By Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump attempted to paint a bleak picture of the U.S. economy Wednesday and pin it on his Democratic rival, Vice President Kamala Harris.
But Trump frequently veered off script to direct personal attacks at Harris, or rail against undocumented immigrants.
“They wanted to do a speech on the economy,” Trump told the crowd in Asheville, North Carolina, in an apparent reference to his campaign advisers.
“Today we’re going to talk about one subject. And then we’ll start going back to the other, because we sort of love that,” he later said.
At one point, Trump openly questioned whether the economy was really what he should be talking about.
“They say it’s the most important subject,” he mused. “I’m not sure it is.”
Nonetheless, Trump did hit the Biden-Harris White House on issues that his campaign advisers had wanted him to highlight, like consumer prices.
“You’re paying the price for Kamala’s liberal extremism at the gas pump, at the grocery counter, and on your mortgage bill,” he said.
Trump also proposed a handful of economic measures that he promised to enact if he is returned to the White House in November.
Among them was a promise that he would slash energy costs “in half” within 18 months of taking office. He did not offer any details of how he might do this. Trump also repeated his recent proposals to eliminate taxes on tips and taxes on Social Security income.
But Trump’s carefully scripted economic attacks frequently devolved into off-the-cuff personal attacks on Harris. Trump accused her of ducking interviews since she became the Democratic nominee because “she’s not smart.” And he again criticized the sound of her laugh, calling it “the laugh of a person with some big problems.”
Several Trump allies have publicly urged the Republican nominee to concentrate on policy, noting that when Trump insults Harris’ intelligence, or questions her ethnicity, he risks alienating independent voters.
Wednesday’s speech was part of an effort underway at the Trump campaign to retool the former president’s message, following President Joe Biden’s withdrawal from the race and Harris’ entry in late July.
Harris, fueled by fresh enthusiasm and hundreds of millions in donations, will come to the state Friday to deliver her own speech on the economy.
As Harris has shot up in the polls, the solid lead Trump had over Biden has evaporated. But Trump still maintains his longstanding advantage over Democrats when it comes to which candidate voters believe would be best for the economy.
Attacking first Biden, and now Harris, over high inflation rates has worked well for Trump so far. But now, new economic data risks blunting the impact of Trump’s attacks.
The Labor Department reported Wednesday that the annual inflation rate had slowed in July to 2.9% year over year, its lowest level since 2021.
