Trump, accused of hateful campaign, points finger at Harris in Palm Beach event

MIAMI — Donald Trump delivered his closing argument to voters on Tuesday from his residence in Palm Beach, unleashing a furious and often false string of attacks on his Democratic rival, Vice President Kamala Harris, and insisting that immigration and border security — not the economy — were the most important issues facing the country.

Speaking in a gilded ballroom at his Mar-a-Lago Club – the same room where he launched his campaign nearly two years ago — Trump painted a dark picture of life in the United States. “Some of the most ruthless killers in the world,” he said, have been allowed to freely roam the streets, while “transgender operations” are happening “all over the place.” He claimed that the world had lost respect for U.S. leadership and that all the country’s problems rested squarely with Harris.

“Today we’re going to talk about the real character of Kamala, a person who has no remorse for the anguish she’s inflicted upon families all across America,” Trump told several dozen supporters. At one point, he accused Harris of running a campaign of “demoralization,” “destruction” and “hate.”

Trump’s remarks came as he enters the final week of his bid to return to the White House after losing reelection in 2020. Polls show a virtual deadlock between Trump and Harris, both nationally and in the handful of key battleground states that will likely decide the race’s winner.

Trump was set to travel to one of those states, Pennsylvania, later on Tuesday for a rally.

Florida, the former president’s adopted home state, has drifted off the battleground map in recent years. Democrats haven’t won a statewide office in Florida since 2018 and Republicans now have over 1 million more active registered voters in the state than Democrats.

Still, Trump has held events in the Sunshine State every week for the past month, seeing it as a place to speak to friendly audiences while still garnering national attention. The Tuesday speech was announced less than 24 hours earlier as Trump sought to draw attention away from offensive remarks about Puerto Rico and Latinos made by a comedian at a Sunday campaign rally.

Speaking in front of a television screen that read “Trump will fix it,” the former president described Harris as “unfit” for the presidency, claim claiming she had “obliterated” the U.S. southern border and stoked political violence with her campaign rhetoric – an argument that Trump has made repeatedly despite his own tendency to vilify his critics and political rivals. Recently, he suggested using the military against what he called “the enemy within.”

Trump, who survived two separate attempts on his life in recent months, suggested that Harris and Democrats had emboldened certain people to commit acts of violence by telling their supporters that Trump is a threat to democracy, despite himself saying that Harris is “trying to destroy our country.”

“After two assassination attempts in just over three months, her lies and her slanders … are inexcusable,” Trump said.

Trump claimed that inflation had gutted the American middle class and said that many people were struggling to keep up with the rising cost of living. But he said that issue is, in his mind, second to border security and immigration. He repeated a dubious claim that foreign countries were emptying their prisons and mental hospitals into the U.S. and, at one point, he played a short video highlighting the story of a 12-year-old girl who had been murdered by two men who were in the U.S. illegally.

“Anyone who knowingly sets loose these monsters into our country has absolutely no right to be running for office, let alone the office of president,” Trump said.

Asked for comment on Trump’s remarks, a spokesperson for Harris pointed to campaign senior adviser Stephanie Cutter’s comments in an interview on CNN on Tuesday, in which Cutter argued that Trump is “unhinged.”

“You know what you’re getting with Donald Trump. He is dangerous. He is unhinged. And this time, he will be unchecked,” Cutter told CNN’s Dana Bash. “You thought he was bad last time? Wait until you see what he does this time.”

The vice president is set to deliver her own closing argument of sorts on Tuesday when she delivers a closely watched speech at the Ellipse outside of the White House, where she’s expected to urge voters to move past the politics and division of the Trump era and look toward Harris’ “new generation of leadership,” her campaign chairwoman Jen O’Malley Dillon told reporters on a conference call on Tuesday morning.