After two days of policy-focused addresses with modest crowds, former President Donald J. Trump returned to form on Wednesday with an outdoor speech in North Carolina, where he insisted that he would not give up personal attacks on Vice President Kamala Harris and continued to sow doubts about the integrity of the election in November.
Speaking to thousands of supporters outside a hangar at an aviation museum in Asheboro, N.C., Mr. Trump ridiculed his advisers for pressuring him to focus on policy instead of on personal insults as he mocked President Biden’s physical appearance. He called former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi “crazy,” labeled Ms. Harris both “stupid” and a “Marxist or a communist” and said former President Barack Obama was “nasty.”
And as he promised to invest in America’s military, criticized the Biden administration’s foreign policy and vowed that only he could restore world peace, Mr. Trump repeatedly revived his false claims of widespread election fraud in 2020 and spun them forward to November.
As he insisted that he could end the war in Ukraine just by being elected, Mr. Trump portrayed his victory as a forgone conclusion that could be stymied only by electoral fraud.
“When, if, but when — I have to always say ‘if,’ you know, because they cheat,” Mr. Trump said of Democrats. “I would say ‘when’ if they didn’t cheat, but they cheat. That’s the one thing — they’re great at cheating in elections.”
The gathering in Asheboro was Mr. Trump’s first outdoor rally since he survived an assassination attempt at an event in Pennsylvania last month. There were numerous heightened security precautions. The lectern where Mr. Trump was speaking from was partially surrounded by bulletproof glass. At least five uniformed personnel, several with sniper rifles, were on surrounding rooftops. And large storage containers were stacked up to block a clean view of the stage from a distance.
The speech, at the North Carolina Aviation Museum and Hall of Fame, was a departure from two other events this week, where Mr. Trump spoke indoors to tamer crowds at small venues. His speech on Wednesday reflected the change: Mr. Trump was lighter and looser than he was on Monday and Tuesday, when at times he rattled off prepared remarks.
His speech on Wednesday was billed as being focused on national security. Early on, he acknowledged that he was rejecting his team’s insistence to stick to issues, saying that he felt moved to respond to a litany of criticism made at the Democratic National Convention, including speeches on Tuesday night by Mr. Obama and the former first lady Michelle Obama.
“They always say, ‘Sir, please stick to policy. Don’t get personal,’” Mr. Trump said. “And yet they’re getting personal all night long, these people. Do I still have to stick to policy?”
The crowd responded with a resounding “No.” Later, Mr. Trump looked to his supporters to help validate his approach, taking an informal poll of whether he should “get personal” or “not get personal.” The first option was met with an eruption of cheers. The second was greeted with a faint smattering of applause.
“My advisers are fired,” Mr. Trump joked. “No. We’d rather keep it on policy. But sometimes it’s hard when you’re attacked from all ends.”
When he focused on national security, Mr. Trump attacked the Biden administration’s approach to foreign policy. He faulted both Mr. Biden and Ms. Harris for the country’s turbulent withdrawal from Afghanistan and for not preventing the continuing wars in Ukraine and Gaza.
“Kamala and Biden have marched us to the brink of World War III,” Mr. Trump said.
A Harris campaign spokesman, James Singer, criticized Mr. Trump’s foreign policy record as president. “America doesn’t need to hear more from Donald Trump on national security, we saw it: bowing down to dictators, sowing chaos and leading with ignorant recklessness,” Mr. Singer said in a statement.
At the rally, Mr. Trump insisted that he would rid the military of “woke” leadership and that he would demand the resignations of “every single senior military official” involved in the Afghanistan withdrawal, in which 13 American service members were killed.
And falling back on culture-war rhetoric that typically animates conservatives, Mr. Trump, who while president banned transgender people from serving in the military, mocked transgender troops as unfit to serve.
“Our warriors should be focused on defeating America’s enemies, not figuring out their genders,” he said. “By that time, hopefully they know their genders.”
Mr. Trump’s speech often veered abruptly from one policy issue to the next. At one point, he said he would name two issues that he thought were the most crucial to his winning the election. But he named only the economy before detouring into a riff on “energy dominance” and returning to his prepared remarks.
And Mr. Trump spent the opening minutes of his security speech focused on the economy, an issue he returned to several times. Hours after the Labor Department announced revised jobs numbers that found the U.S. economy had added roughly 818,000 fewer jobs in 2023 and early 2024 than previously reported, Mr. Trump suggested without evidence that the Biden administration padded numbers.
The Labor Department’s revisions, which are preliminary, are part of an annual process in which its monthly estimates, which are based on surveys, are reconciled with records from state unemployment offices. But Mr. Trump insisted Mr. Biden and Ms. Harris were “fraudulently manipulating” the data in order to win the election, an assertion he tied to his false claims of a rigged election.
“There’s not a thing they’ve done well except cheat and lie,” Mr. Trump said.
And Mr. Trump once again accused the Biden administration of deploying the justice system against him as a form of political persecution, a claim he has not offered evidence of, and then suggested he might respond in kind.
“Weaponization is a double prong that can come back to haunt them, too,” he said.
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