President Donald Trump praised his supporters as the “super elite” on Monday, during a campaign rally in South Carolina.
“You know what you are?” he asked. “You’re the super elites.”
The crowd roared with approval.
Trump explained that he did not care about the current establishment “elites” and said he was changing the title to fit his supporters, the “super elites.”
“Everybody here makes money, works hard, pays taxes, does a great job,” Trump said. “You’re smarter, you’re better, you’re more loyal. We have the greatest base in the history of politics.”
Throughout the evening, Trump spoke about his successes as president in terms of “we.”
“You’re with us, we’re partners in this whole deal, you know, when we came out, we’re partners, this is not me,” the president said. “This is a whole group of people. I don’t believe and I don’t even think it’s close that any president has done what we’ve done in 500 days.”
He repeated the theme that his supporters were the “forgotten men and women” of the United States.
“The forgotten men and women of our country, our forgotten, where they’re still trying to figure out who the hell were all these people that came and voted two years ago. … All of us,” Trump said.
He did not use the term “deplorables” to refer to his supporters, a description first used by Hillary Clinton that the president and his supporters seized as their own.
Trump said that if he ever showed up at a campaign rally and there were empty seats he would know that the movement was fading.
“What I’m going to do if that happens, huh?” he asked the crowd. “I don’t think we’ll be able to take it. Well, it’s not going to happen. Because remember what I said, we’re going to start winning again, we’re winning, we’re winning now. Like we haven’t won before.”
Trump boasted that under his presidency, the United States was rebuilding the military, winning on trade, enforcing the borders, and building the wall.
“As a group, together, we will make America wealthy again, we will make America strong again. We will make America safe again. And we will make America great again,” he concluded.