CINCINNATI — Republican President-elect Donald Trump is taking a victory lap and he began it in Cincinnati Thursday night at the scene of one of his best-attended campaign rallies.
The pugnacious, brawling Trump voters got to know during the campaign is back. Ever the showman, he made the surprise announcement that he will be offering the post of defense secretary to retired Marine Corps Gen. James “Mad Dog” Mattis during the first stop of a “Thank You Tour” to honor supporters in states that helped him to his stunning victory.
“Thank you to Ohio,” he said. “We won the state by almost ten points.”
He told the crowd at U.S. Bank Arena that he planned to bridge partisan divides and bring the nation back together by putting Americans first.
“One of the reasons we’re so divided today is because our government has failed to protest the interests of the American workers and their families,” he told the crowd.
A couple of prominent Ohio Republicans were conspicuous by their absences, according to cincinnati.com: U.S. Sen. Rob Portman and Go. John Kasich, a former presidential candidate who has kept Trump at an arm’s length since the party’s convention in Cleveland, were both at the Ohio Republican Party’s annual Christmas party in Columbus.