On Thursday at an event billed by his campaign as a major rollout of his future economic plans, Donald Trump instead promoted conspiracy theories about Vice President Kamala Harris and immigrants. Trump also embraced harmful environmental policies and rehashed economic ideas that failed during his presidency.
“Kamala Harris is the first major party nominee in American history who fundamentally rejects freedom and embraces Marxism, communism, and fascism,” Trump said in a speech at a luncheon held at the Economic Club of New York.
“You’re learning about this—you’ll find out—nobody knew who she was, just a few months ago, they didn’t know who she was.”
Trump’s claim ignores the fact that Harris has been a public figure for over 20 years, serving as district attorney of San Francisco, attorney general for California, a U.S. senator, and as vice president for the last four years. Harris was certainly well-known enough to secure more than 81.2 million votes as part of the winning presidential ticket in 2020 alongside President Joe Biden.
Trump went on to attack Harris for the economic record of the Biden-Harris administration in an attempt to discount the economic improvements that have occurred since she was sworn in as vice president.
“100% of the net job creation in the past year has gone to illegal migrants,” Trump alleged. But this claim is based on Trump’s frequent habit of attacking migrants and blaming them for problems in the country.
The Associated Press recently fact-checked a similar claim from Trump and noted that it was a “misinterpretation of government jobs data” with Trump conflating statistics of foreign-born workers to undocumented immigrants. In fact, using his own standard, Trump would have to count his wife, Melania, who is a naturalized immigrant from Yugoslavia, as supposedly “illegal.”
Trump’s running mate, Ohio Sen. JD Vance, also recently made this claim, which Politifact rated as “mostly false.” Vance’s source for the data was the anti-immigrant Center for Immigration Studies, which the nonpartisan Southern Poverty Law Center has designated as a hate group.
Trump also used the speech to complain about his recent trial and conviction on 34 felony counts in New York, falsely blaming the prosecution on Harris and the Democratic Party.
“Under Kamala the United States is becoming a third-world banana republic, she and her party are censoring speech, weaponizing the justice system, and trying to throw their political opponents—me—in jail,” Trump said.
“They always have to remember that two can play the game.”
But it was a jury of ordinary citizens, not his political opponents, who judged that Trump had broken New York laws in using campaign funds to cover up his affair with adult film actress Stormy Daniels. Trump’s complaint also ignores his frequent calls for his former political rival Hillary Clinton to be “locked up.”
When he did address his plans, Trump pushed to rescind the Biden administration’s policy to restrict drilling in the Alaskan National Wildlife Refuge, which is meant to protect 13 million acres and the diverse wildlife that inhabits the region.
Trump also called for a return to the tax cuts that passed during his administration, which were tilted in favor of the highest earners and multimillion dollar corporations. These cuts never delivered the economic growth he promised they would when he first campaigned for office, and instead generated trillions in debt and deficit for the U.S.
Trump also said he would appoint billionaire Elon Musk to lead a government efficiency commission. Musk has endorsed Trump’s campaign and repeatedly promoted racist conspiracies on X, the social media platform he purchased.
On economic issues, Trump has one of the worst presidential records. During his time in office, the U.S. economy lost 2.7 million jobs and the unemployment rate reached as high as 14.8% at the height of Trump’s mismanagement of the COVID-19 outbreak in April 2020.
Since Harris took office alongside President Joe Biden in January 2021, the national unemployment rate has gone from 6.4% to 4.3% as of July. And 15 million jobs have been created since the Biden/Harris team took office.
Despite Trump’s claim that Harris is a Marxist and communist, business has boomed during the time she and Biden have been in office, with the stock market reaching record levels it never achieved under Trump.
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Correction: A previous version of this story misidentified JD Vance as a governor. He is a senator.