A crowd that Donald Trump estimated at 21,000 stomped and hollered and cheered their hero Thursday night as he assailed "crooked Hillary Clinton" over and over again.
"The corruption of the Clintons know no limits,'' Trump said in a 45-minute US Bank Arena speech Thursday night.
"She's highly overrated; she couldn't pass her bar exam in Washington, D.C.,'' Trump said. "Highly overrated person."
Clinton, Trump said, is "a corrupt person….she should be locked up. She should."
As he said at Sunday night's debate, Trump said he would appoint a special prosecutor if he becomes president to look into the issue of Clinton and the e-mail server.
Trump said he has no intention of listening to her complaints of wrong-doing on the part of the GOP nominee – an apparent reference to the stories which have come out about Trump's lewd and vulgar comments about women.
"The false allegations of the crooked Hillary Clinton campaign and their allies in the media,'' Trump said, causing most of the audience to turn around boo the media section. "They don't want to talk about the real issues. We will talk about the issues.
The destruction of 33,000 e-mails on a private e-mail server was a crime, according to Trump.
"She deleted them after a subpoena,'' Trump said. "She destroyed them with a hammer. Have any of you done that?"
The e-mails show that "she has no message. I have a message. Make American great again."
"The Clintons are the past,'' Trump said. "We are the future. They call you deplorables. I call you hard-working Americans and together we are going to have this country."
Former New York Mayor Rudy Guiliani, one of Trump's closest advisers, introduced him to the crowd, and talked about the revelations found in Hillary Clinton's e-mails.
"And you know what we found out about these e-mails?,'' Guiliani said. "We were right in the first place. Boy, are they slimy!"
Butler County Sheriff Richard K. Jones, known nationally as a fierce opponent of illegal immigration, was brought out before Trump to deliver a red-meat speech meant to fire up the crowd.
He did.
He soon had them chanting "Lock her up! Lock her up!"
David Goedde of Newport showed up at US Bank Arena hours before the rally was to begin. Trump, he said, is the only political figure in his lifetime who could inspire him.
"There's only one issue that effects each and every one of us and that Is our freedoms,'' Goedde said. "Donald Trump wants to preserve our freedoms. He wants to strengthen our military. He believes in our Second Amendment rights.
"Hillary Clinton wants to take all that away from us,'' the 37-year-old Trump supporter said.
The stories that have been breaking over the past week about Trump's alleged sexual transgressions with women "is a diversion,'' Goedde said. "They just want to shift attention from the things that really matter. Protecting our borders. Protecting our gun rights. I think they know they are in trouble and that's why they are doing this."
Trump spent the entire day Thursday furiously and emphatically denying accusations in the New York Times and elsewhere that he kissed and groped women without their consent.
Wednesday night, in a series of news reports, Trump was accused by four women of unwelcome sexual advances.
In a tweet early Thursday, Trump said "the phoney story in the @nytimes is a TOTAL FABRICATION." Trump threatened to sue the New York Times for defamation, but the Times said it was standing by its story.
This came after a solid week of stories breaking over Trump's alleged sexual transgressions in the past.
And it comes at a time when Trump's campaign is taking a decided nose dive in the polls of many key battleground states.
Many Republican Party leaders who had endorsed Trump abandoned him, including Ohio's junior senator, Rob Portman. Many other stuck with the GOP nominee, especially after his performance in Sunday's debate at Washington University.
A week ago, the Trump campaign was reeling from release of an 11-year-old video tape in which the billionaire real estate mogul made many lewd and vulgar statements about women – saying that because he is a "star," he can have any woman he wants.
Thursday night's rally at the US Bank Arena was his first public event inside the city of Cincinnati – he had previously appeared at the Duke Energy Convention Center for an August speech to the American Legion convention here.
After the Republican National Convention in August, Trump held a rally in West Chester in Butler County.
But, given the closeness of the polling in Ohio, the Trump campaign is likely realizing that Hamilton County could give it a big edge in winning the state on Nov.8.
And, of course, no Republican candidate for president has ever won the White House without winning Ohio.
For Hillary Clinton, winning Ohio would be icing on the cake – it would almost assure her an Electoral College victory. But she does not absolutely have to have Ohio's 18 electoral votes to win the White House.
Tomorrow, Cincinnati Democrats will hear from the other side – former President Bill Clinton, who will hold an early voting rally at Washington Park Friday afternoon.
The 41st president has been the target of Trump attacks lately. At Sunday's debate at Washington University in St. Louis, Trump lined up four women who had accused Bill Clinton of sexual indiscretions in the past – including one, Juanita Broddrick, who had a accused Bill Clinton of raping her in 1978 when he was Arkansas attorney general. He vehemently denied the charge at the time.
