Donald Trump tried to stick to his campaign’s new script on the economy Wednesday, but veered off course to attack Kamala Harris as a left-wing Californian who would flood the country with undocumented thugs.
“They’re taking their criminals and their people from mental institutions, and they’re putting them into our country because we have stupid people like Kamala and Joe running our country,” Trump told supporters at a rally in Asheville, North Carolina.
Calling Harris “far more liberal than crazy Bernie Sanders,” Trump portrayed himself as smarter, more authentic and mentally stable than his opponent, who he accused Democrats of hiding.
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“What happened to her laugh?” he said. “I haven’t heard that laugh in about a week.”
“That’s the laugh of a crazy person, I will tell you,” he continued. “They told her, ‘Don’t laugh, don’t laugh,’ No, her laugh is career-threatening.”
At times, he did manage to steer his attacks back to the economy. Flanked by the new slogan, “No Tax on Tips,” he suggested that Harris would try to steal his proposals when she outlines her economic vision in North Carolina on Friday.
“When Kamala lays out her fake economic plan this week—probably will be a copy of my plan, because basically that’s what she does,” he said.
But he often returned to personal obsessions, like how beautiful she looked on TIME’s recent cover. “They don’t use her picture, they don’t use her picture, they use an artist sketch,” the former president said. “I want to use that artist. I want to find that artist. I like him very much.”
The diversions were typical for a candidate who is anything but disciplined. As both campaigns try to reprise the old campaign theme that propelled Bill Clinton to victory in 1992, reports have suggested Trump’s advisers are tearing their hair out over a man who can’t stay on message.
Trump himself seemed to realize what he was doing—he was just perfectly OK with it.
“Today we’re going to talk about one subject and then we’ll start going back to the other ‘cause we sort of love that, don’t we?” he said, referencing the economy. “They say it’s the most important subject, I’m not sure it is.”
Based on the messaging his campaign was putting out, it was pretty important.
“Since Kamala is not doing any press, she can’t explain why crippling inflation rates have resulted in a 20% increase in prices since she took office,” a Wednesday campaign press release read. “Her campaign is hiding Kamala in the basement because they know she owns every single disastrous policy record of the Biden-Harris administration."
Other campaign communications indicated Trumpworld has pivoted from “Bidenflation” to “Kamalanomics,” pinning responsibility for inflation and high costs of living on the vice president.
While Trump spent his afternoon issuing doomsday warnings about a return to Depression-era calamity if Harris wins, Democrats played defense on an issue they, too, hope to dominate.
“People in western North Carolina know when they’re getting played because they experienced it when then-President Donald Trump ran our economy into the ground like he drove his own casinos into bankruptcy, with low wages for working people, fewer jobs and high unemployment,” Democratic Governor Roy Cooper wrote in a statement ahead of Trump’s rally.
