100,000 people attended Trump’s beach rally in Wildwood.

In comparison, Trump’s rally measures were similar to Franklin D. Roosevelt’s 1932 speech in Sea Girt, New Jersey, which drew over 100,000 people.

During his speech at Sea Girt, Roosevelt campaigned on how prohibition failed.

Per KXAN Austin:

Lisa Fagan, spokesperson for the city of Wildwood, told The Associated Press that she estimated a crowd of between 80,000 and 100,000 attendees, based off her own observations on the scene Saturday, having seen “dozens” of other events in the same space.

Trump was joined on stage by several high-level endorsers including North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum and NFL Hall of Fame linebacker Lawrence Taylor, who is still listed as a registered sex offender after pleading guilty in New York in 2011 to misdemeanor criminal charges of sexual misconduct and patronizing an underage prostitute.

The beachfront gathering, described by Rep. Jeff Van Drew, R-N.J., as the largest political gathering in state history, was designed to serve as a show of force at a critical moment for Trump, who is facing dozens of felony charges in four separate criminal cases with the election less than six months away.

Hours before he was scheduled to take the stage, thousands of Trump loyalists donning “Never Surrender” T-shirts and red “Make America Great Again” hats crowded onto the sand between the boardwalk and carnival rides to greet the former Republican president.

“The everyday American people are 100% behind him,” said Doreen O’Neill, a 62-year-old nurse from Philadelphia.

“They have to cheat and smear him and humiliate him in that courtroom every single day,” O’Neill said. “This country is going to go insane if they steal the election again.”

Here’s Roosevelt’s speech at Sea Girt:

My friends:

Once upon a time an orator who was describing the scenery of his State remarked that in the North it was “mountaineous” and that in the South it was “moisterious.”

That classic description reminds me of the Republican national ticket this year — “high and dry” at one end and at the other end “increasing moisture.”

But before I come to further elucidation on that point let me make another clear.

However we may differ as to method, we all agree that temperance is one of the cardinal virtues. In dealing with the great social problems in my own State, such as the care of the wards of the States, and in combating crime, I have had to consider most earnestly this question of temperance. It is bound up with crime, with insanity and, only too often, with poverty. It is increasingly apparent that the intemperate use of intoxicants has no place in this new mechanized civilization of ours. In our industry, in our recreation, on our highways, a drunken man is more than an objectionable companion, he is a peril to the rest of us. The hand that controls the machinery of our factories, that holds the steering wheel of our automobiles, and the brains that guide the course of finance and industry, should alike be free from the effects of over-indulgence in alcohol.

But the methods adopted since the World War with the purpose of achieving a greater temperance by the forcing of Prohibition have been accompanied in most parts of the country by complete and tragic failure. I need not point out to you that general encouragement of lawlessness has resulted; that corruption, hypocrisy, crime and disorder have emerged, and that instead of restricting, we have extended the spread of intemperance.

This failure has come for this very good reason: we have depended too largely upon the power of governmental action instead of recognizing that the authority of the home and that of the churches in these matters is the fundamental force on which we must build. The recent recognition of this fact by the present Administration is an amazing piece of hindsight. There are others who have had foresight. A friend showed me recently an unpublished letter of Henry Clay, written a hundred years ago. In this letter Clay said that the movement for temperance “has done great good and will continue to do more” but “it will destroy itself whenever it resorts to coercion or mixes in the politics of the country.”

Another statesman, given to the Nation by this State of New Jersey, pointed out this necessary course when Federal Prohibition first became a great issue. President Wilson foresaw the economic and social results of such an attempt. It was not necessary for him to live through the disastrous experience in order to come to the conclusion now confessed by our present President. In statesmanship an ounce of foresight is better than a pound of hindsight.

The experience of nearly one hundred and fifty years under the Constitution has shown us that the proper means of regulation is through the States, with control by the Federal Government limited to that which is necessary to protect the States in the exercise of their legitimate powers. This I submit is the principle embodied in our Democratic platform; and I state further that it is not the principle stated in the Republican platform or in the speeches of acceptance of the two candidates of the Republican Party.


 

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