On Saturday, former President Trump spoke at the North Carolina GOP Convention dinner, and boy did he ever remind his nearly 75 million voters why they miss him. For 90 minutes the former president was just as energetic, comedic, and entertaining as ever. It was quite a stark contrast from the current occupant of the White House, who has yet to step foot inside the James S. Brady Briefing Room since becoming president and has held exactly one “press conference,” in which he read slowly off notecards and was carried through the embarrassing affair by sycophantic reporters, who spoke to him as if they were interviewing a child.

But Trump, who offered a scathing indictment of President Biden’s policies, was also measured in his remarks, and he remained serious and on message when he spoke about the dire direction the country is currently heading in. “Illegal immigration is skyrocketing at a level that we’ve never seen before, and this is over a period of a few months. Drugs are pouring in. Gas prices are soaring. Our industries are being pillaged by foreign cyber attacks. That’s a lack of respect for our country and for our leaders,” Trump said.

Trump also ripped into Biden’s radical-left policies, which are desecrating our economy, opening up our borders, betraying our allies, providing relief to our enemies, and putting America last: “Joe Biden and the Socialist Democrats are the most radical left-wing administration in history. Even Bernie Sanders can’t believe it.”

He criticized Biden for betraying Israel while Hamas fired thousands of rockets at the Jewish homeland and for doing nothing about the recent Russian cyberattacks. He castigated other Democrat governors for failing to keep our streets safe and for allowing schools across the country to teach our children to hate America and each other. “Our country is being destroyed before our very own eyes. Crime is exploding. Police departments are being ripped apart and defunded,” Trump said. “America is being demeaned and humiliated on the world stage. Our freedom is being overtaken by left-wing cancel culture, and the Biden administration is pushing toxic critical race theory and illegal discrimination into our children’s schools.”

Trump also condemned Biden for being soft on China after they unleashed COVID-19 on the world, and he called for a global effort to collect a form of reparations: “All nations should work together to present China a bill for a minimum of $10 trillion to compensate for the damage they’ve caused…. [A]ll countries should collectively cancel any debt they owe to China as a down payment on reparations.” Trump also called on the U.S. to “phase in a firm 100 percent tariff on all goods made in China.” It remains to be seen if Biden will impose any sanctions on the country where his son Hunter received a $1.5 billion investment from a Chinese government–controlled bank in 2013.

Trump also had a few thoughts about Dr. Fauci, who we recently learned was dishonest about his understanding of how and where the Wuhan virus originated. Fauci also provided misleading information to the public that differed from what he said in private email exchanges about the effectiveness of masks, as well as how he believed the virus could be transmitted. “I actually got along with [Fauci], he’s a nice guy, he’s a great promoter. Not a great doctor, but he’s a hell of a promoter,” Trump said. “He likes television more than any politician in this room, and they like television. But he’s been wrong on almost every issue, and he was wrong on Wuhan and the lab also.”

The former president applauded Republican governors for ensuring that future federal and state elections are secure, free of ballot harvesting, unsupervised drop boxes, and dead people on voting rolls: “Republicans across the country are pursuing voting reforms to ensure election integrity…. Joe Biden called these common-sense reforms un-American. But the thing that is really un-American is an election scam, that’s un-American.”

Trump also stressed the importance of a large Republican turnout for the midterm elections next year to regain control of Congress and push back against Biden’s out-of-control $6 trillion in proposed spending, which will cause massive inflation and further bankrupt our country. “The survival of America depends upon our ability to elect Republicans at every level, starting with the midterms next year. We have to get it done.” Trump said. “While Democrats push economic policies designed to punish American workers, Republicans must keep on fighting to protect, promote, and uplift the American worker, who we cherish.”

As for the future of the GOP, there is no doubt that Trump remains the most powerful leader in the Republican Party today. To deny that fact is to deny reality. All of the talk about nominating a more “unifying” candidate in 2024 does not appear to be a winning strategy. With respect to Gov. Ron DeSantis, Nikki Haley, and Sen. Ted Cruz, it is patently ridiculous to believe that any of them could drive a higher voter turnout than Trump, who received the most votes for any incumbent president in U.S. history and the highest percentage of non-white voters for any Republican president since Richard Nixon in 1960. He also increased his share among Latino voters by 8 percent and increased his support among black voters by 3 percent compared to 2016. That does not sound like a president who failed to unify the country, and Trump’s supporters are not going away anytime soon either.

It is for those reasons that the Big Tech overlords at Facebook and Twitter have shamefully thrown Trump off their platforms. They are terrified that he will have another shot at the White House in 2024, and they are doing all they can to silence him and cut off his most effective form of communicating with the public.

The television networks at ABC, CBS, CNN, MSNBC, NBC, and PBS are also choosing not to cover Trump much these days, and when they do they mostly smear and besmirch him, as is their wont.

The Washington Post and the New York Times can try to ignore Trump all they want, or push more false stories about him colluding with the Kremlin. The corrupt attorney general in New York can continue her phony partisan witch hunt into the Trump Organization. Liz Cheney, Mitt Romney, and other establishment Republicans can hope that Trump disappears and chooses not to run for president again in 2024. But that would be wishful thinking on their part.

If one thing is certain besides death and taxes, it is that Trump will not be silenced. He won’t ride off into the Florida sunset and devote his life to golfing at Mar-a-Lago, and there’s not a thing that any amount of censorship from Big Tech or any amount of propaganda from the Fourth Estate that can stop him from delivering his message.

David Keltz was a speechwriter for the Administrator at the U.S. General Services Administration from 2020–21 and is the author of the new book The Campaign of His Life and Media Bias in the Trump Presidency and the Extinction of the Conservative Millennial. He previously served as a White House Intern for Vice President Mike Pence. Follow him on Twitter @david_keltz or email at dkeltz1@gmail.com.