Trump’s campaign called it an economic address. He made big promises but mostly veered off topic

Associated Press

ASHEVILLE, N.C. (AP) — Donald Trump made little effort to stay on message Wednesday at a rally in North Carolina that his campaign billed as a big economic address, mixing pledges to slash energy prices and “unleash economic abundance” with familiar off-script tangents on Democratic nominee Kamala Harris’ laugh, the mechanics of wind energy and President Joe Biden’s son.

The 75-minute speech featured a litany of broad policy ideas and even grander promises to end inflation, bolster already record-level U.S. energy production and raise Americans’ standard of living. But those pronouncements were often lost in the former president’s typically freewheeling, grievance-laden style that has made it difficult for him to answer the enthusiasm of Harris’ nascent campaign.

Trump aired his frustration over Democrats swapping the vice president in place of Biden at the top of their presidential ticket. He repeatedly denigrated San Francisco, where Harris was once the district attorney, as “unlivable” and went after his rival in deeply personal terms, questioning her intelligence, saying she has “the laugh of a crazy person” and musing that Democrats were being “politically correct” in trying to elevate the first Black woman and person of South Asian descent to serve as vice president.

“You know why she hasn’t done an interview? She’s not smart. She’s not intelligent. And we’ve gone through enough of that with this guy, Crooked Joe,” Trump said, using the nickname he often uses for Biden.

When he was focusing on policy, Trump pledged to end “job-killing regulations,” roll back Biden-era restrictions on fossil fuel production and investments in green energy, instruct Cabinet members to use “every tool” to “defeat inflation” within the first year of a second term and end all taxes on Social Security benefits and income classified as tips.

He promised economic growth so abundant that “we will pay off all our debt,” similar to a pledge he made in 2016 before the national debt ballooned during his presidency. He pledged to lower Americans’ energy costs by “50 to 70%” within 12 months, or a “maximum 18 months.” But he immediately hedged: “If it doesn’t work out, you’ll say, ‘oh well, I voted for him and he still got it down a lot.’”

At one point, Trump seemed even to question the purpose of giving a speech ostensibly devoted to the economy. “They wanted to do a speech on the economy,” he riffed, apparently referring to his campaign aides. “They say it’s the most important subject. I’m not sure it is.”

Trump spoke at Harrah’s Cherokee Center, an auditorium in downtown Asheville, with his podium flanked by more than a dozen American flags and custom backdrops that read: “No tax on Social Security” and “No tax on tips” — a made-for-TV setup to project the policy heft his campaign wanted Trump to convey.

Republicans had been looking for him to focus more on the economy than the scattershot arguments and attacks he has made on Harris since Democrats shifted to her as their presidential nominee. Twice in the past week, Trump has virtually bypassed such opportunities, first in an hourlong news conference at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida, then in a 2 1/2-hour conversation on the social media platform X with CEO Elon Musk.

When he stayed on script Wednesday, Trump contrasted the current economy with his own presidency, asking, “Is anything less expensive under Kamala Harris and Crooked Joe?”

“Kamala has declared that tackling inflation will be a ‘Day One priority’ for her,” Trump said. “But Day One for Kamala was 3 1/2 years ago. Why hasn’t she done it?”

Yet throughout his speech, Trump ping-ponged between his prepared remarks and familiar attacks — deviating from the teleprompter in the middle of explaining a new economic promise when something triggered another thought. He ticked through prepared remarks crisply and quickly. The rest was his more freewheeling style, punctuated with hand gestures and hyperbole.

More than once, he jumped from a policy contrast with Harris to taking another swipe at her hometown of San Francisco. He also noted several times that it was Biden, not Harris, who earned votes from Democratic primary voters. During a section of his speech on energy, he slipped in an apparent dig at Hunter Biden, the president’s son, and his “laptop from hell.”

Trump sought to connect his emphasis on the border and immigration policy to the economy. He repeated his dubious claim that the influx would strain Social Security and Medicare to the point of collapse. He bemoaned the taxpayer money being spent on housing migrants in some U.S. cities, including his native New York. But most of the time he spent on immigration was the same broadsides about immigrants and violent crime that have been a staple of Trump’s speeches since 2015.

The latest attempt to reset his campaign comes in the state that delivered Trump his closest statewide margin of victory four years ago and that is once again expected to be a battleground in 2024.

Trump aides have long thought that an inflationary economy was an albatross for Democrats this year. But the event in Asheville only amplifies questions about whether Trump can effectively make it a centerpiece of his matchup against Harris.

The speech came the same day that the Labor Department reported that year-over-year inflation reached its lowest level in more than three years in July, a potential reprieve for Harris in the face of Trump’s attacks over inflation. Harris plans to be in North Carolina on Friday to release more details of her promise to make “building up the middle class … a defining goal of my presidency.”

A new poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research finds that Americans are more likely to trust Trump over Harris when it comes to handling the economy, but the difference is slight — 45% for Trump and 38% for 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 want him to expand his appeal ahead of Election Day.

“He needs to tell people what he’s going to do, talk about the issues,” said Timothy Vath, a 55-year-old who drove from Greenville, South Carolina. “He did what he said he was going to do” in his initial term. “Talk about how he’d do that again.”

Mona Shope, a 60-year-old from nearby Candler, said Trump, despite his own wealth, “understands working people and wants what’s best for us.” A recent retiree from a public community college, Shope said she has a state pension but has picked up part-time work to mitigate against inflation. “It’s so I can still have vacations and spending money after paying my bills,” she said. “Sometimes it feels like there’s nothing left to save.”

In some of his off-script moments, Trump ventured into familiar misrepresentations of fact, including when he mocked wind energy by suggesting people would face power outages when the wind wasn’t blowing.

Trump again insisted that inflation would not have spiked had he been reelected in 2020, a claim that ignores the global supply chain interruptions during the COVID-19 pandemic, COVID-19 spending boosts that included a massive aid package Trump signed as president, and the global energy price effects of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

A Harris aide said Wednesday that the vice president welcomes any comparison Trump is able to make.

“No matter what he says, one thing is certain: Trump has no plan, no vision, and no meaningful interest in helping build up the middle class,” communications director Michael Tyler wrote in a campaign memo. Tyler pointed to the economic slowdown of the pandemic and 2017 tax cuts that were tilted to corporations and wealthy individual households, and predicted Trump’s proposals on trade, taxation and reversing Biden-era policies would “send inflation skyrocketing and cost our economy millions of jobs – all to benefit the ultra-wealthy and special interests.”