Former President Donald Trump held two campaign events in New Hampshire and South Carolina on Saturday, marking his first formal public appearance since he declared his 2024 candidacy.

His events were more intimate than the large rallies for which he has become known, but still hit on policies that he said would be antithetical to President Joe Biden’s approach to immigration and crime. He also brushed aside any concerns that he may have, in his own words, “lost his step,” telling New Hampshire Republican leaders he is more “angry” and “committed” than ever.

In South Carolina, Trump met with a couple of hundred people and made remarks with Governor Henry McMaster — who is heading the Trump campaign’s South Carolina leadership team — and Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) on either side of him.

He also hit on cultural issues and education, deriding “wokeness” in the military and “perverts” who are “indoctrinating youth” into believing there are more than two genders. Later in his remarks, Trump promised to cut federal funding for any school pushing leftwing political or sexual content onto children, and to incentivize states to protect the rights of parents in education.

“If any principal is not getting the job done, the parent should have the right and be able to vote and to fire them, and to select someone else that will do the job properly,” Trump said.

Trump’s campaign events come as he remains the only Republican candidate in a field that is expected to grow to include officials who served in the last administration. This week former UN Ambassador Nikki Haley said she would soon decide whether she would run in 2024. Both former Vice President Mike Pence and former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo recently released memoirs, which typically precede presidential announcements for those with aspirations for the nation’s highest office.

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, who beat his Democratic gubernatorial opponent in 2022 by such a decisive margin that the once-purple state was declared red by legacy media, is also releasing a memoir next month but remains guarded about his plans. Polling suggests that a DeSantis entry in the 2024 Republican primary would cause the biggest splash in the field.

Nominating contest aside, it’s unclear who the Republican nominee would be running against. President Joe Biden has declined to say whether he will seek re-election, and his absence could cause a messy primary process.

Biden, like Trump, is also under investigation by a special counsel over his handling of classified documents.

Dr Jordan B Peterson laid out his plan to take on the globalists on “The Joe Rogan Experience,” telling the podcast king in an extended interview posted Saturday that he is considering starting a populist alternative to the World Economic Forum.

Peterson, the DailyWire+ star, clinical psychologist, and best-selling author, also told Rogan that the transgender “contagion” is damaging children and likened it to the satanic ritual abuse claims that arose in daycare centers nearly 40 years ago. He also took a clear shot at the globalist group that gathers in Davos to formulate progressive policies to impose on the world.

“I’ve been trying to understand the driving ideas underneath this globalist utopian tyranny that seems to be developing from the top-down, and I think it’s driven at least in part by this religious vision that I already described — you know, that you have to construe culture itself, especially industrial culture, as the tyrannical father raping and pillaging everything in its way, which is [an] unbelievably dangerous way to think — too one-sided,” Peterson said.

Peterson blasted the progressive elites, who hint darkly at population controls and push policies that make food and energy expensive for the world’s poor.

“I’ve already felt that I’ve been at war for the last six months, and I would say it’s war because what I observed happening in Europe when I was there last was that … it’s pretty damn clear that the globalist utopians are willing to sacrifice the poor for the sake of the planet, you know, and they’re doing that by cranking energy prices up through the roof, and that means that people die,” Peterson said.

Peterson has clashed with leftist authoritarians in the past, including Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who is a WEF regular. Peterson is also currently sparring with a psychology trade association that sought to sanction him for tweets it deemed offensive. The College of Psychologists of Ontario ordered Peterson to undergo “social media communications retraining” or face a hearing on the potential suspension of his license to practice clinical psychology. Peterson made it clear he has no intention of submitting to the group’s demand.

Rogan also asked Peterson to share his thoughts on what is behind the surge in people identifying as transgender. Peterson explained that the trend is being driven by “sociological contagion,” and compared it to “the satanic ritual abuse accusations that emerged in daycares in the 1980s.” Peterson blasted his home country’s new law, which amended Canada’s human rights protections to cover transgender and “nonbinary” citizens. Peterson predicted that the new law and continued mainstreaming of young people getting chemical and surgical gender treatments will “fatally confuse thousands of young girls.”