Former President Trump lashed out at Michelle and Barack Obama on Wednesday after the former first couple delivered twin blockbuster speeches at the Democratic National Convention.
Trump, who spoke from behind bulletproof glass in Asheboro, N.C. at his first outdoor rally since surviving an assassination attempt, slammed the Obamas for their sharp-edged speeches that brought a packed house of Democrats to its feet in Chicago.
“Did you see Barack Hussein Obama last night?” Trump asked, pointedly using Obama’s middle name. “He was taking shots at your president. And so is Michelle.”
Trump asked the crowd of loyal fans whether he should stick to his script or turn to personal attacks.
“He was very nasty,” Trump said. “I try to be nice to people.
“They always say, ‘Sir, please stick to policy, don’t get personal.’ Yet they are getting personal all night long, these people,” Trump said. “Do I still have to stick to policy?”
Egged on by roars of approval, Trump blamed his political enemies for unleashing his myriad legal woes, including his 34 felony convictions in the New York hush money case.
“Sometimes it’s hard when you get attacked from all ends,” Trump said. “They want to put you in jail for nothing. I could have done that to Hillary Clinton.”
The attacks on his predecessor and his wife ended a brief effort by Trump to play nice. A day earlier, he had insisted that he likes and respects both Obamas, even though he spent years spinning racist conspiracy theories about them.
Barack Obama drew laughter from the crowd at the United Center where he deftly played on Trump’s insecurities by questioning his obsession with crowd sizes.
Michelle Obama delivered an even more brutal attack line when she slammed Trump for feeling “threatened” by a Black first couple.
“For years, Donald Trump did everything in his power to try to make people fear us … his limited, narrow view of the world made him feel threatened by the existence of two hard-working, highly educated, successful people who happened to be Black,” the former first lady said to a thunderous roar.
Trump has struggled in the past month to train effective attacks on Harris since President Biden stepped aside and endorsed her to take his spot on the ticket.
The former president has continued to hammer Biden, a strange move since he’s no longer in the race. Trump has also moaned that his campaign spent tens of millions of dollars honing its strategy for a race against Biden, only for Democrats to pull a last-minute switch on him.
One of Trump’s missteps was his unfounded claim that migrants are taking away “Black jobs” from African Americans, a jibe that struck a nerve with Black voters.
He also fell flat with the outlandish claim that Harris isn’t really Black and only recently started embracing her Black heritage.
As he himself acknowledged, Trump has struggled to stay on message as he seeks to remind voters about issues like inflation and the southern border, topics that GOP strategists say he holds a strong advantage on.
Instead, he has regularly gone way off script at speeches with personal attacks and strange riffs like praising fictional serial killer Hannibal Lecter or mulling over the respective benefits of being attacked by sharks or suffering electrocution.
