MESSENGER PHOTO BY HANS MADSEN Former President Donald Trump holds up a Trump Caucus Captain hat that he’d just signed for the crowd Saturday during his rally at Fort Dodge Senior High.

FORT DODGE — With some 2,000 people cheering just about every sentence he spoke, former President Donald Trump declared in Fort Dodge Saturday that he would seal the southern border, drill for domestic oil and prevent World War III.

“Every sane person without what they call Trump derangement syndrome — a great honor to have a disease named after me — wants to get back to how great we had it under the Trump administration,” he said.

“Joe Biden’s banana republic ends Nov. 5, 2024, and if it doesn’t, we don’t have a country anymore,” he added.

Speaking in a packed gymnasium at Fort Dodge Senior High School, the former president declared that his Make America Great Again organization is “the greatest movement in the history of the country.”

During his one hour, 15-minute speech, the former president heaped insults on his opponents.

He consistently referred to President Joe Biden as “Crooked Joe Biden.”

He referred to Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, one of his rivals for the Republican presidential nomination, as “Ron Desanctimonious.” He referred to Niki Hailey, another Republican candidate, who served as his ambassador to the United Nations, as “Birdbrain.”

But his pledge to seal the border between the United States and Mexico drew the most thunderous applause.

“And with the border — no more coming in unless you come in legally,” Trump said.

With that comment the crowd was on its feet, and began chanting “USA, USA.”

“Beautiful chant,” Trump replied.

Sealing the border was his signature campaign promise when he won the White House in 2016. He vowed to build a wall separating the countries and have Mexico pay for it.

During his term, about 500 miles of wall were built. Mexico did not pay for it.

But on Saturday, Trump asserted that “Mexico paid for a lot of it” by stationing 28,000 troops along the border. He said the Mexican soldiers wore bandoliers of ammunition across both shoulders like an early 20th century bandit named Pancho Villa.

Trump said if he is re-elected, on his first day in office, he will end any mandates for the manufacture of electric vehicles.

“We have a thing called gasoline,” he said.

He said he would ensure the supply of gasoline by signing an executive order to “drill, baby, drill,” which would allow more oil exploration.

He said that as president, he would end the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East, although he did not say how he would do so.

He also said he would prevent World War III.

“I will prevent World War III from happening,” he said. “We’ve never been closer to World War III than we are now.”

Trump said that he secured $28 billion for Midwestern farmers in the trade deal he negotiated with China. He described that agreement as “the best trade deal anyone’s ever seen.”

But later in his speech, he called the United States-Mexico-Canada trade agreement also negotiated by his administration as “the best trade deal ever made.”

Trump also made some unsubstantiated claims on purely political matters. He said he was responsible for preserving the first-in-the-nation status of the Iowa Republican caucus.

He also asserted, without any proof, that he was responsible for the re-election victories of Iowa’s Republican U.S. senators, Joni Ernst and Charles Grassley.