Donald Trump goes off script in dehumanising rant at half-baked Ohio rally

Former President Donald Trump is always in his least controllable state when unchained from his teleprompter — and Saturday afternoon’s rally in Dayton, Ohio was a prime example.

The event at the home of the Dayton Air Show was billed as an event to boost Bernie Moreno, a local car dealership mogul and business owner, to victory in the state’s quickly-approaching Senate primary on Tuesday. Mr Moreno, running his second campaign for Congress, is backed by Mr Trump’s endorsement for the first time and hopes that it will push him past his rivals in the Republican field. What sparse polling exists suggests that the race is tight, with single digits likely separating the three main candidates. Mr Trump’s favourite has a small lead, but a persistent one.

Saturday’s rally was anything but focused on Bernie Moreno, however. Over several hours at the rally The Independent spotted a grand total of one sign proclaiming support for the would-be senator, and none was being sold by the multitude of vendors lined up on the approach to the airfield.

That isn’t to say he wasn’t mentioned at all — current Senator JD Vance, himself a through-and-through Trump loyalist (after a rather embarrassing about-face on that issue) issued a stern call to send him back up in the upper chamber, while Mr Trump mock-pleaded with him to win on Tuesday. But time reserved for the man-supposedly-of-the-hour, whose election is just three days away, was still eclipsed by Mr Trump’s own campaigning for a second term and his ranting against Joe Biden and the Democrats who thwarted him in 2020.

And boy was that a sore topic. It was on this issue that Mr Trump departed almost completely from his prepared remarks as he labeled his political opponents inhuman: “in