Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump filled a converted Air Force hanger on Friday in Denver for an hour-long speech that didn’t disappoint an avid crowd, including Republican elected officials, GOP candidates and Trump supporters who say they are counting on the billionaire to shake up a corrupt system and get the country back on track.

“I think he’s going to get our mojo back for America,” Boulder resident Brad Bartholomew told The Colorado Statesman. “That’s why I’m behind him.”

In wide-ranging remarks delivered just about 24 hours after Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton accepted the nomination in Philadelphia, Trump boasted that just-released Nielson ratings showed his acceptance speech a week earlier won a couple million more viewers and said Clinton’s speech was “really lies.”

“She made it sound like everything is rosy-dory,” Trump said at a rally held at the Wings Over the Rockies museum, surrounded by vintage military aircraft. “Things are not rosy-dory, folks.”

Pointing to economic indicators released on Friday that showed the economy grew in the last quarter at a paltry 1.2 percent annual rate, Trump ticked off complaint after complaint about Clinton’s optimistic tilt toward the general election just 101 days away.

“We’ve had more police shootings over the last year,” he said. “I mean, nobody’s ever seen anything like what’s going on.”

Trump ambled through a greatest-hits list of campaign proposals and themes, including restricting the flow of Syrian refugees – “The people coming in from Syria, we have no idea who they are. Remember, they cut the heads off people, they drown people in steel cages,” he said as the crowd shook – and junking international trade agreements, including NAFTA and the controversial Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement, which Clinton has said she opposes and hasn’t been ratified yet by the United States.

He also got the crowd to boo retired four-star Gen. John Allen, who led coalition forces in Afghanistan. He endorsed Clinton at the Democratic convention, calling Trump inexperienced and wrong on military issues such as torture.

“You know who he is? He’s a failed general,” Trump said. “He was the general fighting ISIS. I would say he hasn’t done so well, right?” Trump said as the crowd expressed its displeasure.

Trump called his opponent “Crooked Hillary” within a minute of taking the stage. Although he egged on supporters chanting “Lock her up!” at a town hall event hours earlier in Colorado Springs – “I’ve been saying let’s just beat her on Nov. 8th. But you know what, I’m starting to agree with you,” he told that crowd, adding, “I’m taking the gloves off” – he merely smiled and paused to bask in the roar when the Denver crowd took up the chant.

“We have to win this state,” Trump said. “I’m going to be here so much, you’re going to say, ‘Please, OK, we’ll vote for you, don’t come back here any more.'”

From the sound of things, not many in the crowd – estimated at 6,500 by fire department officials – would mind if Trump returns to Colorado again and again before the election.

That includes a GOP state lawmaker locked in what could be the contest that determines which party controls the state Senate when legislators are sworn in next year.

“I’ve heard people say this is not a swing state anymore and it’s not in play, and I scratch my head at that and say we’ll see,” state Sen. Laura Woods, R-Arvada, told The Statesman after the event. “I would hate for him to think Colorado isn’t relevant.”

Woods, who is facing a rematch against former state Sen. Rachel Zenzinger, D-Arvada, to represent the nearly evenly divided Senate District 19, said she wasn’t bothered by Democrats’ efforts to link her to Trump in hopes that might cost her support in the northwest suburban district.

“I am not considering running way from him,” Woods said. “He is the people’s candidate. The people have spoken across this country – 14 million voters. I heard the other day that 86 percent of Republicans say they will vote for Donald Trump. That doesn’t say to me I should run away from him. Why would I do that?”

Woods said she’s seen recent polling that shows Trump ahead in Jefferson County, and that’s borne out by her discussions with voters.

“I know from the door knocking I have been doing this summer there is a lot of Trump support in my district,” she said. “It’s the blue collar workers, it’s the Hispanic women, it’s the union members. It’s a diverse group of people and reasons for supporting him, but I’ve bumped into quite a few Trump supporters in my district.”

It’s the same kind of diversity she saw at the Denver rally, where she and her husband stood among Trump supporters about 30 feet from the podium.

“The crowd was huge and diverse and energetic,” Woods said. “What I really loved was seeing lots and lots of millennials in the crowd. I was standing with Hispanics and I was standing with blacks and I was standing with all the ethnic groups. The diversity of support Trump has in Colorado was encouraging.”

