GETTYSBURG, Pa. — Donald Trump came to this historic battlefield town Saturday to offer his vision for America's future, saying he hoped to "heal the divisions" of the country as President Abraham Lincoln tried to do here seven score and 13 years ago.
Yet in his own Gettysburg address, Trump, who has been sliding in the polls less than three weeks before Election Day, did not offer much in the way of race-changing oratory and did not seem to embrace Lincoln's unifying ambition.
Instead, the Republican nominee used the first third of what had been promoted as a "closing argument" speech to nurse personal grievances, grumbling about "the rigging of this election" and "the dishonest mainstream media," and threatening to sue the women who have come forward — an 11th woman did Saturday — to accuse him of aggressive sexual advances.
"Every woman lied when they came forward to hurt my campaign — total fabrication," Trump said. "The events never happened. Never. All of these liars will be sued after the election is over."
And the more substantive part of the speech, intended to outline his first 100 days in office if he is elected president, did not quite live up to its billing by campaign aides, who had promised a major policy address not unlike Newt Gingrich's 1994 "Contract with America." Instead, a subdued Trump — who Friday acknowledged the possibility of electoral defeat — largely repeated his existing campaign promises, from renegotiating trade deals to enforcing tougher immigration laws.
In his speech, given before a small, handpicked crowd in a conference room, Trump did offer specific immigration proposals, including an "End Illegal Immigration Act" that would establish mandatory minimum prison sentences for unauthorized immigrants caught illegally re-entering the country after deportation. He also said he would stop issuing visas to any country that refused to take in citizens ordered deported from the United States, a policy that would almost certainly disrupt immigration and commerce with China, which is one such country.
Trump also reiterated his promise to build a border wall with Mexico and have Mexico pay for it, although he hedged his wording a bit, saying, "The country of Mexico will be reimbursing the United States for the full cost of such a wall."
Repeating earlier pledges to "drain the swamp" in Washington, Trump promised to push through a series of new ethics laws, as well as term limits for both the House and Senate. And he called for "a hiring freeze on all federal employees to reduce the federal workforce through attrition, exempting military, public safety and public health."
On Saturday afternoon, a spokeswoman for the Clinton campaign, Christina Reynolds, called Trump's Gettysburg remarks a preview of what a Trump State of the Union address would resemble: "Rambling, unfocused, full of conspiracy theories and attacks on the media and lacking any real answers for American families."
At her own rally Saturday in Pennsylvania, a confident Clinton devoted much of her speech to the state's contentious Senate race, putting in an extended plug for the Democratic candidate, Katie McGinty, and attacking the Republican incumbent, Sen. Pat Toomey, for not denouncing Trump for his vulgar remarks about women.
"You know, a lot of Republicans have, they have had the grit and the guts to stand up and say, 'He does not represent me,' " Clinton said at the rally in Pittsburgh.
A Bloomberg News poll conducted this month showed Clinton with a 9 percentage point lead over Trump in Pennsylvania.