GETTYSBURG, Pa. _ Donald Trump launched another late attempt to fix his sagging campaign Saturday, delivering a speech billed as a closing argument in a hotel ballroom near the battlefield that turned the direction of the Civil War.
Yet, even as the Republican nominee for president praised Abraham Lincoln for uniting the country, Trump laced his Gettysburg speech with familiar charges of a rigged election and corrupt media, and new threats against the 10 women who have accused him of sexual misconduct.
"All of these liars will be sued when the election is over," Trump said.
The event epitomized the Trump campaign's twilight phase, with a speech in two parts that seemed at odds with each other.
It was at once a confident and forward-looking outline of a Trump administration that would obliterate the Washington establishment and return power to the people, as Trump pledged more than two dozen bills and executive actions in his first 100 days in office.
Yet it was also a lament full of blame, indignation and threats against the forces that Trump says are allied in an all-out effort to deny him the White House.
Intending to look presidential, Trump spoke with a subdued voice from a teleprompter to a small crowd that rarely left its feet, a contrast to two free-wheeling rallies he had in Pennsylvania on Friday.
Trump billed the speech as a policy address that would highlight his first actions as president. But almost all of the promises had been made before in other speeches and press releases.
They include steep tax reductions, a border wall with Mexico, a constitutional amendment limiting terms for members of Congress and the cancellation of billions of dollars in payments for United Nations climate-change programs. He added new details to a recent proposal to impose mandatory minimum criminal sentences for immigrants who return to the U.S. illegally after they have been deported, and a promise to freeze most federal government hiring.
Trump had given a similar speech in June, during another low point in his campaign, laying out eight promises for his first 100 days in office. Among them: appointing conservative judges, repealing and replacing President Obama's health care law and lifting restrictions on energy production.
Earlier, though, Trump plowed through the long list of his alleged enemies.
He again tried to define his Democratic opponent, Hillary Clinton, as the choice of elites and establishment figures who have no regard for the working class.
"Hillary Clinton is not running against me," Trump said. "She's running against change and she's running against all of the American people and all of the American voters."
Trump has also accused the news media repeatedly this past week of ignoring three recent national polls that show him leading Clinton _ including the Los Angeles Times poll that showed him leading by a fraction of a percentage point as of Saturday. Most national polls, however, and those from key battleground states, show Trump falling further behind Clinton.
Trump has vacillated in recent days between bravado and tentative talk about confronting the possibility of a loss.
In three speeches Friday, he mentioned Britain's vote in June to leave the European Union, known as the Brexit, which defied predictions from many experts.
Trump alternately described his campaign as "beyond Brexit," "Brexit-plus," and "Brexit times five."
Many of his supporters are convinced he will win, agreeing with him that the news media is in cahoots with Clinton to shape coverage and manipulate polls to depress turnout among his voters.
"I hate seeing stuff about the polls," said Jacqueline Catapano, a nurse who attended a boisterous rally in Newtown, Pa., Friday. "It's a tactic from their side to get people to think we're already defeated."
A few minutes into a speech at the fairgrounds in Fletcher, N.C., on Friday, Trump broke off from a riff about American workers and promised that he, too, would work harder.
He promised four daily campaign appearances, maybe just two on slow days, "right up until the actual vote on Nov. 8."
Then Trump said something that seemed a measure of humility. It was, after more than a year of nonstop hyperbole, almost as shocking as some of the bombast.
"And then, I don't know what kind of shape I'm in, but I'll be happy that at least I will have known, win lose or draw _ and I'm almost sure if the people come out, we're going to win _ but I will be happy with myself," he said.
"Because I don't want to say, I don't want to think back, if only I did one more rally," he said. "I would have won North Carolina by 500 votes instead of losing it by 200 votes."
"I never want to ever look back."
"What a waste of time if we don't pull this off," he said a few minutes later.
