Former President Donald Trump held his first major campaign rally of the year in Texas over the weekend, and used the occasion to underscore the harm he believes President Joe Biden has done to the reputation of the United States on the world stage, as the Daily Mail reports.

The event took place at Waco Regional Airport, where thousands of enthusiastic supporters gathered to hear Trump's take on the various threats facing the country and why he believes he is uniquely suited to address the damage he says has been done since he left the White House.

“Very smart people”

At the top of Trump's list of dangerous developments occurring on Biden's watch was the strengthening ties between Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping.

“If you saw the other day with President Xi, smart, top of his game, President Putin, smart, very smart people, standing there talking about the world order for the next 100 years,” Trump said, referencing a recent meeting between the two men.

At the end of their bilateral talks at the Kremlin, Xi reportedly said to Putin, “Right now there are changes, the likes of which we haven't seen for 100 years. And we are the ones driving these changes together,” to which his Russian counterpart reportedly replied, “I agree.”

“That's one of the saddest things you can imagine,” the former president opined.

“I got along well with Putin”

The former president continued to outline the wrong turns he believes Biden has taken in the realm of global affairs, giving specific attention to the war in Ukraine, as the Mail noted.

Trump asserted that the conflict between Russia and Ukraine would never have started – let alone persisted for more than a year – if he had remained in office.

“I used to talk to Putin, I got along well with Putin, I used to talk to Putin about it. It's something he certainly had on his mind. I never even talked about it. For four years you didn't even hear about it,” Trump said of the conquest in Ukraine.

“As soon as I was out, or left, or however you want to describe that catastrophe, they started putting soldiers on the border,” Trump added, while also suggesting that he could facilitate a swift settlement to the hostilities. “I know both people, and you can get it very, very quickly.”

“They're laughing”

Shining a spotlight on what he views as the dangerous frailties exhibited by the current commander in which, Trump also recounted a particularly embarrassing Biden gaffe that occurred during his recent diplomatic visit to Canada.

As the New York Post noted, while addressing the parliament in Ottawa, Biden mistakenly lauded “China” instead of “Canada” for agreeing to accept thousands more Latin American migrants, before attempting a correction by saying, “You can tell what I'm thinking about China. I won't get into that yet.”

Remarking on the mental misfire, Trump said, “But I watched Joe Biden say, 'I'd like to thank China,' and he's in Canada. The entire room starts laughing...the whole place, the whole place was laughing.”

“They're laughing at our country. We don't want anybody to laugh – nobody laughed at our country when I ran it, I can tell you that,” Trump declared.

“Department of injustice”

Leaving no doubt about his opinion of the ongoing probe by Manhattan D.A. Alvin Bragg into the Stormy Daniels hush money matter, which could potentially yield an indictment at any time, Trump also used the rally as an opportunity to decry what he characterized as “prosecutorial misconduct.”

“The district attorney of New York, under the auspices and direction of the 'department of injustice' in Washington, D.C., is investigating me for something that is not a crime, not a misdemeanor, not an affair,” Trump said.

Blasting what he sees as the politically motivated nature of the proceedings designed to neutralize him as an electoral threat, Trump added, “They have nothing and yet it went on and on and it continues to be stacked – [Bragg's] office with D.C. operatives.”

“The only way to stop these arsonists is to rebuke and reject this evil persecution by sending us straight back to the White House,” Trump told rally attendees,” and though the campaign season is admittedly at an early stage and the candidate field far from set, the former president appears supremely confident about his reasons for running as well as his chances of success.