ASHEVILLE, N.C. (AP) — Donald Trump is trying to refocus his efforts to make a presidential comeback on Wednesday, this time with a rally and speech in North Carolina that his campaign has touted as a major address on economic policy.
Watch the live event in the player above.
Trump speaks at Harrah’s Cherokee Center, an auditorium in downtown Asheville. His lectern is lined with more than a dozen American flags and special backdrops bearing the words “No Tax on Social Security” and “No Tax on Tips.”
SEE: How Trump’s desire for more Federal Reserve control could affect the economy if he is re-elected
Republicans want more attention from Trump than just the indiscriminate arguments and attacks he has made against Vice President Kamala Harris since Democrats nominated her as their presidential candidate. Twice in the past week, Trump has wasted such opportunities, first in an hour-long press conference at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida, then in a two-and-a-half-hour conversation on social media platform X with CEO Elon Musk.
The latest attempt comes in the state where Trump won his narrowest statewide victory four years ago and which is likely to be a contested arena again in 2024. The question for the election campaign is whether Trump can stick to a narrow framework in economic policy, especially to burden Harris with the consequences of inflation, instead of falling into his usual inhibitions and complaints.
The speech comes on the same day that the Labor Department reported that inflation hit its lowest level in more than three years in July, which could be a potential boon for Harris. Harris plans to be in North Carolina on Friday to announce more details of her pledge to “make building the middle class … a critical goal of my presidency.”
REGARD: Trump holds press conference at Mar-a-Lago
According to a new poll by the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research, Americans trust Trump more than Harris on economic issues. However, the difference is small: 45 percent trust Trump, 38 percent trust Harris.
Some voters who came to hear Trump said they were ready to hear him make concrete statements about the economy – not because they don’t already trust him, but because they want him to expand his appeal to Harris.
“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.”
READ MORE: Trump reports in chat on X about assassination and deportations with Musk
The Asheville venue is significantly smaller than usual Trump rallies, with fewer than 3,000 seats. But the auditorium layout – as opposed to a sports arena or open outdoor space that the former president is used to – seemed tailor-made to help Trump cast the event as much as possible as a major political speech rather than a typical rally.
Trump has criticized Harris and Biden before him over the economy, but he has usually gone overboard, warning of a “Kamala crash like 1929,” accompanied by other sweeping generalizations such as warning of a “World War III” and “the US suburbs being flooded with violent foreign gangs.” Trump made almost verbatim claims about Biden’s potential election in 2020.
Trump has claimed in recent weeks that if he were re-elected, “there would have been no inflation,” ignoring the disruptions to global supply chains during the Covid-19 pandemic, the Covid-19 spending increases that included a massive relief package Trump signed as president, and the impact of the Russian invasion of Ukraine on global energy prices.
The former president has also promised to immediately address the higher prices in a next term. His key policy proposals on that front include expanding oil drilling (US production has reached its highest level ever under Biden), new tariffs on foreign imports, extending his 2017 tax cuts that expire under the next administration, suspending taxes on tip income and rolling back Biden-era investments in greener energy and infrastructure.
READ MORE: AP-NORC poll: Americans think Harris is more honest and disciplined, slightly prefer Trump on economic and immigration issues
Yet at Mar-a-Lago, in his conversation with Musk, on his own platform Truth Social, and in his recent rallies and other interviews, Trump has overshadowed his own economic agenda. He has become fixated on personally attacking Harris, falsely accusing her of misrepresenting her own race and ethnicity. He has fallen into old attacks on Biden, repeating the lie that his 2020 defeat was due to systematic voter fraud. Most recently, he has begun railing against the size and enthusiasm of the crowds Harris draws on the campaign trail, even falsely claiming that a photo of her rally was faked using artificial intelligence.
These factors have made it difficult for Trump to create a clearer political contrast with the Democrats, no matter how hard his advisers push the idea of such a realignment.
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.”
READ MORE: Harris is politically cautious, wants to outmaneuver Trump and address weak points in 2020
In announcing his speech, Trump’s campaign team listed the impact of inflation in North Carolina since Biden took office in 2021. The team did the same before Trump’s August 3 rally in Atlanta. Trump even read the statistics from the teleprompter – but not until near the end of his 91 minutes at the podium and long after several thousand of the once-capacity crowd had left the building.
North Carolina is another swing state where Trump will have to contend with the resurgent Harris campaign, in an area that seemed to be leaning more Republican under Biden as the Democratic candidate.
Asheville and the surrounding area will prove key to the election outcome. Set against the backdrop of the Blue Ridge Mountains, the city has a liberal cultural identity with a bohemian vibe and a live music and craft beer scene that attracts left-leaning students, retirees and tourists. But the surrounding mountain counties of western North Carolina have become increasingly Republican in recent election cycles.
