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Donald Trump, in Grand Junction, says he will “drain the swamp in Washington D.C.”

Republican nominee promises to “drain the swamp” in Washington with proposed ethics reforms that include term limits

DENVER, CO - DECEMBER 18 :The Denver Post's Jason Blevins Wednesday, December 18, 2013 (Photo By Cyrus McCrimmon/The Denver Post)
By | jblevins@denverpost.com | The Denver Post
PUBLISHED: | UPDATED:
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GRAND JUNCTION — Several thousand supporters crowded a Grand Junction airport hangar Tuesday to hear their leader, Donald Trump, urge them to keep the faith.

Ramping up his attacks on reporters covering his presidential campaign, Trump rallied his supporters to ignore media reports and polls showing him slipping further behind Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton.

“Either we win this election or we lose the country,” Trump said to howling approval. “We are going to have one of the great victories in political history.”

Promising “real change,” the Republican nominee riled the crowd with pointed jabs at his opponent and reporters. His stop in Grand Junction , while he traversed the country in a westward push toward Las Vegas, where on Wednesday he will debate Clinton in the final presidential debate of this election.

Minutes after his Boeing 757 touched down on the Grand Junction tarmac, thousands of supporters spilling from a hangar began an impassioned “USA” chant. The cheers grew as Trump stepped from his plane just outside the hangar.

Addressing what he called “the government of corruption” and promising to “drain the swamp in Washington, D.C.,” Trump outlined several ethical reforms, including five-year bans on government officials and Congress members from lobbying, lifetime bans on government officials lobbying for foreign governments and a constitutional amendment imposing term limits on elected officials: six years for members of the House and 12 years for members of the Senate.

“We are going to have a new government that serves the people. It hasn’t done that in a long time,” Trump said in his fiery 50-minute speech.

Every few minutes the crowd would drown out a brave protester who was shouting from the sea of banners. Trump said the Democratic National Committee was paying the protesters to disrupt his campaign events.

Touching a nerve on the Western Slope, Trump promised to “unleash American energy,” tapping shale, oil, natural gas and coal by “getting rid of job-killing EPA regulations.”

“We are going to put miners right here in Colorado back to work,” he said.

He criticized Clinton’s support of trade agreements such as the North American Free Trade Agreement and the Trans-Pacific Partnership, saying that international donors “control her every single move.”

“If we let the Clinton cartel run this government, history will record that 2017 was the year America lost its independence,” he said. “It will not happen on our watch.”

Trump said he planned to cut the corporate tax rate from 35 percent to 15 percent. He promised the “biggest tax cut since Ronald Reagan.” He said he would defend religious liberty and end Common Core educational standards, rebuild the military and protect the Second Amendment, “which is totally under siege,” he said.

Andy Cross, The Denver Post
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Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump gives a thumbs-up to supporters at the Norris Penrose Equestrian Center for a rally in Colorado Springs on Oct. 18, 2016.
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He reiterated his campaign-bolstering promise to build a wall on the country’s southern border and make Mexico pay for it. He blasted Clinton over using a private server to handle sensitive e-mails while secretary of state, saying it was “many times worse than Watergate.”

He criticized “the media.” Often he pointed to the corral of cameras pointed at him, for covering “fictitious stories about me” while ignoring Clinton’s e-mail server and the recent Wikileaks disclosure of e-mails from her campaign. He referred several times to “major articles” from newspapers like The New York Times, The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal.

“There’s voter fraud with the media because they so poison the mind of the people by writing false stories. I believe actually they are more crooked than crooked Hillary,” he said. “The media is an extension of the Hillary Clinton campaign, and without that she would be nowhere. I think the media is trying to discourage our people from getting out and voting.”

Shaun Heater liked everything he heard. The coal miner with the “Coal, Guns, Freedom” sticker left his home in Craig at dawn and waited in line for seven hours to see Trump. He liked Trump’s promise to end Common Core.

“My wife is a teacher,” Heater said. “She can’t teach. They won’t let her. She’s just teaches the tests.”

His fellow co-worker Leonard Sanderson appreciated Trump’s promise to bolster the flagging coal industry.

“If Hillary gets in, our taxes will double, our jobs go away and our guns go away and nobody wins” Sanderson said.

This is a scary time, Heater said. He’s got a 3-year-old son and a new house and a good job. He sees Clinton as a direct threat to his livelihood and way of life.

“This is our last shot to take this country back,” he said. “When Trump said that, it really resonated with me.”

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