During remarks at Mar-a-Lago, his estate in Palm Beach, Florida, Trump echoed his familiar attacks on Harris and Democrats and claimed the vice president was running a “campaign of hate.”

“I have a plan to save America,” he said. “We have no choice, it’s the greatest thing there is, and we’re going to save it.”

Trump painted a dire picture of US cities, claiming there was “monastery” and “bloodshed”. data released by the FBI in September, it showed that violent crime and property crime fell in 2023, and murder and negligent homicide saw an 11 percent drop.

The Republican presidential candidate appeared to attack the Biden administration for failing to respond to a Iranian assassination plot against Trump, which was detected by US intelligence services. A Pakistani national with alleged links to Iran was arrested and charged in August with a murder-for-hire scheme targeting government officials, including Trump.

The former president said that if he were in office and a foreign nation threatened his political opponent, he would threaten to “destroy your entire country.”

Trump’s remarks focused largely on immigration and the Biden administration’s border policies, indicating that his closing message to the American people will focus on an issue that has been central to all three of his presidential campaigns.

“To me, nothing is more important than the fabric of our country being destroyed by people sitting there violently, sitting stupidly, stupidly there,” he said. “I think what’s happening at the border is the biggest problem.”

Trump has announced that if elected, his administration will seize the assets of drug gangs and cartels and use them to create a fund to provide restitution to victims of crimes committed by illegal immigrants in the US.