If Donald Trump seemed angry at Tuesday night’s debate, he was unapologetic about it two days later, saying he was furious about what Kamala Harris was doing to the country.
“People were saying I was angry about the debate, angry,” he told a raucous crowd in Tucson, Arizona.
“I was angry, and yes, I am angry that she allowed 21 million illegal immigrants to invade our communities. Many of them are criminals.”
The event was billed as an opportunity to address the growing cost of living crisis, and Trump unveiled a new populist policy, promising to eliminate overtime taxes.
But much of his speech focused on Tuesday’s debate. Trump criticized the moderators and said he did not need to meet with Harris again after his “monumental victory.”
After marking the anniversary of 9/11 on Wednesday, Donald Trump returned to the campaign trail on Thursday, holding a rally in Tucson, Arizona, a must-win state.
In a poll of viewers conducted by DailyMail.com, Harris was declared the winner of the debate. They also said she was the winner of the vibes war, saying the vice president made them feel “hopeful” while Trump made them feel “upset.”
Trump was clearly taken aback by their attacks, and was prompted to repeat a right-wing online rumour that illegal immigrants had been stealing and eating pets.
On Thursday, he returned to the campaign trail, trying to get back on track in a key state.
He did so in typical Trump style, unapologetic for appearing angry and repeating the claim about immigrants and cats and dogs.
He said calls to 911 in Springfield, Ohio, revealed the migrants were walking away with geese.
“The migrants are leaving with the city’s geese. They’ve taken them away,” he said. “You know where the geese are in the park, on the lake, and they’re even leaving with their pets.”
‘They kidnapped my dog’
She appeared at the city’s Linda Ronstadt Music Hall, much to the horror of her namesake, who had previously condemned her appearance.
The Tucson Symphony Orchestra is usually the venue for performances. ZZ Top will be coming in October. But on Thursday it was the scene of Trump’s characteristically freewheeling and angry speech.
JL Partners asked 800 independent voters to sum up Trump’s debate performance in one word. Angry was one of the most common words, behind strong, confident and arrogant.
Trump appeared at the Linda Ronstadt Music Hall in Tucson on Thursday
Trump to visit Arizona, California and Nevada on Western tour
“I am angry about young American girls who are being raped, sodomized and murdered by savage foreign criminals,” he said.
“I’m angry about the runaway inflation that’s destroying our middle class, and the American people are very angry about that, too, and all the other things we’ve had to endure for three and a half years.”
Behind him, a diverse mix of supporters, some wearing cowboy hats, some in suits, held signs. “Latinos por Trump,” read one.
And he couldn’t help but recall the debate, criticizing both Harris and the two ABC moderators.
“Kamala Harris showed up spouting empty rhetoric. The same old lies, platitudes, offering no plan, no policies, no details at all, nothing,” he said.
‘The two hosts, David Muir and Linsey Davis, sat there and just corrected me on the things I was right about, but they didn’t correct Kamala on Project 25 which she knew nothing about, on the bloodbath hoax that has been totally debunked, which had to do with the auto industry that’s going to die.
JL Partners surveyed 800 independent viewers immediately after Tuesday’s debate. They said they knew more about Trump’s political plans than Harris did.
People lined up around the convention center, wrapping around parking lots, in temperatures exceeding 100 degrees F to get a seat inside.
Both candidates targeted battleground states as they looked to capitalize on Tuesday’s debate.
Harris was in North Carolina, with campaign rallies in Charlotte and Greensboro, for a chance to further energize her supporters after a strong showing when she left Trump offside and on the defensive in their first face-to-face meeting.
His team has been studying the 90-minute debate for clips that could be turned into TV ads.
Trump, meanwhile, was looking to stabilize his campaign, which has been in flux since Harris unexpectedly entered the race in July.
He has beefed up his senior staff, which he believes can take advantage of what they see as Harris’s inability to deliver on her policy agenda and her vague answers on Tuesday.
This intuition is confirmed by a survey of debate viewers (all of them independent) conducted by JL Partners for DailyMail.com.
Republican Senate candidate Kari Lake was one of the opening speakers on Thursday.
Trump and Harris faced off for more than 90 minutes in the ABC News debate on Tuesday
About 50 percent said they still needed to know more about Harris’s plans for the job, compared with 37 percent who responded to Trump’s.
Arizona is critical to Trump’s chances of success. Joe Biden won there by fewer than 11,000 votes, a narrow margin that triggered a series of legal actions and allegations of fraud by Trump allies.
Trump had won four years earlier with 3.5 percent.
The latest data from the JL Partners/DailyMail.com election model, which analyses decades of data alongside the latest polls and forecasts, suggests he is currently “leaning Trump”.
His visit sparked criticism from the start. Mexican-American singer Linda Ronstadt condemned him for his “hate” before his appearance at the concert hall that bears his name.
“I am saddened to see the former president bring his hate show to Tucson, a city with deep Mexican-American roots and a joyful, tolerant spirit. I not only deplore his toxic politics, his hatred of women, immigrants and people of color, his criminality, his dishonesty and his ignorance, although there is that too,” Ronstadt wrote on Facebook in which she also called him a rapist.