Trump goes off topic again: Are voters worried about the economy or Harris’ smile?

You know why she didn’t do an interview? She’s not smart. She’s not intelligent. And we’ve been through enough of that with this guy, crooked Joe,” Trump said, using the nickname he often uses for Biden.

Trump said his advisers wanted him to focus on economic issues, but he wasn’t sure he agreed that the economy was the most important issue in the election.

Trump delivered a speech at Harrah’s Cherokee Center, an auditorium in downtown Asheville. His podium was flanked by more than a dozen American flags and special backdrops that read: No Tax on Social Security and No Tax on Tips.

Republicans had hoped that Trump would focus more on the economy than on the rambling arguments and attacks he has made on Harris since Democrats named her their presidential candidate. Twice in the past week, Trump has all but blown such opportunities, first in an hour-long press conference at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida, and then in a 2 1/2-hour conversation on the social media platform X with CEO Elon Musk.

More than once, he jumped from a policy contrast with Harris to another dig at her hometown of San Francisco. He also noted multiple times that it was Biden, not Harris, who was getting votes from Democratic primary voters. During a portion of his speech about energy, he took a pointed dig at Hunter Biden, the president’s son . and his laptop from hell.

Once Trump had pledged in his speech to halve energy prices, within a minimum of 12 months and a maximum of 18 months, he put his two cents in, seemingly against the script: If it doesn’t work, you’ll say: oh well, I voted for him and he did a good job.

The latest attempt to reset his campaign comes in the state that delivered Trump’s closest statewide victory four years ago and is expected to be a battleground again in 2024. The question for the campaign is whether Trump can stick to a tight economic framework, particularly to saddle Harris with the consequences of inflation, rather than falling back on his usual grumbling and grievances.

The speech comes on the same day that the Labor Department reported that annual inflation in July hit its lowest level in more than three years, a potential boon for Harris amid Trump’s attacks on inflation. Harris plans to be in North Carolina on Friday to provide more details on her pledge to make building the middle class … a defining goal of my presidency.

Trump promised to sign an executive order directing government agencies to use all available tools and authorities to lower prices.

A new poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research finds that Americans trust Trump more than Harris when it comes to handling the economy. But the gap is small: 45 percent for Trump and 38 percent for Harris.

Some voters who turned out for Trump said they were ready to hear him provide more specific details on the economy, not because they don’t already trust him, but because they want him to broaden his appeal to Harris.

He needs to tell people what he’s going to do, talk about the issues, said Timothy Vath, a 55-year-old who came from Greenville, South Carolina. He did what he said he would do in his first term. Talk about how he would do it again.

Mona Shope, a 60-year-old from nearby Candler, said that despite his own wealth, Trump understands working people and wants the best for us. Shope, who recently retired from a public community college, said she receives a federal pension but has been working part-time to combat inflation. “It’s so I can still go on vacation and spend money after I pay my bills,” she said. “Sometimes it feels like there’s nothing left to save.”

In some of his unconventional moments, Trump has ventured into familiar misrepresentations, such as when he ridiculed wind energy by suggesting that people would experience power outages if the wind didn’t blow.

Trump has claimed in recent weeks that there “would have been no inflation” if he had been re-elected, ignoring the global supply chain disruptions during the COVID-19 pandemic, the COVID-19 spending increases, including a massive aid package Trump signed as president, and the global effects of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

The former president has also promised an immediate fix for higher prices in a next term. His key policy proposals on that front include ramping up oil drilling (U.S. production has reached an all-time high under Biden), new tariffs on foreign imports, an extension of his 2017 tax cuts that are set to expire under the next administration, suspending taxes on tip income, and rolling back Biden-era investments in greener energy and infrastructure.

But at Mar-a-Lago, in his conversation with Musk, on his own Truth Social platform, and in his most recent rallies and other interviews, Trump has overshadowed his own economic agenda. He has falsely accused Harris of misrepresenting her own race and ethnicity. He has fallen back on old attacks on Biden, repeating the lie that his 2020 defeat was due to systemic voter fraud. Recently, he has taken to lashing out at the size and enthusiasm of the crowds Harris draws on the campaign trail, even falsely claiming that a photo of her rally was fabricated using AI.

Those factors make it difficult for Trump to create a clearer policy contrast with the Democratic candidacy, no matter how much his advisers push for such a rethink.

A Harris aide said Wednesday that the vice president welcomes any comparison Trump can make.

Whatever he says, one thing is certain: Trump has no plan, no vision, and no meaningful interest in helping to build the middle class, communications director Michael Tyler wrote in a campaign memo. Pointing to the pandemic’s economic slowdown and the 2017 tax cuts that targeted corporations and wealthy individual households, Tyler predicted that Trump’s proposals on trade, taxes, and rollbacks of Biden-era policies would send inflation spiraling and cost our economy millions of jobs — all to benefit the ultra-rich and special interests.