Donald Trump held his first outdoor campaign event on Wednesday since an assassination attempt, lobbing insults at his surging Democratic opponent Kamala Harris from behind bulletproof glass at a rally in the battleground state of North Carolina.
Trump, 78, speaking against a backdrop of vintage warplanes at an aviation museum, called Harris the “most radical left person” ever to run for the White House and claimed that millions of jobs will “vanish overnight” if she wins in November.
“Your life savings will be totally wiped out,” the Republican candidate told the crowd, one of a number of apocalyptic scenarios he painted during his speech.
“All over the world, our adversaries knew that America was not to be trifled with when I was your commander in chief,” Trump said. “If comrade Kamala wins this November, World War III is virtually guaranteed to happen.”
With Harris drawing enthusiastic crowds since replacing Joe Biden at the top of the Democratic ticket, the event in Asheboro was a chance for Trump to reclaim his longtime dominance in staging spectacular rallies.
It was his first big outdoor event since being lightly wounded in an attempted assassination at a similarly open site in Butler, Pennsylvania, a month ago.
That attack left one rally participant dead before the 20-year-old gunman was killed by a Secret Service sniper.
The Secret Service recommended that Trump stick to more easily controllable indoor venues such as sports arenas. He has since held about a dozen indoor events.
The Secret Service does not comment publicly on security operations and did not respond to requests for comment on Wednesday’s preparations.
A bulletproof screen could be seen around the podium where Trump and his vice presidential pick, J.D. Vance, addressed the crowd in Asheboro.
At one point during his speech, Trump left the stage and entered the crowd to check on an attendee who was suffering a medical issue.
Crowds are an integral part of Trump’s political brand, with the right-wing billionaire seeking to portray himself as an outsider and man of the people.
Even as president, he kept up a steady schedule of election-style rallies, often filling sports arenas with at least 10,000 people.
He had counted on these demonstrations of strength as a key weapon in his plan to make the 81-year-old Biden, whose own public events were generally low-key and relatively small-scale affairs, look ineffectual.
Trump’s strategy was upended on July 21, however, when Biden abruptly dropped his reelection bid and endorsed his 59-year-old vice president as the future of the Democratic Party.
The immediate explosion of Democratic support for Harris appears to have stunned the Trump campaign.
Nowhere is the shift in momentum more visible than in Harris’s ability to pack arenas.
She is consistently filling venues with well over 10,000 people. On Tuesday night, supporters packed the Democratic National Convention in Chicago while she hosted a mass rally of her own in Milwaukee.
In a clear dig at Trump, her Milwaukee event took place in the same arena that the Republicans had used for their convention back in July.
North Carolina is one of a handful of swing states that are expected to determine the outcome of the November 5 election.
US presidential elections are not decided by an overall national vote but state-by-state, with each state worth varying amounts of Electoral College votes. The winning candidate needs to win a majority of the Electoral College.
Most states trend solidly Republican or firmly Democrat, and only around seven are considered true toss-ups where the race is really fought — and where the candidates spend most of their campaigning time and money.