Donald Trump went to the southern border to paint Vice President Kamala Harris as responsible for a migrant crisis as he and the Democratic presidential nominee’s allies traded barbs ahead of her big national convention moment.

But he did not immediately do so. Instead, the GOP presidential nominee went off-script as soon as he stepped to a microphone on a dusty road beside a towering brown strip of border wall, talking about the Democrat he wanted to be running against this fall.

“Joe Biden, the way that he was taken out was a coup,” Trump said as he began speaking in Sierra Vista, Ariz., on Thursday, hours before Harris was scheduled to formally accept Democrats’ presidential nomination in Chicago. “He got 14 million [primary] votes, and the person running now (Harris) got none.”

He then instantly shifted from the 2024 primaries to 2020, when Harris was in the pack of Democrats seeking the nomination, though that context was left unsaid.

“She was disgraced. She was figured out by the Democratic voters. She never made it to Iowa. … And now she’s running against us. The good news is I think we’re winning in the polls, from what I’ve seen. … It was a coup of an American president. And it was done with anger,” Trump said.

Trump then managed to focus on illegal immigration for most of the event, with some exceptions, contending Biden “has allowed 20 million people into our country [illegally],” adding: “We have to clean up our border.”

The remarks continued Trump’s recent trend of veering off his campaign aides’ plans to focus on key policy issues and Harris.

On the border, Trump vowed, if elected, to start a “mass deportation of criminals” program and “seal the border.” He also said his administration would seek strict sentences for “illegal alien criminals,” including a 10-year mandatory minimum sentence for anyone convicted of human smuggling, a “guaranteed life sentence for anyone [found] guilty of child trafficking, and a death penalty for anyone guilty of child or woman sex trafficking.” He also promised his administration would seek the death penalty for drug dealers and drug traffickers, as well as anyone who is found guilty of killing law enforcement personnel.

Answering a question from a reporter, Trump vowed to cut off all trade and slap substantial tariffs on Central and South American countries if they refused to take back any of their citizens returned by his possible administration for entering the United States illegally. 

The former president and his surrogates, including many congressional Republicans, have tried hitting Harris on illegal immigration, calling her Biden’s “border czar” and questioning why she has not done more while in office to curb illegal border crossings.

Harris was not put in charge of immigration issues, however. Biden did assign her to lead a group of actions intended to “address the root causes of migration from El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras.” 

To Trump’s left in Cochise County were pieces of a border wall that was one of the chief campaign promises of his administration — stacked up on the ground rather than installed. Those sections were never completed once Biden took office.

“There are a lot of rough people on the other side,” Trump said, pointing toward Mexico. He falsely stated his administration had “the best numbers in recorded history” on illegal crossings.

“For nearly four years as border czar, Comrade Kamala has overseen a nation-wrecking border invasion,” he said. “She’s allowed at least 20 million people, all illegal aliens into our country, including millions and millions of unvetted fighting-aged men from over 158 countries.”

White House and Harris campaign officials for weeks have touted federal law enforcement data showing border crossings have been declining, however.

Trump’s running mate, Sen. JD Vance of Ohio, was in Valdosta, Ga., on Thursday, where he contended Harris only recently “found Jesus” on issues like crime and immigration. He contended Biden administration officials, including Harris, enacted policies that have made law enforcement’s job even tougher.

He also contended Harris was “so into soft-on-crime policies” that she selected “the perfect running mate,” Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz. “Do we want Kamala Harris as the prosecutor in chief of this country? No,” Vance said from a parking lot outside a law enforcement building. “We want Donald J. Trump.”

Senior Trump campaign aides on a Sunday call with reporters stressed they wanted several events this week to focus mostly on policy issues as Democrats met at Chicago’s United Center. But as he did Thursday in Arizona, Trump veered off those topics all week, with the candidate making false statements and engaging in name-calling.

Notably, at one point Trump appeared to acknowledge he lost the 2020 election, saying he “came up a little short.”

On Wednesday in North Carolina, another battleground, Trump wondered aloud why he is criticized for taking personal jabs at his opponents when former President Barack Obama and his wife, Michelle Obama, made personal statements about him at the convention Tuesday evening.

An average of several polls of Arizonans tabulated by RealClearPolitics showed Trump and Harris virtually tied in the battleground state.

A national polling calculation by FiveThirtyEight showed Harris has opened a 47 percent to 43.7 percent lead over Trump, with independent candidate Robert Kennedy Jr. netting 4.8 percent. Kennedy reportedly could drop out as soon as Friday, and some analysts have said that likely would help Trump.

‘Trump killed that bill’

Even before Trump spoke, the Harris campaign had deployed surrogates to try to flip the border issue back on the former president.

Arizona Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly challenged Trump’s calling the U.S.-Mexico border “wide open,” arguing crossings have drastically decreased while Harris as been vice president

“The fact is that Vice President Harris is the only candidate who has a record of standing up for Arizona border communities and can be trusted to support our communities and fix the broken system,” Kelly, who was due to speak ahead of Harris at the convention Thursday, said in a statement.

“We’ve seen crossings at Arizona’s border decrease — including a 32 percent decline in July — thanks to the executive actions of the Biden-Harris administration,” Kelly added. “There is more work to be done, but Kamala Harris is the one for the job. This is [in] stark contrast to Donald Trump and JD Vance, who don’t want real solutions to the issue.”

Speakers at this week’s convention have repeatedly noted that Trump spearheaded an effort that sunk a bipartisan border and immigration package the White House negotiated with Senate Republicans and Democrats.

“Trump killed that bill, and he did it because he knew that if we fixed the border, he’d lose his ability to divide us, his ability to fan the flames of fear,” Sen. Christopher S. Murphy, D-Conn., who was involved in the negotiations, told delegates Wednesday night. “For 20 years, Kamala Harris has been tough as nails when it comes to securing our border.”

Asked about such comments, Trump called the Senate package “weak” and “terrible,” instead endorsing a more conservative version crafted and passed by House Republicans.

To be sure, Harris has a long way to go on the issue.

A survey conducted Aug. 14-16 by CBS News found that among likely voters who called the southern border a major issue, 76 percent supported Trump while just 24 percent supported the vice president.

“San Francisco liberal Kamala Harris’ fake promises to secure the border will never become reality,” Will Reinert, the National Republican Congressional Committee’s national press secretary, said in a Thursday statement. “The same Kamala who wanted to abolish ICE and decriminalize illegal border crossings, will cave to House Democrats’ open-border demands.”