Former President Donald Trump, speaking Wednesday at his first outdoor rally after he was injured in an assassination attempt July 13, spoke out about national security, taunting Democrat nominee Kamala Harris as "comrade," and promising that if he's elected, the U.S. will return to a position of global strength.
"She'll destroy our country just like she destroyed San Francisco," he said of Harris at the rally in Asheville, North Carolina, where he stood behind bulletproof glass. "With the Trump victory, we will once again have the greatest economy in history. We're going to do things that are going to make us so great, so fast. We're going to bring it back."
Trump pointed to numbers released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, in which it was determined Wednesday that 818,000 jobs that "don't exist" were reported under Harris and President Joe Biden.
"They built them up so that they could say what a wonderful job they're doing," said Trump. "They wanted this to come out after Nov. 5, so it wouldn't have meant so much."
But "Comrade Kamala," as Trump has been calling Harris, is the "most radical left person ever to run for high political office in our country," and if she wins in November, "millions of jobs will vanish overnight," he said.
"Inflation will completely destroy our country," Trump said. "We'll have inflation worse than they've given us. ... I had virtually no inflation. And now their numbers are up to 22%, 23%, but their real number is probably 40 to 50%."
The Biden-Harris administration, he added, has done a "terrible job for our country in every single way. There's not a thing they've done well except cheat and lie."
This included the botched withdrawal from Afghanistan, with Harris continuing to stress that she was the last person in the room when Biden made his decision, said Trump.
"Four years ago, our country was strong and respected like never before," he said. "Our allies admired us, our enemies feared us because everyone knew that as an American president, I was all about putting America first. But these people don't have any idea what they're doing."
As a result, 13 service members were "tragically and needlessly killed" at the Bagram airport during the withdrawal, and 45 others were horrifically wounded."
Further, Trump said, "$85 billion worth of the best military equipment anywhere in the world was handed over to these people. Afghanistan is now one of the largest arms merchants anywhere in the world ... you have to ask yourself, who bought all that stuff in the first place? Who bought it all?"
The "calamity," he added, is on Harris' shoulders.
"What they've done to this country is incredible," Trump said. "But she bragged that she would be the last person in the room. And she was. ... I'm the one that got the soldiers down to 5,000 people. I was going to do it, but we were going to get out last. You don't pull the soldiers out first. You let the soldiers stay last."
Trump also insisted that while he was in office, "our adversaries knew that America was not to be trifled with."
He pointed out that he got along with leaders such as Vladimir Putin in Russia and Xi Jinping in China, and said that if he had stayed in office, their aggressions would not be happening.
"Putin would have never gone into Ukraine," Trump said. "Israel would have never been attacked. It's a sad, sad situation. So many people are dead. So many people are gone, so many cities. ... I really believe that the Afghan disaster, what happened, the stupidity and the way we pulled out and the bedlam and all of that, it would have been very smooth. We were going to get out with strength and dignity. But when Putin saw that, he said, 'Wow, those people don't know what they're doing.'"
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