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Keeping Track of President-elect Trump's Ohio Campaign Promises

Donald Trump speaks at a rally in Cleveland in March. [Nick Castele / ideastream]
Donald Trump speaks at a rally in Cleveland in March.

President-elect Donald Trump held more than a dozen rallies in Ohio during the general election, before carrying the state by eight points versus Hillary Clinton. He’ll take office next year having made some big promises in the Buckeye State.

In Ohio, Donald Trump said he’d get rid of Common Core and repeal Obamacare. He said he would not cut Social Security. He laid out plans to direct $20 billion in block grants toward helping students in poverty attend both public and private schools.

And he said he would reanimate Ohio’s legacy industries.

“The governor, your governor, has let your coal industry down,” Trump said at a rally in Cleveland in March this year, before the primary. “He’s let it go to hell. Your steel industry is going to hell. We’re going to revive it. We’re going to bring it back.”

At the March rally in Cleveland, Trump also repeated his signature promise about the U.S.-Mexico border.

“We’re going to have a wall, a real wall, folks, a real wall,” he said. “And who’s going to pay for the wall?”

“Mexico!” the crowd yelled back at him.

“Who?” he asked.

“Mexico,” the crowd repeated.

“You better believe it, they’re paying,” Trump said.

In Youngstown, Trump promised to question prospective immigrants on their attitudes toward the United States. 

“I call it extreme, extreme vetting,” he said.

At New Spirit Revival Center in Cleveland Heights, Trump said he wanted to make cities like Cleveland, Detroit and Baltimore “the economic envy of the world.”

“Factories everywhere, new roads, new bridges, new schools, new hope,” Trump said. “We’re going to bring our jobs back.”

His latest rally was in Cincinnati after the election. There he repeated a pledge to renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement.

Nick Castele was a senior reporter covering politics and government for Ideastream Public Media. He worked as a reporter for Ideastream from 2012-2022.