Trump insults Biden, predicts reelection in New Hampshire rally

US President Donald Trump on Friday insulted his Democratic challenger Joe Biden as "low-IQ" and barely conscious in a New Hampshire speech reinforcing his strategy of painting himself as the defender of the country against socialist mayhem.

The speech, filled with hyperbolic and inaccurate descriptions of life under the Democrats, followed Trump's White House address to the Republican convention late Thursday where he warned that "no one will be safe in Biden's America."

Trump told the crowd assembled at the airport in Manchester, New Hampshire, that he was sure of victory on November 3.

"Does anyone have any doubt?" he asked to a chorus of support.

"I will have lost to a low-IQ individual. I don't want that. 'Sleepy Joe,' I don't want it," Trump said of the former vice president and longtime senator. "The guy doesn't know he's alive."

Much as he did Thursday at the White House, Trump claimed to be singlehandedly protecting the country from Democratic anarchists.

And he again said that the coronavirus, which has killed more than 180,000 Americans already, was under control.

"Hopefully we're at the end," he said.

The difference in New Hampshire, where he hosted a scaled-down version of his trademark pre-coronavirus rallies, was that Trump was able to cut free with ad-libs and even more personal attacks on his rival.

"We are all that stand between the American people and the left wing mob," he said. "If you want to save democracy from the mob, then you must vote to defeat an extremely poor candidate."

To cheers and laughter, Trump, 74, described 77-year-old Biden as "weak" and "the worst candidate ever put up by the Democratic party."

As he has before, Trump claimed falsely that Biden, a lifelong Catholic, is "against God."

Fanning the race flames

Trump is bidding to make what he calls "law and order" the central plank of his reelection campaign just as tensions over race and police brutality spiral around the country.

After flaring all summer, a shooting by a white police officer of an African-American man in Kenosha, Wisconsin, sparked another wave of anger, with demonstrations and at times rioting and looting dominating television screens for days.

On Friday, tens of thousands of people flooded Washington, DC, to protest that shooting and other instances of racial injustice, as well as to mark the anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr's historic 1963 "I Have a Dream" speech.