In Disjointed Speech, Trump Talks Gaza, Storm, Migrants and ‘Full Metal Jacket’

In unfocused remarks that frequently veered into tangents, former President Donald J. Trump responded on Tuesday to Iran’s launching a missile attack against Israel by insisting that the world was nearing global devastation, criticizing President Biden’s leadership and falling back on his frequent hypothetical that he would have prevented the crisis in the Middle East had he won in 2020.

“They are very close to global catastrophe,” Mr. Trump said during a speech in Waunakee, Wis., a town of about 15,000 people near Madison.

Mr. Trump did not provide any details of how he might quell the war in Gaza or otherwise address the escalating conflict between Israel and Iran that has heightened tensions throughout the region.

He falsely claimed Iran went broke under sanctions that were imposed while he was president and argued that the Biden administration had not taken a tough enough stance toward the country.

But Mr. Trump’s remarks about Iran’s attack against Israel were characterized more by his digressions than by his response to world events. As he insisted that he would restore global stability and criticized “a nonexistent president and a nonexistent vice president,” Mr. Trump departed from his prepared remarks in order to criticize San Francisco, attack Vice President Kamala Harris’s response to Hurricane Helene, stoke fears around immigration, blast the prisoner swap deal with Russia that freed Brittney Griner, repeat his false claims of widespread election fraud and relitigate whether the 1987 film “Full Metal Jacket” should have won Academy Awards.

At one point, as he insisted that there would not have been a war in Gaza had he won in 2020, he abruptly pivoted.

“This would have never happened in the Middle East,” Mr. Trump said. “It wouldn’t have been on Oct. 7. You wouldn’t have had inflation. You know, we’ll go to a different topic. You wouldn’t have had inflation. None of these things would have happened.” Then, he began talking about the Biden administration’s withdrawal from Afghanistan.

Mr. Trump’s responses to current events were in themselves a detour. As he stood inside Dane Manufacturing, a contract manufacturer and metal fabricator, he told the crowd he would give a “speech on economics and bringing back business and things.”

But it was not until more than 30 minutes into a speech that ran for more than an hour that Mr. Trump began to discuss the economy at length, a shift that he acknowledged as he promised “a manufacturing renaissance and a booming middle class, which is really what I’m here to talk about.”

Mr. Trump was making his third visit to a manufacturing facility in the last week, one of a number of smaller events his campaign is holding to outline an agenda that aims to restore U.S. manufacturing. Roughly 500 people were inside the facility for Mr. Trump’s speech, though more than that had arrived hoping for a seat.

Dane County is the heartbeat of Wisconsin Democrats. The state’s second-largest county, it gave 75 percent of its votes to Mr. Biden in 2020 and is a difficult place for any Republican to campaign. And yet Mr. Trump cannot afford to have his margin decrease in the fast-growing county, given the narrow statewide margins in recent Wisconsin elections.

Mr. Trump did repeat pledges he made last week to encourage companies to make products in the United States, mostly by increasing tariffs and offering tax breaks to companies that manufacture domestically.

Still, as is often the case, he shifted quickly to talking about immigration, an issue he wants to put at the center of the election. And he again asserted without evidence that Democrats were urging immigrants to enter the country and vote illegally in November.

“You know, there’s a reason why they let all these people in,” he said. “Because they want to get them to vote.”

Mr. Trump was also scheduled to speak to the press in Milwaukee on Tuesday evening at a small theater inside the Discovery World museum. Ahead of those remarks, screens on the stage where he will speak displayed messages about school-choice programs.

Dan Simmons contributed reporting from Milwaukee.