Tossing his "boring" prepared remarks into the air, US President Donald Trump has unleashed a fierce denunciation of the nation's immigration policies, calling for tougher border security while repeating his unsubstantiated claim that "millions" of people voted illegally in California.
Trump was in West Virginia on Thursday to showcase the benefits of Republican tax cuts, but he took a big and meandering detour to talk about his tough immigration and trade plans.
He linked immigration with the rise of violent gangs like MS-13 and suggested anew that there had been widespread fraud in the 2016 election that cost him the popular vote.
"In many places, like California, the same person votes many times. You probably heard about that," Trump said. "They always like to say, 'Oh, that's a conspiracy theory.' Not a conspiracy theory, folks. Millions and millions of people. And it's very hard because the state guards their records. They don't want us" to see them.
While there have been isolated cases of voter fraud in the US, past studies have found it to be exceptionally rare. Earlier this year the White House disbanded a controversial voter fraud commission amid infighting and lawsuits as state officials refused to co-operate.
In recent weeks, Trump has been pushing back more against the restraints of the office to offer more unvarnished opinions and take policy moves that some aides were trying to forestall.
"This was going to be my remarks. They would have taken about two minutes," Trump said as he tossed his script into the air. "This is boring. We have to tell it like it is."
As he has done before, Trump conjured images of violence and suffering when he described the perils of illegal immigration, though statistics show that immigrants commit crimes at a lower rate than citizens. He dubbed MS-13 gang members "thugs" and said his administration's crackdown on the group was "like a war".
"MS-13 is emblematic of evil, and we're getting them out by the hundreds," said Trump, who sat on stage at a long table in a gym draped in American flags and decorated with signs that read "USA open for business".
"This is the kind of stuff and crap we are allowing in our country, and we can't do it anymore."
Invoking the lines of his June 2015 campaign kick-off speech, in which he suggested that some Mexican immigrants were rapists, the president appeared to claim that a caravan of migrants that had been working its way north through Mexico toward the US was besieged with violence.
"Remember my opening remarks at Trump Tower when I opened? Everybody said, 'Oh, he was so tough,' and I used the word rape," he said. "And yesterday it came out where this journey coming up, women are raped at levels that nobody has ever seen before. They don't want to mention that."
It was not clear what Trump was referring to.
Trump also defended his proposed tariff plan, which many of his fellow Republicans fear will start a trade war with China.
All of that overshadowed any time spent promoting the tax plan.
