At Bojangles Coliseum Wednesday night, Donald Trump dispensed with any messages about unity and spent almost all of his 90-minute speech in a blistering attack against Vice President Kamala Harris, the presumptive Democratic nominee for president.
It was his first campaign rally since President Joe Biden said he would not seek reelection. During the Republican National Convention last week, Trump began his acceptance speech somberly. It was just days after a gunman tried to kill him at a rally in Pennsylvania.
All that was quickly gone in Charlotte.
"You know, I was supposed to be nice. They say something happened to me when I got shot — I became nice. And when you are dealing with these people, they are very dangerous people, you can’t be too nice. If you don’t mind, I'm not going to be nice," he said, drawing cheers from the crowd.
For the next hour and a half, Trump delivered a speech laden with fierce attacks on Biden and Harris. Even by the standards of nine years of Trump rallies, it was particularly harsh. It also offered a preview of the fall campaign.
"So now we have a new victim to defeat. Lyin' Kamala Harris," he said.
Trump showed how he’ll try to tie her to the unpopular issues that weighed Biden down, such as inflation and the border. He said she's actually the driving force behind every Biden "catastrophe."
"She is a radical left lunatic who will destroy our country if she ever gets the chance to get into office. We won’t let that happen," he said.
The crowd loved it. Some Trump fans camped out at Bojangles six hours or more before the doors opened Wednesday. Many people were turned away because there wasn’t room inside.
Trump said Biden was a fake liberal, and that Harris is a real liberal.
And he singled her out for — in his view — not telling the truth about Biden’s mental struggles and lapses.
"For three and a half years Harris shamelessly lied to the public to cover up Joe Biden’s mental unfitness claiming that 'Crooked Joe' was at the absolute top of his game — I don’t think so," he said.
A dizzying stretch
The last six weeks of the campaign have seen a series of stunning events — from Trump’s conviction in New York, to Biden’s disastrous debate performance, to the assassination attempt, to Biden dropping out.
In her first campaign event as the presumptive Democratic nominee, Harris noted her own history as San Francisco district attorney and California’s attorney general. She said she was familiar with people like Trump — who she called a predator, a felon and a fraudster.
He responded Wednesday:
"And she’s got a new line, you know. She’s going 'I’m the prosecutor.' And she’s one of the worst prosecutors in history. She destroyed San Francisco. 'I’m the prosecutor and he’s the convicted felon or something,'" he said.
Democrats had been campaigning extensively in North Carolina before Biden dropped out, and will likely continue to try and flip the state. Polling averages have generally shown Trump with a six-point lead in recent weeks. Gov. Roy Cooper is in the mix as a vice presidential candidate to run alongside Harris, and has reportedly submitted vetting materials.
Earlier in the day, the Harris campaign held a news conference to highlight how Trump-appointed Supreme Court justices overturned Roe vs Wade. It also criticized Trump over Project 2025 — a Heritage Foundation blueprint for a second Trump term.
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