Donald Trump Donald John TrumpUS reimposes UN sanctions on Iran amid increasing tensions Jeff Flake: Republicans 'should hold the same position' on SCOTUS vacancy as 2016 Trump supporters chant 'Fill that seat' at North Carolina rally MORE delivered a sustained and blistering attack on presumptive Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton Hillary Diane Rodham ClintonJeff Flake: Republicans 'should hold the same position' on SCOTUS vacancy as 2016 Momentum growing among Republicans for Supreme Court vote before Election Day Warning signs flash for Lindsey Graham in South Carolina MORE in a 40-minute scripted speech Wednesday that sought to reassure Republicans about his campaign.

Trump seemed intent on projecting as presidential an image as possible in the address, delivered at his hotel in New York’s SoHo neighborhood rather than his usual venue of Trump Tower.

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Dressed in a sober dark suit and red tie, Trump spoke in front of four American flags and read mostly off a teleprompter, employing his trademark rhetorical flourishes only sparingly.

The presumptive GOP nominee aimed to cast Clinton as a fundamentally corrupt figure who is more intent on catering to moneyed interests than defending the rights of American workers.

Trump even sought to turn the former secretary of State’s “I’m With Her” slogan against her.

“She believes she’s entitled to the office,” Trump said, “I’m with you, the American people. She thinks it’s all about her. I know it’s all about you.”

Trump sought to amplify his support in the Rust Belt — a region most Republicans believe offers him his most plausible path to the White House — by tying Clinton to the trade policies of her husband, former President Bill Clinton William (Bill) Jefferson ClintonDolly Parton remembers Ginsburg: 'Her voice was soft but her message rang loud' Sunday shows preview: Justice Ginsburg dies, sparking partisan battle over vacancy before election Calls grow for Biden to expand election map in final sprint MORE.

“Hillary Clinton supported Bill Clinton’s disastrous NAFTA, just like she supported China’s entrance into the World Trade Organization,” he said. “We’ve lost nearly one-third of our manufacturing jobs since these two Hillary-backed agreements were signed.”

At another point, he asserted that “she gets rich making you poor.”

Trump’s appeal is strongest among working-class white Americans, and polls from Quinnipiac University released this week showed him running neck and neck with Clinton in Ohio and Pennsylvania.

On several other occasions, Trump made direct appeals to Democrats or Democratic-leaning groups.

Near the beginning of the speech, he explicitly asked supporters of Clinton’s vanquished primary opponent, Sen. Bernie Sanders Bernie SandersNYT editorial board remembers Ginsburg: She 'will forever have two legacies' Two GOP governors urge Republicans to hold off on Supreme Court nominee Sanders knocks McConnell: He's going against Ginsburg's 'dying wishes' MORE (I-Vt.), to “join our movement.”

Later, he suggested that Clinton’s willingness to embrace immigration reform would hurt African-Americans and Hispanics disproportionately. Because members of those groups “need jobs,” he said, “they are the ones she will hurt the most.”

Insiders will see Wednesday’s speech as evidence that the Trump campaign is moving onto more professional and orthodox footing after Corey Lewandowski was fired as campaign manager on Monday.

Lewandowski’s defenders assert that his insistence on “letting Trump be Trump” paved the way for the business mogul’s against-the-odds victory in the battle for the Republican nomination.

But his detractors counter that he was too much of an enabler of his boss, especially with regard to getting into high-profile personal feuds of negligible interest to the average voter.

Trump on Wednesday kept his focus unremittingly on Clinton, and other issues were conspicuous for their absence. His two most controversial proposals — building a wall on the U.S.-Mexico border and banning non-citizen Muslims from entering the U.S. — were referred to only obliquely.

Social media reports also indicated that reporters from news organization that had been blacklisted by the Trump campaign were allowed in to cover the address.

Much of the reaction from pundits split along predictable partisan lines, with Fox News Channel’s Sean Hannity describing the jab at Clinton’s slogan as “brilliant” and The Nation’s Joan Walsh calling the address “robotic” and “lie-riddled.”

The speech also received immediate pushback from Clinton allies. The pro-Clinton group Correct the Record peppered reporters’ inboxes with emails at the rate of about one every four minutes during the time Trump was speaking.

That’s the kind of display of organizational muscle that makes Republicans jittery about the state of Trump’s campaign. He has a staff about one-tenth of the size of Clinton’s. The most recently released fundraising numbers showed the Clinton campaign with about $42 million on hand and just $1.3 million for Trump's.

Trump and his allies have argued that those figures are essentially meaningless because he is a billionaire who could theoretically cut a check to his own campaign that would eliminate Clinton’s advantage at a stroke.