Mayor Michelle Wu launched her long-delayed re-election campaign kickoff in a State of the City speech that opponent Josh Kraft could not compete against, taking a strong swipe at President Donald Trump and Republican “bullies” for criticizing Boston’s sanctuary city status.

“This is our city. No one tells Boston how to take care of our own. Not kings, and not presidents who think they are kings,” Wu said, referring to her testimony in Washington before the House Oversight Committee. “Boston was born facing down bullies.”

Wu held the power of the bully pulpit Wednesday night inside MGM Music Hall, where rock stars usually perform, announcing major feel-good initiatives like an affordable housing plan, an energy saver program and an expansion of free museum Sundays for families of Boston schoolchildren.

It was a demonstration of the power of incumbency and an example of why Boston mayors are hardly ever defeated.

Referring to border czar Tom Homan’s threat to bring “hell” to Boston for harboring illegal immigrants, Wu Wednesday retorted that “come high water or hell – no matter who threatens to bring it – Boston has stood up for the people we love and the country we built.”

Wu’s speech took place two months later than a normal State of the City address because she had just given birth to her third child in January and took some time off.

It was her second major public appearance in the last few weeks, coming just two weeks after being hauled in front of the House Oversight Committee by Republican leaders to testify about Boston’s sanctuary city status.

“It is because of this community – and the work we’ve done together – that I was able to raise my right hand, swear an oath and tell the nation the truth, that Boston is the greatest city on earth,” she said Wednesday night to loud applause from the partisan crowd of City Hall officials and political leaders.

Her testimony before Congress drew mostly praise from her supporters and also served to galvanize her re-election campaign on an issue that could have become a liability.

“We are a city where the Irish coffee is strong and our opinions are stronger,” she said in the State of the City. “We may not always agree or see eye to eye, but at the end of the day, we are a family. If you come for one of us, you will get all of us.”

The speech Wednesday night was essentially rocket fuel for her campaign, which has yet to be officially started. She was primed for this moment.

It was more like a state of the campaign speech solidifying her standing at the top of the polls over Kraft, son of billionaire Patriots’ owner Robert Kraft.

Wu’s State of the City and her condemnation of Trump is bound to get national attention and solidify her as one of the country’s leading political progressives, though it’s not going to help when it comes to the federal government’s likely punishment of Boston for being a sanctuary city.

Before the speech even began, she announced a deal with the Boston teachers’ union to lock them into pay raises for the next three years.

Look for Wu’s speech and the initiatives she launched to become talking points for her campaign in the coming months.

Wu, as expected during her speech, repeated her claim that Boston is safe, despite data showing other cities with less violent crime and a major crime problem in Downtown Crossing that is keeping people from visiting the city.

She also spent a good part of the speech Wednesday night highlighting progress in the schools, though violence and old broken down school buildings continue to plague Boston’s school system.

Kraft tried to blunt the impact of the speech by announcing his first ever union endorsement, but that received just a fraction of the attention Wu got for her televised speech.

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