Former President Donald Trump was scheduled to give a speech on economic policy in Asheville, N.C., on Wednesday, preemptively rebutting Vice President Kamala Harris’ economic speech slated for Friday across the state in Raleigh.

But he struggled to stick to the topic at hand -- "They say it’s the most important subject, I’m not sure it is," Trump said of the economy -- before veering into a number of other subjects, including attacking Harris.

“This is a little bit different day, because this isn’t a rally… we’re talking about a thing called the economy. They wanted to do a speech on the economy. A lot of people are very devastated by what's happened with inflation and all of the other things,” Trump told the gathered audience in Asheville. “So we're doing this as an intellectual speech. You're all intellectuals today. Today, we're doing it, and we're doing it right now. And it's very important. They say it's the most important subject. I think crime is right there. I think the border is right there, personally.”

But Trump promised his supporters “we’re going to talk about one subject, and then we’ll start going back to the other because we sort of love that, don’t we?”

Throughout his nearly 80 minute remarks, Trump made bold economic promises for goals he would set in his second administration, but offered few details on how he would go about reaching them. He predicted a 1929-style Great Depression economic collapse if Harris wins in November, promised to direct his Cabinet secretaries and agency heads “to bring consumer prices rapidly down,” and pledged to cut “energy and electricity prices by half, at least” within 12 to 18 months. 

“And if it doesn't work out, you say, ‘Oh, well, I voted for him. I still got them down a lot,’ but we're looking to do it. We're looking to cut him in half, and we think we'll be able to do better. And every single thing that I promised I produced, every single thing,” Trump said. “You will never have had energy so low as you will under a certain gentleman known as Donald J Trump. Have you heard of him? So we think your energy bills will be down by 50 to 70% — how good would that be for a thing called inflation? How good will that be?”

He also said “I’ll keep you out of World War III” and claimed Russia would never have invaded Ukraine in 2022 and Hamas would never have attacked Israel on Oct. 7 had he continued to be president. And he claimed by cutting federal regulations created during the Biden administration and cutting taxes, he would save Americans as much as $8,000 a year. (He seemed to inflate that number as he spoke. In his prepared remarks shared with the press ahead of his speech, the promise was $5,000 a year in savings.)

But Trump dedicated much of the speech to attacking and criticizing Harris. Some of his critiques were policy-based, if frequently misleading or false, and focused on the Biden administration’s handling of the economy and the U.S.-Mexico border. Other asides were not quite so substantive.

“And for nearly four years, Kamala has crackled as the American economy has burned. What happened to her laugh? I haven't heard that laugh in about a week. That's why they keep her off the stage. That's why she's disappeared. That's the laugh of a crazy person,” Trump said. “She's crazy. They told her, don't laugh. Don't laugh. No, her laugh is career-threatening.”

“That’s the laugh of a person with some big problems,” he added.

He called her “stupid,” described her as an “incompetent socialist lunatic,” and said she was the “worst vice president in history.” Commenting on her lack of interviews and press conferences since she rose to the top of the Democratic ticket last month, Trump said she hasn’t done an interview yet “because she’s not smart, she’s not intelligent.”

Turning to Harris’ running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, Trump described him as “a clown” and said “he wants tampons in boys bathrooms.” A law passed by the Minnesota state legislature and signed by Walz last year requires schools to provide menstrual products "in restrooms regularly used by students in grades 4 to 12 according to a plan developed by the school district." It does not require schools to place tampons in boys bathrooms, leaving it up to local school districts to implement the policy on their own.

Trump also belittled Harris and Walz “never” working in the private sector, remarking “it’s no wonder they’re both socialists. They’re actually beyond socialists” and joking that when Harris loses in November she’ll have “the opportunity to try something new, a real job in the private sector for the first time in her life.”

Harris and Walz are not socialists. The vice president worked as a prosecutor in the 1990s after law school and spent some time working as a city attorney for San Francisco before entering electoral politics in her successful run for San Francisco district attorney in 2003. She also worked at a McDonald’s in college. 

For his part, Walz worked as a public school social studies teacher for much of his adult life and served in the National Guard for 24 years, but has had multiple forays into the private sector. In the 1980s, he worked at a tanning bed factory in Jonesboro, Ark., and, later in life, started a company with his wife that organized trips to China for U.S. high school students. 

Harris’s campaign slammed Trump as a “Park Avenue Prince” attacking veterans and teachers “for not having a real job” and mocked him for being unable to stay on topic.

“During what was billed as a speech about his economic vision, Donald Trump said he’s ‘not sure the economy is the most important topic’ – because when you’re running to slash taxes for rich donors and corporations it’s easy not to care about the working families and middle class Americans who get hurt as a result,” Harris campaign spokesperson Ammar Moussa said in a statement. 

To back his bold economic promises, Trump brought Wall Street investor Scott Bessent onto the stage in Asheville. Bessent has advised Trump on economic issues and is considered to be in the running for a role in the next Trump administration. Trump described him as “one of the most brilliant men on Wall Street” and “central casting.”

Bessent claimed the stock market’s success in recent years — the Dow Jones Industrial Average finished the day above 40,000 as Trump spoke — could be credited to Trump and that a Harris administration would “start with the Kamala crash in the stock market, and then it will be the Kamala crash in the economy.”

As he wrapped up his speech in North Carolina — a swing state that Biden lost by just over a percentage point in 2020 and one that both campaigns this time around are investing heavily in winning — Trump ended with the boldest pledges of all. 

“No more wars, no more disruptions. We will have prosperity and we will have peace,” he said. “Together, we will deliver low taxes, regulations, low energy costs, low interest rates, low inflation, so that everyone can afford groceries, a car and a home. Common sense.”

“Everyone will prosper, every family will thrive and every day will be filled with opportunity, hope and joy,” Trump continued. “But for that to happen, we must never let Kamala Harris get anywhere near the White House and we must defeat her country-destroying, liberal agenda.”