The setting matched the message Tuesday as Donald Trump stood beneath the gun barrels of a 57,000-ton battleship in Los Angeles Harbor and fired rhetorical blasts on immigration, trade and national security.
But protesters on shore nearly drowned out Trump, the front-runner for the Republican presidential nomination, as his shipboard rally set the stage for Wednesday’s GOP debate at the Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley.
Borrowing Richard Nixon’s racially charged pledge to stand up for the “silent majority” amid the social upheaval of the 1960s, Trump told supporters gathered on the ship’s stern that Americans were disgusted by the U.