072517...R TRUMP 3...Y-town...07-25-17...President Donald J. Trump points out to the crowd during his rally at the Covelli Centre Tuesday evening...by R. Michael Semple

YOUNGSTOWN, Ohio — On the drive to the Covelli Centre through Trumbull and Mahoning counties’ “beautiful roads,” and past its shuttered factories from the Vienna Air Base, first lady Melania Trump asked her husband, “What happened here?”

“I said, ‘Those jobs have left Ohio,” President Donald J. Trump said. “But they’re all coming back.”

The Covelli Centre was filled with nearly 7,000 of the president’s supporters. The crowd chanted for the president at the rally sponsored by his campaign.

“Don’t sell your house,” Trump advised, promising a jobs boom that will raise up the Mahoning Valley.

Trump said he is pushing Congress for a bill that would bring a $1 trillion investment in the country’s infrastructure, that will also grow the economy.

He also promised more money in the pockets of Americans if he gets the tax reform package.

“If I get what I want, it will be the single biggest tax cut in American history,” Trump said. “We have the highest taxes anywhere in the world. And this will really bring it down to one of the lowest.”

That is what will pull places like the Mahoning Valley out of economic slumps, Trump said.

“We will have growth, we will have everything we’ve dreamed of having. It’s time to let Americans keep more of their own money.”

The president is promising a “new era of growth, prosperity and wealth.”

“People will be lifted from welfare to work and dependence to independence,” Trump said.

American steel, iron and aluminum will be used to fix roads and build airports, putting Americans to work by “rebuilding the nation’s crumbling infrastructure.”

“We will buy American, and we will hire American,” Trump said.

The president promised to never again sacrifice American jobs in order to enrich other countries.

“We don’t protect our people,” Trump said.

The president said that will change soon, and he will push for trade reforms that will benefit the American worker and business owner again.

Trumpeting his administration’s tough approach to illegal immigration and criminal gangs, Trump also described people “screaming from their windows, ‘Thank you, thank you,'” to border patrol agents and his Homeland Security secretary.

“We’re liberating our towns and we’re liberating our cities. Can you believe we have to do that?” he asked, adding that law enforcement agents were rooting out gang members — and “not doing it in a politically correct fashion. We’re doing it rough.”

“Our guys are rougher than their guys,” he bragged.

Trump also said Tuesday that he’s been working with a pair of Republican senators to “create a new immigration system for America.”

“We want a merit-based system, one that protects our workers” and one that “protects our economy,” said Trump, endorsing legislation that would put new limits on legal immigration.

Ahead of the rally, Trump stopped by a veterans’ event as part of the White House’s weeklong celebration of servicemen and women. Following brief remarks by several of his Cabinet members, Trump entered a small room of veterans, several of them over 80 years old, and praised them for their commitment and sacrifice for the country.

“A truly grateful nation salutes you,” Trump told the group in Struthers.

But he quickly shifted gears to recall his unexpected election win in Ohio, praising Youngstown and towns like it for helping him secure the electoral votes that put him over the top.

“It was incredible time we had. You saw the numbers,” he said. “Democrats, they win in Youngstown — but not this time.”

Trump joked about accusations that he doesn’t act “presidential.”

“It’s so easy to act presidential,” he said. “But that’s not going to get it done.”

Trump’s speech gave residents renewed patriotism, and offered hope that a depressed area will see a renewal of industry and prosperity, said Kevin Wyndham, chairman of the Trumbull County Republican Party.

“We have been made to be ashamed over the last few years of having pride in this country. We are told it’s shameful to be proud to be American, but we are lucky to be American and we needed to hear that,” Wyndham said.

Not everyone was so enthusiastic.

Angel Julious said she never protested a thing in her life, but when she heard Trump would be speaking in her own backyard, she picked up a marker and made a sign.

She wrote, “Health care for all. No to wealth care and walls.”

“When I heard he was coming, I got really upset. I just don’t like anything he stands for. He doesn’t care about the dignity of Americans, and all he is trying to do it undo everything (Barack) Obama did,” Julious said.

Wearing a T-shirt with an image of the former president on it, Julious joined many others on Federal Plaza, blocks from the Covelli Centre.

Many who gathered in the plaza came to protest the president’s push to dismantle the Affordable Care Act, even as Trump touted a U.S. Senate vote earlier Tuesday opening debate on legislation to repeal and replace the legislation.

Karen Zehr of Warren and with Valley Voices United for Change, was helping people register to vote and sign petitions for a 2018 Ohio ballot issue that would require bipartisan panels to draw federal voting districts.

“We have to stand up and show people, and tell people, that we oppose what is being done to our health care. (Trump) promised us during the campaign that he could broker a better health care bill. But we haven’t seen that yet. Every proposal would be worse than what we have now,” Zehr said.