MIAMI — A day after an electoral setback for his fellow Republicans, President Donald Trump sounded midterm campaign themes during an hour-plus address to a business and culture summit.
“After last night’s results, the decision facing all Americans could not be more clear,” the president said. “A choice between communism and common sense.”
Trump’s speech, on the anniversary of his comeback presidential election win, did not unveil any new initiatives, other than his threat to boycott this December’s G20 gathering in South Africa due to his disagreements with the country’s government policies.
Beyond that, Trump lauded record stock market returns, pledged trillions of dollars in foreign investment and what he termed another historic tax cut as part of the “one big, beautiful bill” that he signed into law this past summer.
Trump also declared victory on securing the border and defended the military strikes on vessels racing from Venezuela, alleging again that they are smuggling narcotics that kill Americans.
“I think we can honestly say, and I think you’ll see it even more so over the next 12 months, that this is the golden age of America,” Trump said.
The president also rehashed and replayed 2024 campaign themes — including musing about transgender weightlifters and resurrecting nicknames for political rivals, from “Sleepy Joe Biden” for the former president to “Crying Chuck Schumer” for the Senate Minority Leader. He again decried the “rigged” 2020 election despite evidence to the contrary.
And he added more than a modicum of boasting.
“I think it’s the best nine months, they say, of any president,” Trump claimed of the start to his second White House term. “And I really believe that. If we can have a few more nine months, like this you’ll be very happy, very satisfied.”
US President Donald Trump speaks at the American Business Forum at the Kaseya Center in Miami on Nov. 5, 2025.
Trump spoke to a friendly audience numbering in the thousands. Many identified themselves as business owners and some wore trademark “MAGA” red caps. Miami Mayor Francis Suarez presented Trump with a key to “real estate” for a presidential library — a nod to the parcel near the Kaseya Center in downtown Miami that has been offered to Trump.
The president’s appearance was sandwiched between speeches by two other global figures, Nobel Peace Prize winner María Corina Machado and soccer star Lionel Messi, at the eclectic two-day conference on politics, business and culture.
Trump spoke just hours after the Venezuelan opposition leader heartedly endorsed his administration’s tough stance toward the Maduro regime. Messi was scheduled to give the final talk in the early evening of the first day of the summit.
Nobel Peace prize winner said Trump aggressiveness toward Maduro ‘absolutely correct’
Machado spoke via video amid growing belligerence between the Trump administration and the Venezuelan regime of Nicolás Maduro.
“The strategy of President Trump toward this criminal narco-terrorist structure is absolutely correct because Nicolás Maduro is not a legitimate head of state,” Machado said.
A U.S. military operation that began in September in the southern Caribbean Sea has led to about 15 deadly attacks on boats that Washington has alleged are trafficking lethal narcotics from the Venezuelan coastline. News media outlets have reported that Trump’s team is readying to launch attacks on Venezuelan military installations inside the South American country’s borders, but Trump himself has publicly given mixed signals.
In a Nov. 2 network interview, Trump said he believed Maduro’s regime was nearing its end but replied “I don’t think so” when asked if the U.S. and Venezuela were heading toward military conflict.
Maduro has sought assistance from Moscow and Beijing as tensions with Washington rise. On Nov. 4, a Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson said China “opposes any attempt to undermine peace and stability in Latin America and the Caribbean, as well as unilateral coercive actions against foreign vessels that exceed reasonable and necessary limits.”
Machado praised the Trump administration measures saying they are targeting the sources of illicit financing of the Machado government from drug trafficking, gold smuggling, weapons and arms dealing as well as and human trafficking.
“You need to cut those cash flows, and that’s precisely what President Trump is doing to protect millions of lives of American citizens, Latin American citizens and certainly Venezuelan citizens,” she said. “Maduro started this war and President Trump is ending that war.”
Trump speaks in Miami on anniversary of 2024 presidential win
Trump arrived in Miami on the anniversary of his 2024 presidential comeback victory. A year later, though, the president and his party suffered political setbacks when Democrats and left-focused positions swept electoral contests in Virginia, New Jersey, New York City and a statewide redistricting proposition in California.
“American voters just delivered a Democratic resurgence. A Republican reckoning. A Blue Sweep. And it happened because our Democratic candidates, no matter where they are, no matter how they fit into our big tent party, are meeting voters at the kitchen table, not the gilded ballroom,” wrote Democratic National Committee Chairman Ken Martin.
In an election evening post, the president stiff-armed chatter that the results were a referendum on his ambitious, and tumultuous, 10 months since returning to the Oval Office.
“‘TRUMP WASN”T ON THE BALLOT, AND SHUTDOWN WERE THE TWO REASONS THAT REPUBLICANS LOST ELECTIONS TONIGHT,’ according to pollsters,” the president wrote in a social media post.
Trump took the stage on a day in which he logged an ignominious landmark — presiding over what at 36 days ranked as the longest-government shutdown in U.S. history.
The previous, a 35-day closure from 2018-2019, took place during his first term in the Oval Office. Altogether, both episodes are a dubious achievement for a man who in pre-presidential interviews often said commanders-in-chief bear the brunt of blame when the government closes over the inability of the person in White House to strike a deal and a stalemate.
“If there is a shutdown … I actually think the president would be blamed,” Trump said in a 2013 interview during the Obama administration. “I think it would be a tremendously negative mark on the president of the United States. He’s the one that has to get people together.”
Trump has sought to fault the rival party for the stalemate, saying they are “Crazed Democrat Lunatics” that are “able to block everything by withholding their votes.” Surveys show Americans appearing to fault the president and the GOP majorities in Congress more than the minority Democrats.
Preparations were under way in the morning of Nov. 5 for President Donald trump’s appearance at the America Business Forum in Miami.
Record-long government shutdown wearing on Republicans, public
In mid-October, a Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research survey found close to 60% of those asked said Trump and the GOP Congress have “a great deal” or “quite a bit” of responsibility for the closure, while 54% said the same of Democrats. An NBC News poll released at the end of the month showed 52% of those asked pointed the finger at Trump and Republicans while just 42% did so at congressional Democrats.
Throughout the ordeal, the president has at times tripped over his own messaging. On Nov. 4, Trump claimed in a social-media post that food assistance benefits would only resume “when the Radical Left Democrats open up the government” but that was later corrected by the White House press office’s assertion the administration was complying with a court order to continue funding the payments.
The president has also admonished fellow Republicans in the U.S. Senate to not be “weak and stupid” and instead vote to end the filibuster rule, which would pave the way for a simple majority to pass government funding legislation. Senate leaders have shrugged off the demand.
He has not publicly commented on a bipartisan House initiative to strike a compromise on extending Obamacare tax credits, the issue at the core of the shutdown.
Antonio Fins is a politics and business editor at The Palm Beach Post, part of the USA TODAY Florida Network. You can reach him at [email protected]. Help support our journalism. Subscribe today.
This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Post: Trump in Miami sounds 2026 midterm campaign themes, claims ‘golden age’
