Trump pulls no punches in re-election bid speech

US President Donald Trump touted his economic record and fight against illegal immigration while heaping disdain on his political opponents in announcing his re-election bid on Tuesday in Orlando, Florida.

Among his targets were the Robert Mueller investigation, his 2016 Democratic opponent, Hillary Clinton, and Washington insiders. Trade pacts NAFTA, the TPP and the Paris Agreement on climate change also were criticized.

"We went through the biggest witch hunt in political history," Trump said of the probe by Special Counsel Robert Mueller. "It was all an illegal attempt to overturn the results of the election.

"For the last 2 ½ years we have been under siege … and now they want a do-over," he said. "Nobody has done what we have done under a great illegal witch hunt."

Trump said of the probe that "they appointed 18 angry Democrats to try to take down our incredible movement. The Democrats don't really care about Russia. They only care about their own political power. They tried to erase your vote."

On China, Trump praised President Xi Jinping, and said they had a good conversation on Monday. Trump expressed optimism about renewing trade talks when the two leaders are scheduled to meet at the G20 Leaders Summit (June 28-29) in Osaka, Japan.

But Trump, who also accused China of manipulating its currency and subsidizing its companies, said his administration has taken "historic action to confront China's trading abuses".

A study in March by economists from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, Columbia University and Princeton University, before Trump raised tariffs on China even more, found that the public and US companies were paying $3 billion a month in higher taxes from the trade dispute.

"This is a very big arena, for a Tuesday night, if we have about three or four empty seats, the 'fake news' will say we didn't fill up the arena," Trump said at the start of his 1 ½-hour speech, after an introduction by first lady Melania Trump.

The editorial board at the city's largest paper, the Orlando Sentinel, created a buzz when it published an anti-endorsement of Trump on Tuesday.

"We're here to announce our endorsement for president in 2020, or, at least, who we're not endorsing: Donald Trump."

"The idea came up to just go ahead and do a partial endorsement," Opinion Editor Mike Lafferty said. "We settled on it as a way to make a statement."

The paper also wrote about the response to the editorial: "Reactions poured in from readers throughout the day. They ranged from several dozen readers who cancelled subscriptions to emails and calls that said the editorial was a 'disgrace' and called us 'crazy' and 'un-American'.

"Today's editorial should be in all papers across the US," said one supportive email.

Trump said his Democratic challengers would seek to legalize migrants coming across the southern border so they could vote and boost the Democratic political base. He also criticized sanctuary cities, which offer refuge to undocumented immigrants.

The president said he was representing people who "love their country, love their flag, love their children and believe that a nation must care for its own citizens first".

Trump said he defeated a "corrupt and broken political establishment" and is presiding over a "thriving, prospering, booming" economy.

Clinton once again came up in Trump's speech, about her use of a private email server.

"If you want to know how the system is rigged, just look at how they came at us for three years with everything they had, versus the free pass they gave to Hillary and her aides after they set up an illegal server, destroyed evidence, deleted and acid-washed 33,000 emails, exposed classified information, and turned the State Department into a pay-for-play cash machine."

Trump also touted the nation's low unemployment rate and praised what he said was record low unemployment for African Americans, Hispanic Americans and Asian Americans.

"Our economy is the envy of the world, perhaps the greatest economy we've had in the history of our country. The American Dream … is bigger, better and stronger than ever before."

Trump said the TPP (Trans-Pacific Partnership) would have "dealt the death blow to the auto industry". He also praised his proposed replacement for the North American Free Trade Agreement — the United States Canada Mexico Agreement.

"We stared down the unholy alliance of lobbyists and donors, broke down doors of Washington back rooms, where deals were cut to surrender your sovereignty and you very way of life. … My only special interest is you," Trump said.

"We're draining the swamp. And that's why the swamp is fighting back so viciously and violently," he said.

Trump also criticized Democratic front-runner Joe Biden and former president Barack Obama, saying they didn't do enough to protect American manufacturing.

"Since my inauguration, we've added 16,000 manufacturing jobs a month. We'll tell Sleepy Joe we found the magic wand," he said.

In response, Kate Bedingfield, Biden's deputy campaign manager, said: "Our country cannot afford four more years of Trump diminishing America's role on the world stage, cutting access to health care, ignoring the climate emergency that is an unprecedented threat to our national security, tearing children from their parents at the border, giving enormous new tax breaks to big corporations and the wealthy at the expense of working families, and dividing our country by embracing toxic bigotry and racism that's antithetical to who we are."

Andrew Yang, a candidate for the Democratic nomination, who will take part in the party's first round of debates next week, tweeted: "When I'm President the plan is to be too busy solving problems to be having rallies for my re-election."

Reuters and The Associated Press contributed to this story.