Trump boasts of toppling 'Barack Obama dynasty': 'The only time I saw him work hard was when he was trying to beat me’

President appearing for Republicans across the country

Donald Trump has boasted of beating the “Barack Hussein Obama dynasty”, telling a rally in Mississippi he was “kicking the ass” of his predecessor and his supporters.

At an event held almost precisely a year from 2020’s election day, Mr Trump unleashed a series of coarse and offensive comments that have increasingly become his trademark.

He dismissed the impeachment investigation being undertaken against him by Democrats as “crap”, and referred to former congressman Beto O’Rourke, who hours earlier had announced he was ending his bid to be the party’s 2020 presidential challenger, as a “poor b***ard”.

As Mr Trump was speaking in the city of Tupelo, the birthplace of Elvis Presley, and where he was appearing to support Republican Tate Reeves, who is locked in a tight race to become governor in a vote next week, Democrats met in Des Moines. At the Iowa Democratic Party’s Liberty and Justice Celebration, 14 hopefuls spoke for 10 minutes each, as they sought to make their case to take on Mr Trump next year.

The event, a bookmark in the political calendar for Democrats, has been the place many candidates have previously shone, including Mr Obama, who used a 2007 speech there to boost his campaign. The following year, he stunned many by winning the state and going on to seize the White House.

On Friday, Mr Trump, who has previously questioned Mr Obama’s citizenship, launched new attacks on the 44th president. Using his full name and stressing Mr Obama’s middle name “Hussein”, he claimed he had defeated the “the Clinton dynasty, the Bush dynasty, the president Barack Hussein Obama dynasty”.

As the crowd booed, he added: “The only time I saw Barack Obama work hard is when he was trying to beat me”.

Mr Trump, who dismissed the impeachment investigation against him as a “witch hunt” and also insulted the media – such elements have become a staple of his speeches – found time to attack Joe Biden, one of the Democrats’ frontrunners to take him on in 2020.

At one point, Mr Trump mockingly impersonated the former vice president and claimed: “They’ve been plotting to overthrow the election since the moment I won.”

Mr Trump made clearly false claims about Democrat Jim Hood, who is challenging to become governor, calling him a progressive liberal. In reality, Mr Hood, the only statewide Democrat in Mississippi and who currently serves as its attorney general, is among the most conservative Democrats in the country.

He has previously said he would have signed the state’s new “heartbeat abortion law” had he been governor.

The event came a day after Democrats voted to formalise the investigation into whether Mr Trump abused his office and compromised national security when he asked the president of Ukraine to investigate one of his political rivals.

Aggrieved and feeding off the energy of the crowd, Mr Trump angrily defended himself against what he called the “deranged impeachment witch hunt” and accused Democrats of doing anything to take him down and invalidate the results of the 2016 campaign.

He said: ”While we’re creating jobs and killing terrorists, the Democrat Party has gone completely insane.“

The rally is one of a handful of events Mr Trump and vice president Mike Pence will be holding in the coming days to try to bolster Republican candidates running in gubernatorial elections.

Mr Trump is scheduled to travel to Kentucky on Monday to campaign for incumbent Matt Bevin. He is heading to Louisiana on Wednesday to campaign for Republican gubernatorial candidate Eddie Rispone, who is trying to unseat incumbent Democratic governor John Bel Edwards.

Additional reporting by agencies