Donald Trump reprised his role of a reality TV character during a rally in Waunakee, Wisconsin on Tuesday, telling voters in the key swing state that his Democratic rival Kamala Harris wouldn’t have succeeded on his business competition show.
“Kamala, you’re fired!” the ex-president said, invoking his contestant-eliminating tagline from The Apprentice after he urged voters to support him. “Get out of here!”
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“The Apprentice … she wouldn’t have won The Apprentice,” the GOP candidate said.
His speech was intended to focus on the economy, which along with immigration has been a top concern among voters. Trump did discuss the economy, vowing to eliminate taxes on tips and overtime, and promised to help Americans with languishing purchase-power, saying: “Inflation, we can solve it.”
Trump’s speech was also punctuated by self-praise, with boasts about his crowd size and closeness to Elon Musk. He also indulged in fearmongering about the Middle East conflict, noting Iran’s missile strike on Israel, and alarmism about migrants.
“These people are grossly incompetent,” Trump said of Joe Biden and Harris’s handling of the US military. “And now we have them in charge of potentially world war three. World war three – it’s going to be like no other if it happens, because of nuclear weapons and other weapons of mass destruction that nobody’s ever seen before.”
Trump also claimed that migrants were “taking over our small towns and cities they’re taking over our big cities too”, and seemed to voice support for New York City’s Democratic mayor, Eric Adams, who last week was charged with allegedly accepting bribes from the Turkish government.
“If you fight it, you get indicted,” Trump said, echoing Adams’s claim that he was being politically targeted for clashing with the Biden administration over the migrant crisis. “The mayor of New York … he was appalled at what was happening and they indicted him, and I predicted it.”
Trump’s comments comes as he continues to hammer Harris on her economic policies, and just hours before vice-presidential contenders JD Vance and Tim Walz were scheduled to debate. Voters have said that they want to hear both VP picks speak about immigration and the economy on Tuesday evening, according to a CBS News/YouGov poll
In a Harris poll conducted for the Guardian, a majority of those surveyed, 66%, said that the cost of living was among their biggest economic concerns. Democrats are confronted by continued pressure on American consumers who have seen their purchasing power plummet after inflation hit 9.1% in summer 2022 –a 40-year high – under Biden’s administration.
Americans’ concerns over prices extend far beyond grocery-store shelves and gasoline pumps but the very places they call home. Democrats fear that housing costs could tilt key swing states such as Nevada; in Las Vegas, the median home price ballooned from $345,000 in August 2020 to $480,000 in August 2024.
Inflation has decreased, and Harris has introduced numerous proposals to lower housing costs, and increase access to home ownership, in her economic platform agenda. But Trump and his surrogates have used economic challenges to double down on an integral campaign motif: Americans lives got worse under Democratic leadership.
At a recent rally in Newton, Pennsylvania, Vance alleged – without evidence – that Harris had a hand in worsening the economy, and then tied financial concerns to immigrants by claiming their arrival contributed to increasing housing costs.
“The problem with Kamala Harris is that she’s got no substance,” Vance said. “The problem with Kamala Harris is that she’s got no plan. And the problem with Kamala Harris is that she has been the vice-president for three and a half years and has failed this country.”
While Trump’s camp is doing everything possible to sully Harris’s economic prowess, the poll for the Guardian indicates that Americans prefer her policies. The survey asked Americans about twelve economic policies – six from Trump, six from Harris – without being told which were from whom.
The most popular idea, from Democrats, was a federal prohibition on the price-gouging of groceries and food. Some top economists have criticized this idea, but 44% of those survey agreed that it would boost the economy.
