The former President Donald Trump repeatedly accused Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris of pushing a “communist system” during a two-hour Thursday afternoon press conference at Trump’s golf course in Bedminster, New Jersey.

“You’re all going to be thrown into a communist system,” Trump warned. “You will be thrown into a system where everybody gets health care. She’s in favor of the death of the American Dream.”  

The early evening event came only hours after the Trump campaign veteran Corey Lewandowski, along with five other new faces, joined the 2024 team. The announcement comes a day after rumors swirled that Trump was mulling the future of the campaign managers Chris LaCivita and Susie Wiles.

Standing in front of a long table covered in common grocery items such as cereal and coffee, Trump said Harris was “running on the Maduro plan, something straight out of Venezuela or the Soviet Union.”

“Thanks to Kamala’s war on American energy, electricity prices are up 32 percent, gasoline prices are up 50 percent and going higher,” Trump read from a notecard on the podium. “If she’s elected, social security will fail. It’ll be a blowup like you’ve never seen before, a bankruptcy of the entire system, probably the nation itself.”

Trump warned America will experience a “stock market crash like 1929” if Harris is elected in November. The former president’s prediction came on the same day that the American stock market closed in on all-time highs. Fox News displayed the Dow Jones ticker up more than 500 points in the bottom right corner of the screen as Trump made gloomy prediction after gloomy prediction about the economy. 

Trump argued that Harris “far more radical than Bernie Sanders” and said her VP Tim Walz “wants tampons in boys bathrooms.”

“People don’t respect her in the economy,” Trump said. “Economists are laughing. She wants to change a free enterprise–type country into a communist-type country. That’s what she knows.”

Trump accused Harris of “destroying California along with Gavin Newscum,” mocking Newsom’s last name. Trump stated that San Francisco “was a great city 15 years ago.” 

Trump also railed against migrants, who he claimed accounted for “virtually 100 percent of the net job creation in the last year.”

“In fact, I’ve heard substantially more and actually beyond that number 100%” Trump added. “It’s a much higher number than that but the government has not caught up with that yet.”

Trump threw his support behind large-scale legal migration during the Q&A session that followed his prepared remarks:

"We’re going to let a lot of people come in, because we need more people, especially with AI coming and all the different things,” Trump said. “But we’re going to make sure they’re not murderers, killers, and drug dealers…”

Trump brushed off new polling that shows Harris suddenly tied or leading in all of the battleground states.

“I tend to poll low,” admitted the former president. “In some cases, very low.”

Despite the cereal centerpiece at Thursday’s press conference, the common grocery items on the table behind Trump weren’t mentioned until Right Side Broadcasting Network’s Brian Glenn prompted Trump to discuss the spread an hour into the press conference.

"I think I’m going to take some of them back to my cottage and have a lot of fun,” Trump joked. “Like the Cheerios. I haven’t seen Cheerios in a long time. I'm going to take ‘em back with me."

The spread was meant to stress how inflation has hurt the average American, an obvious counter to Harris who is expected to announce her plan to ban price gouging on groceries during a Friday speech in the battleground state of North Carolina. She is also expected to announce a plan to provide $25,000 in government-backed down payment assistance to first-time home-buyers. 

When queried about his 2024 strategy now that Harris is leading the ticket, Trump kept it simple: “All we have to do is define our opponent as being a communist or a socialist or somebody that’s gonna destroy our country.”