Donald Trump declared victory over Joe Biden on Wednesday evening and promised thousands of adoring fans in North Carolina that there’d be no more Mr Nice Guy as he promised he would make Kamala Harris his next victim.
He took a lap of honor at his first rally since Biden dropped out of the race and unveiled his new attack strategy for ‘radical left lunatic’ Harris.
And he laughed off reports that he was a changed man after coming within an inch of being assassinated.
‘I was supposed to be nice. They say something happened to me when I got shot,’ he said at a sports arena in Charlotte. ‘I became nice.
‘When you are dealing with these people, they’re very dangerous, you can’t afford to be nice. So if you don’t mind … I’m not going to be nice.’
This election was meant to be boring: Two old, when men squaring off just like they did in 2020.
But Trump has already survived an assassination attempt and now he is adjusting to a new contest. Biden is gone, after sensationally dropping out Sunday, and he must now recalibrate to take on the first black woman (in all likelihood) to be her party’s nominee.
‘As you know three days ago we officially defeated the worst president in the history of our nation,’ he said setting off a deafening roar from more than 10,000 supporters.
‘So now we have a new victim to defeat, lying Kamala Harris.’
He was as good as his word not to be nice, painting a nightmare vision of America if ‘border czar Harris’ was put in charge of the country.
‘Kamala’s deadly destruction of American borders is completely and totally disqualifying. She should never be trusted to be the president.
‘If border czar Harris is in charge, every week they’ll bring in a neverending stream of illegal aliens, rapists, blood thirsty killers, child murderers to go after our sons and our daughters.’
He ran down her record as a prosecutor in California, derided her work on immigration and claimed the ‘fake news’ had quickly changed its tune on a vice president that it previously wrote off as ineffective.
‘Everything Kamala touches turns into a total disaster,’ he said. ‘Check out San Francisco: 20 years ago it was the greatest city in our country. Now it is unliveable.’
His supporters think the change of candidate changes little in the race, even as Harris’s campaign reports an avalanche of cash and volunteers.
‘It would be OK if it were just her,’ said Susan Putnam, a retired office worker, as she waited for Trump to appear. ‘But it’s not. She’ll have the deep state behind her.’
The race is likely to be tight. A Reuters/Ipsos poll completed on Tuesday showed Harris with a two-point lead over Trump, 44 percent to 42 percent, although other polls have shown the former president narrowly ahead.
And on Wednesday Trump turned his full focus on Harris, using the opportunity to bring on stage a Border Patrol union leader and the head of the National Association of Police Organizations. The message was clear as Trump, a convicted felon, portrayed himself as the candidate of law and order,
North Carolina voted narrowly for Trump in the past two elections.
However, Democrats see it as a potential pickup and the state’s term-limited governor, Roy Cooper, is among the possible running mates being considered by Harris.
His campaign and allies have pivoted rapidly to attacks on the vice president, tying her to the administration’s struggles to tame inflation and a crisis at the border.
A super PAC launched TV ads on Monday, accusing Harris of covering up Biden’s obvious mental decline.
‘But Kamala knew Joe couldn’t do the job, so she did it,’ says the narrator of the ad, funded by MAGA Inc.
‘Look what she got done, a border invasion, runaway inflation, the American Dream dead. They created this mess. They … no, Kamala owns this failed record.’
And on Tuesday, Trump said the switch in candidates held no fear for him. He said her campaign for president imploded in 2020.
‘So if she campaigns that way now and this is only going to be tougher, although she does have a lot of support from the fake news. There’s no question about that,’ he told reporters on a briefing call.
‘But if she campaigns the way she campaigned then, you know, I suspect she won’t be too tough.’
The change in candidate has provided a fillip to Democrats too.
The Harris campaign on Wednesday said it has raised $126 million since Sunday, with 64% of donors making their first contribution of the 2024 campaign.
Harris held her first rally since becoming the likely nominee a day earlier in Milwaukee, where she warned that Trump would take the nation ‘backward.’
‘Do we want to live in a country of freedom, compassion and rule of law, or a country of chaos, fear and hate?’ she asked.