Former President Trump on Monday denied being a Nazi, a day after a controversial Madison Square Garden rally where speakers used crude and racist language.
Even before the event, critics including Hillary Clinton and Kamala Harris’ running mate Tim Walz, compared it with a 1939 rally by Nazi sympathizers at the same venue.
‘I’m not a Nazi. I’m the opposite of a Nazi,’ Trump told thousands of supporters at Georgia Tech.
‘Now the way they talk is so disgusting and just horrible.’
Trump spent the day in the crucial swing state of Georgia a day after entertaining supporters in New York.
Former President Donald Trump denied being a Nazi on Monday evening
‘My father — I had a great father, tough guy. He used to always say, never use the word Nazi. Never use that word,’ said Trump.
It comes after a string of officials who worked with Trump described him as a ‘fascist’ or said he would govern as a dictator.
And the event was his first rally since Madison Square Garden a day earlier when speakers delivered a string of crude remarks.
Comedian Tony Hinchcliffe described Puerto Rico as ‘a floating island of garbage’ triggering condemnation from some Hispanic leaders.
In his speech, Trump attacked Harris for using bad language on a hot mic and also punched back at former first lady Michelle Obama for delivering a blistering attack on his mental abilities and history of sex abuse allegations.
She must have touched a nerve with Trump, 78, who would become the oldest president to be inaugurated if he wins November’s election.
He railed against her on social media during the day, and opened his speech by punching back.
‘You know who’s nasty to me? Michelle Obama,’ said Trump after taking the stage at Georgia Tech.
Trump spent the day campaigning in the critical swing state of Georgia, while his opponent Kamala Harris was in Michigan, talking economics
Thousands of Trump supporters packed into the McCamish Pavilion in Atlanta, Georgia
Trump railed against Obama, as well as Fox News, on his social media platform
‘I always tried to be so nice and respectful … She opened up a little bit of something. She was nasty. Shouldn’t be that way. That was a big mistake that she made.’
Obama made her first appearance of the campaign alongside Kamala Harris on Saturday.
She pointed to Trump’s history of sexual abuse allegations as well as his former chief of staff John Kelly’s recent assessment that he would govern as a dictator if reelected.
Trump responded with a post on his social media platform.
‘FoxNews spends far too much time promoting the Democrats, their surrogates, and their agenda,’ he said on Truth Social.
‘Today I watched, over and over again, an angry and totally out of control Michelle Obama trying to save the dying Campaign of Comrade Kamala Harris.’
Lawyer Alina Habba was one of the warm-up acts on Monday evening
Much of the rest of the speech was Trump’s standard stump offering: Taking a quick straw poll of who had already voted; asking his audience who was better off now than they were four years ago; and promising to tell Harris, ‘You’re fired.’
‘We’re going to have the biggest victory in the history of our country on November 5,’ he said, referring to it as ‘liberation day.’
But he also claimed a double standard as he recounted details of how Harris was caught on a hot mic using bad language.
‘She used the F-word. Did you see that? No, it’s terrible,’ he said. ‘If that ever happened to me, it would have been front page headlines.’
Harris was caught out talking to Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer about the difficulty her campaign was having reaching young men.
When she realised a camera was running, she said: ‘We just told all the family secrets, s***,’ before letting out a guffaw.