Trump’s focus on economic statistics – including real employment, quarterly growth and home ownership rates – was encouraging, she said.

“He read off lots of statistics about why we need to make America great again,” Woods said. “It’s easy for the governor of Colorado to say the economy in Colorado is great, and I would agree there are pockets where it is doing well. But I’m walking lots of doors in lots of neighborhoods, and you can tell people are not as prosperous and doing as well as the governor wants people to believe.”

Republican congressional candidate George Athanasopoulos – he’s challenging U.S. Rep. Ed Perlmutter in the 7th Congressional District – had high praise for Trump’s speech and the enthusiastic turnout it drew but added he wants to see better coordination between the presidential candidate, the state Republican Party and local candidates.

“It was a great event, but great events alone are not going to lead us to victory in November. We have work to do to demonstrate to voters that we are the winning ticket,” Athanasopoulos said, noting that he hadn’t been contacted by the Trump campaign until he heard campaign officials were calling for him to come up on stage. But by the time that happened, he’d just recently stepped out of the museum to replenish his supply of campaign fliers and was barred from re-entry.

“We’re all on the same team, so we should all be in the same fight and we should be fighting together. We’re still working out the kinks,” he said with a chuckle after the event. “We have the winning message, we have the winning issues, we are the ones speaking for the mood of the electorate. It would be a travesty if the Democrats overcame that with a superior ground game and a dominant organizational effort.”

His fellow congressional candidate Casper Stockham, the GOP challenger to U.S. Rep. Diana DeGette, managed to meet Trump backstage after his speech but also had some pointers for the presidential candidate.

“I think he’s going to win a good majority of the Republicans, but his speech is not going to resonate with any unaffiliated voters or anybody on the fence,” Stockham told The Statesman after the speech. “His talk was good for getting the Republican base on board, but if he wants to win the presidency, he needs to win more than the Republican base.”

Specifically, Stockham said, Trump needs to tackle head-on a persistent criticism Stockham said he hears frequently while campaigning.

“I’d like for him to dispel the rumors he’s a racist. I defend him all the time in the black and brown community. That’s one of the first things they say,” said Stockham, who is African-American.

“I don’t spend a lot of time trying to defend Trump – that’s going to be up to him. But it would be fantastic if we got some help from him. He needs to give us some information so we can fight for him, and he hasn’t been doing that,” Stockham added.

“All the stuff he’s done in his life – he’s only been a racist since he started running against Democrats. Nobody’s called him a racist until he started running as a Republican,” Stockham said, pointing to Trump’s consistent support for pillars of the black community, including the Revs. Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton.

“When they need money, the very first call they make is to Trump,” Stockham said. “Donald Trump has been seen many times hanging out with black folks – Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, Muhammad Ali, Jay Z, Mike Tyson, Michael Jackson – he’s helped them all.”

When he had the opportunity to shake hands with Trump after his Denver speech, Stockham said he told the candidate about his 86-year-old mother.

“She voted for Obama twice, and she’s voting for Trump, she loves Trump,” he said. “Trump gave me an autographed note to give to her. Racists don’t do that, you know what I’m saying?”

Former Chicago resident Dmitri Bogdanovich, who nearly yelled himself hoarse during the rally, told The Statesman he was proud to support Trump.

“He’s fresh. I don’t like the old system. It’s not working, it’s not working,” he said. “They’re telling us one thing, and I’m seeing something different on television. I just don’t think they’re telling us the truth.”

He said the last great Democrat was John F. Kennedy, adding that the only Democrat who’s earned his vote was Chicago’s legendary Mayor Richard J. Daley. “He was a strong conservative, and there was law and order in Chicago. That’s why I had to leave Chicago,” Bogdanovich said.

He said he wasn’t happy with the tenor of politics these days, either.

“I don’t like the division. I want us to be able to argue even if we disagree. And we’re not doing that anymore. We’re literally in a political civil war now.”

State Rep. Jim Wilson, R-Salida, also had high praise for Trump’s appearance.

“People are going to be surprised,” he said after the speech. “It’s a clear choice. What I tell people, if you’re comfortable with what’s going on, you’re not for Trump. If you don’t like what’s been going on, you’re for Trump. It’s pretty simple.”

– ernest@coloradostatesman.com