ASHEVILLE, N.C. (AP) — Donald Trump made little effort to stick to his message Wednesday at a rally in North Carolina that his campaign billed as a major economic address, mixing promises to lower energy prices and “unleash economic abundance” with the usual off-script digressions about Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris’s laughter, how wind power works and President Joe Biden’s son.
The 75-minute speech included a litany of broad policy ideas and even grander promises to end inflation, boost the U.S.’s already record-high energy production and raise Americans’ standard of living. But those announcements were often lost in the former president’s typically casual, uncomplaining style of speaking, which he has used to try to dampen enthusiasm for Harris’s fledgling campaign.
Trump vented his frustration with Democrats replacing Biden with vice president. He repeatedly denigrated San Francisco, where Harris once served as district attorney, as “uninhabitable” and attacked his rival in deeply personal terms. He questioned her intelligence, said she had “the laugh of a madwoman” and mused that Democrats were being “politically correct” in trying to make the first black woman and person of South Asian descent vice president.
“You know why she didn’t give an interview? She’s not smart. She’s not intelligent. And we’ve been through enough of that with that guy, Crook Joe,” Trump said, using the nickname he often uses for Biden.
Turning his attention to policy, Trump promised to end “job-killing regulations,” roll back Biden-era restrictions on fossil fuel production and green energy investments, instruct Cabinet members to exploit “all means” to “beat inflation” within the first year of his second term, and eliminate all taxes on benefits and income classified as tips. Specifically, he promised to reduce Americans’ energy costs by “50 to 70%” within 12 months or “18 months maximum.”
But he immediately added: “If it doesn’t work out, you’ll say: Well, I voted for him and he still got far.”
Trump delivered his speech at Harrah’s Cherokee Center, an auditorium in downtown Asheville. His lectern was lined with more than a dozen American flags and special backdrops that read “No Tax on Social Security” and “No Tax on Tips” – a scene that seemed to illustrate the political weight Trump was trying to convey as part of his campaign.
Republicans had expected him to focus more on the economy than on the disjointed arguments and attacks he has made against Harris since Democrats selected her as their presidential candidate. Twice in the past week, Trump has all but skipped such opportunities, first at an hour-long news conference at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida, then at a two-and-a-half-hour conversation on social media platform X with CEO Elon Musk.
Sticking to the script on Wednesday, Trump compared the current economic situation to his own presidency, asking, “Is there anything cheaper under Kamala Harris and Crooked Joe?”
“Kamala has said that fighting inflation will be her priority from the beginning,” Trump said. “But Kamala’s first day was three and a half years ago. Why didn’t she do it?”
Yet throughout his speech, Trump oscillated between his prepared remarks and the usual attacks. He turned away from the teleprompter in the middle of explaining a modern economic promise when something else occurred to him. He ran through his prepared remarks crisply and quickly. The rest was his wide-ranging style, peppered with hand gestures and exaggerations.
More than once, he jumped from a political opposition to Harris to another jab at her hometown of San Francisco. He also noted several times that it was Biden, not Harris, who won votes in the Democratic primary. During a section of his speech on energy, he slipped up an obvious jab at Hunter Biden, the president’s son, and his “laptop from hell.”
Trump tried to tie his emphasis on the border and immigration policy to the economy, repeating his dubious claim that the influx would strain Social Security and Medicare to the point of collapse. He complained that some U.S. cities, including his hometown of New York, were spending taxpayer money to house migrants. But most of the time he spent on immigration were the same broadsides about immigrants and violent crime that have been a staple of Trump’s speeches since 2015.
The latest attempt to refocus his campaign comes in the state where Trump won his narrowest statewide victory four years ago and which is likely to be a contested scene again in 2024.
Trump’s aides have long believed that inflation will be a burden for Democrats this year, but the event in Asheville only raises more questions about whether Trump can actually make inflation the centerpiece of his duel against Harris.
The speech came on the same day that the Labor Department reported in July that year-over-year inflation hit its lowest level in more than three years. That could provide a respite for Harris amid Trump’s attacks on inflation. Harris plans to be in North Carolina on Friday to provide more details on her pledge to “make building the middle class … a critical goal of my presidency.”
According to a modern poll by the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research, Americans trust Trump more than Harris on economic issues. However, the difference is miniature: 45 percent trust Trump, 38 percent trust Harris.
Some voters who came to hear Trump said they were ready to hear him talk more specifically about his plans – not because they don’t already trust him, but because they wanted him to build his appeal before Election Day.
“He needs to tell people what he’s going to do, talk about the issues,” said Timothy Vath, a 55-year-old from Greenville, South Carolina. “He did what he said he would do in his first term.” “Talk about how he would do it again.”
Mona Shope, a 60-year-old from nearby Candler, said that despite his own wealth, Trump “understands working people and wants the best for us.” Shope, who recently retired from a public community college, said she receives a government pension but has taken a part-time job to combat inflation. “This way, after paying my bills, I can still take vacations and spend money,” she said. “Sometimes it feels like there’s nothing left to save.”
In some of his offbeat moments, Trump has engaged in his trademark twisting of facts, such as mocking wind energy by claiming that people would face power outages if the wind didn’t blow.
Trump again claimed that inflation would not have risen as much if he had been re-elected, ignoring the disruptions to global supply chains during the Covid-19 pandemic, increased Covid-19 spending, which included a massive relief package Trump signed as president, and the impact of the Russian invasion of Ukraine on global energy prices.
A Harris aide said Wednesday that the vice president welcomed any comparison Trump could make.
“No matter what he says, one thing is certain: Trump has no plan, no vision, and no serious interest in building the middle class,” communications director Michael Tyler wrote in a campaign memo. Citing the economic slowdown caused by the pandemic and the 2017 tax cuts that primarily benefited corporations and wealthy households, Tyler predicted that Trump’s proposals on trade, taxes, and a reversal of Biden-era policies would “drive up inflation and cost our economy millions of jobs – all to the benefit of the super-rich and special interests.”
