Donald Trump returned to Georgia on Wednesday, where he soaked up the adulation of his MAGA fanbase and escaped the ongoing frustrations of Washington, D.C., where his legislative agenda is stalled and his war with Iran continues to spiral out of his control.

Trump played what he views as his administration’s greatest hits during the Wheeler High School event, centered around the launch of his Trump Accounts for children, as it veered off into topics including the SAVE America Act, the Iran war, and the abduction of Nicolas Maduro, the former president of Venezuela.

Trump even invited up an executive with the Atlanta Braves, Mike Plant, to a chorus of the highly-criticized Tomahawk Chop from the crowd — whom Trump eagerly told to keep going. He then took the opportunity to throw his own hometown team, the New York Mets, under the campaign bus.

“I like baseball. I like baseball. But this guy’s done such a great job. You know, the Mets have the highest salary in baseball, and they lose all the time,” joked Trump. “Maybe we can steal him.”

Trump’s quip came just hours after The Wall Street Journal published an article analyzing the value return ratio for New York’s second major league baseball team, titled simply: “The Mets Are the Biggest Waste of Money in Baseball History.”

Trump’s quoted statistic was taken directly from the article: The Mets, according to the Journal, get some of the worst value out of their team salaries of any team in Major League Baseball, having started the season with the highest cumulative payroll of any MLB team only to sink to their current position quickly: dead last in their division, with a 43-60 win/loss record. They’re the only team in the National League East division with a losing record.

Gripes from Mets fans about their team’s record are well-known and transcend political party. But New Yorkers are not likely to be thrilled to hear it from Trump, who was booed when he attended the U.S. Open in New York earlier this year and was booed again when he lingered onstage awkwardly as Spain lifted the 2026 World Cup trophy last week at MetLife Stadium, near New York’s border with New Jersey.

The rally was also aimed at boosting Rep. Mike Collins, the Republican candidate challenging Sen. Jon Ossoff in Georgia, who was nowhere to be found, remaining in Washington, D.C. for votes.

At other points during his rally, the president received loud rounds of applause as he claimed that America had “won” Venezuela, and when he vowed that he wouldn’t let Iran obtain a nuclear weapon.

He also referenced his attendance at a dignified transfer event at Dover Air Force Base in Delaware earlier in the day, and eagerly accepted the crowd’s thanks for giving the family of a slain U.S. soldier a ride home to Georgia on board Air Force One.

The solemn event marked the beginning of a new phase of the Iran war, with the U.S. and Iran trading numerous strikes over last week and this past weekend. A 60-day ceasefire extension touted by the president in June has collapsed, with the two sides trading salvos of missiles, drone attacks and rockets; the Pentagon has confirmed injuries to nearly 100 U.S. troops since combat resumed earlier in July.

During his remarks, Trump referred to “beautiful” Lt. Tyler Feehan, whose family accompanied Trump to Georgia on the plane, seemingly comparing him to other slain U.S. soldiers who’d passed through Dover Air Force base.

“This was a beautiful son. You know, I read when I go to Dover. I read charts on all of the young people, and some are unbelievable, [But] some are a little bit, you know,” he said, with a slight chuckle. “They got a little bit of, a little couple of little bad things put in.”

He did not elaborate on that point.

Trump attended the dignified transfer of three fallen U.S. servicemembers on Wednesday; two were killed in an Iranian attack on an airbase in Jordan, and a third was killed in Iraq’s Erbil Air Base.

His return to Georgia followed an address he gave at the White House last Thursday claiming that the state was the target of malicious Chinese election interference in 2020. However, he stopped short of claiming that the supposed Chinese efforts had influenced the overall outcome of the election.

Georgia was one of the sites of Trump’s own efforts to overturn the 2020 election as he alleged without evidence that massive fraud was taking place to boost Joe Biden to victory. In January, FBI agents raided election offices in Fulton County, Georgia, but no criminal charges have resulted from that raid.