Donald Trump, touting plans on taxes and health, tried on Friday to turn the page on a week in which he was overshadowed by Kamala Harris and struggled to focus on policy issues instead of personal attacks on his opponent in the US presidential race.

From a lectern at a Mexican restaurant in Las Vegas, the Republican candidate spoke about his plan to eliminate taxes on tips to waiters and other service employees. He discussed his campaign’s efforts to court Hispanic voters in Nevada, a battleground state that could help determine the Nov. 5 election, and nationwide.

The tax proposal, a pillar of Trump’s economic agenda, is the kind of issue his advisers have been pressing him to focus on, rather than his frequent personal attacks against Vice President Kamala Harris’ looks, Black and Indian heritage and intelligence, warning they could turn off the moderate voters he needs to win.

At an event in Arizona later, the former president repeated his tax pledge, while promising to set up a commission to investigate presidential assassination attempts. He also said he would install a panel to investigate “an increase in chronic health problems and childhood diseases.”

Both proposals are apparent concessions to independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who endorsed Trump at the event after dropping out of the race.

Trump’s comments come one day after Kamala Harris accepted the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination with a muscular speech that laid down broad foreign policy principles and sharp contrasts with Trump with 11 weeks left until Election Day.

Trump sought to counter-program the four-day convention with events of his own around the country, hoping to steal some media attention from Kamala Harris. However, his speeches on foreign policy, the economy and crime did little to dislodge the spotlight from Kamala Harris and received little attention – a stunning turnabout for a politician used to dominating headlines.

The Republican and his aides hope Thursday’s boisterous convention finale marks the end of the honeymoon period for Kamala Harris, who emerged as the Democratic candidate little more than a month ago, after President Joe Biden exited the race and endorsed her.

During Kamala Harris’ acceptance speech in Chicago, Trump attacked her with dozens of posts on his Truth Social platform, calling her a liar, a Marxist and “Comrade Kamala Harris.” One post simply asked: “IS SHE TALKING ABOUT ME?”

William Rosenberg, a political science professor at Drexel University, said Trump’s personal attacks on Kamala Harris underscored his frustration with having to face a biracial woman, a task complicated by his history of making racist remarks.

“His anger and his words speak volumes,” Rosenberg said. “He’s navigating a path which is full of problems for him.”

Kamala Harris has surged in the polls since entering the race, with polling aggregator website FiveThirtyEight putting her ahead of Trump in six of seven battleground states.

She is also outraising her Republican counterpart. Her campaign told the Federal Election Commission this week that it raised $204 million last month, compared to $48 million reported to the body by Trump’s main fundraising group.

One question still to be answered is whether Kamala Harris will also outpace Trump on the trail in the coming weeks. Biden, 81, made relatively few campaign stops, easing pressure on Trump to travel more around the country. That may now change with Harris, 59.

Trump, 78, will travel to Detroit on Monday to address a conference of the National Guard Association of the United States and is scheduled to give a speech at a conservative women’s group’s annual summit in Washington on Friday.

Campaign spokesperson Karoline Leavitt said Trump would hold at least one additional campaign stop between those two events, without providing details.

The Kamala Harris campaign has not yet released details of her movements for next week.

Leavitt blamed the media for focusing their stories on Trump’s personal attacks, which she said made up a fraction of his otherwise policy-heavy rallies and speeches.

At a speech event on Wednesday in Asheboro, North Carolina, billed as one on national security, Trump said he had rejected the recommendations of his advisers to focus on policy, and he insulted Kamala Harris and other Democrats in personal terms.

He again recounted those conversations with advisers at the rally in Arizona on Friday.

“My geniuses, they get paid a fortune – actually not that much – but I call up my people, I say, ‘They’re knocking the hell out of me, and you say I shouldn’t get personal. I have to get personal, don’t I?'” Trump said to applause.

An outside adviser to Trump told Reuters on condition of anonymity that several advisers had told the former president that a continued focus on insults rather than policy could doom his chances in November.

Republican strategist Doug Heye said Trump could still win the race, which he predicted would be close, but to do that he should focus on inflation, illegal immigration and other issues that polling show many voters give him higher marks on.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

Republican presidential nominee and former U.S. President Donald Trump speaks during a visit to the Livingston County Sheriff’s Office in Howell, Michigan.
| Photo Credit: Reuters

Former President Donald Trump pledged on Tuesday to “Make America Safe Again” while campaigning in Michigan as the Democrats who gathered in Chicago to nominate Kamala Harris branded him a career criminal.

As part of a battleground campaign swing designed to counter the Democratic National Convention, Trump stood alongside sheriff’s deputies in the city of Howell and tarred Harris, a former San Francisco district attorney and California attorney general, as the “ringleader” of a “Marxist attack on law enforcement” across the country.

“Kamala Harris will deliver crime, chaos, destruction and death,” Trump said in one of many generalizations about an America under Harris. “You’ll see levels of crime that you’ve never seen before. … I will deliver law, order, safety and peace.” Trump has sought in recent weeks to blunt the enthusiasm that Harris has attracted since President Joe Biden ended his reelection campaign and endorsed her. That has involved both dark predictions about what electing Harris would mean for the country and efforts by Trump’s advisers to set up events where he can try to draw specific policy contrasts. On Tuesday in Michigan, the subject was crime and public safety.

“Our policemen and women have the backs of law-abiding citizens every day,” Trump said. “When we go back to the White House, you’re going to see support the likes of which you haven’t seen, certainly in four years.” In excerpts released before his speech, Trump’s campaign also said he would call for the death penalty for child rapists and child traffickers; he did not mention that during his remarks.

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The event was the latest billed as focused on a specific issue. But on these occasions, Trump has spent considerable time attacking Harris personally and taking shots at Biden, and the same was true after their appearances on Monday at the Democratic convention.

“I watched last night in amazement as they tried to pretend everything was great,” Trump said, singling out inflation and the U.S.-Mexico border as topics Democrats glossed over. “We have a fool as president,” he said of Biden.

Trump presented a bleak portrait of life in the U.S. and the threat of a Harris presidency, though he was short on specifics and heavy on hyperbole.

“It’s just insane,” Trump said. “You can’t walk across the street to get a loaf of bread. You get shot, you get mugged, you get raped, you get whatever it may be. And you’ve seen it, and I’ve seen it, and it’s time for a change.” Trump making such claims, surrounded by supportive law enforcement officers, stood in stark contrast to the Democrats’ convention. Speaker after speaker found ways Monday night in Chicago to remind Americans that Trump is the first former president ever convicted of felony crimes, has been found civilly liable for sexual assault, and still faces multiple indictments, including for his efforts to overturn his 2020 defeat to Biden.

Rep. Jasmine Crockett of Texas skewered Trump on Monday night as “a career criminal, with 34 felonies, two impeachments and one porn star,” a reference to his payments to an adult film actress at issue in his New York conviction for business fraud.

As the crowd roared, Crockett kept going, hailing Harris as a former prosecutor who “has a resume” while Trump “has a rap sheet.” The derision reached its peak as Hillary Clinton, whom Trump defeated in 2016, stood back from the podium and smiled as delegates chanted: “Lock him up! Lock him up!” — a turnabout from Trump supporters’ chants about Clinton eight years ago despite the former secretary of state never having been charged with any crime.