Trump prepares for Gettysburg address unveiling 'first 100 days' agenda – and his aides say Hillary is just 'waiting out the clock'

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Donald Trump will plant a flag on hallowed ground Saturday morning by laying out near the Gettysburg National Battlefield what he would do in his first 100 days as President of the United States.

The Civil War location, a senior campaign aide told reporters on a Friday night conference call, has great significance: 'Gettysburg was the moment when the war turned.'

And he aims to enter the campaign's final two weeks by making 'a closing pitch to voters.'

Donald Trump will lay out an agenda for his first 100 days as President of the United States – if he can win – with a Saturday morning speech in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania  

'Gettysburg was the moment when the war turned,' a senior campaign aide said Friday night when asked why the team chose the Civil War town for his policy address

The Republican nominee's campaign said he will unveil a list of at least 10 major policy proposals, in teleprompter-driven remarks designed to reinforce his image as a can-do executive with laser-focused goals.

Democrat Hillary Clinton, the aide snarked, can't articulate her policy goals because her donors haven't yet told her what to think.

'Secretary Clinton has no core,' the aide charged, quoting a Democratic aide in a hacked email recently released by WikiLeaks.

'Her policies are determined by the checks that are given to her, and nothing else. And of course no one actually disagrees with that. Everyone understands that she's a special-interest-driven candidate.'

The aide described Saturday's event, added to the calendar on Friday afternoon, as 'our chance to lay out a positive vision for the country, from Mr. Trump, about what he's going to do in his first 100 days in office, and how he's going to go about doing it.' 

Another Trump aide said Hillary Clinton's campaign is 'sitting on their lead' and 'waiting out the clock' instead of offering policy specifics

The aide said Trump and Clinton are 'running two different campaigns in the home stretch'

Clinton won't follow suit – 'she can't even go there' – the aide predicted, 'because she doesn't even know what checks she's going to get between now and when she would hypothetically be elected.'

But it's not clear where 'there' is, or why it's taken so long to read the map.

The aide promised 'new material' on Saturday but quickly played it coy, saying: 'I don't want to say what it will be.'

'What you're seeing tomorrow, is Mr. Trump identifying the 10 most important principles for the first 100 days, and then offering policy solutions to go with those.'

Trump's Gettysburg address comes with just 17 days to go before the Nov. 8 election. He and Clinton have debated three times. And, most worrisome for Republicans, an estimated 4 million Americans have already cast ballots through early voting programs.

As the call was going on, Trump himself appeared on the Fox News Channel with host Sean Hannity to preview Saturday's speech in an equally vague fashion.

Trump's staffers were vague in a conference call with reporters, and the candidate matched them stride for stride with a host of non-specifics on the Fox News Channel's 'Hannity' show

Vaguer still was Eric Trump, who wrote in a fundraising email that the 'first 100 days' agenda consisted of boilerplate promises and generalized talking points

'We're going to be lowering taxes. We're going to be strengthening our borders,' he said, remixing buzzword bromides that have been speech staples for months.

'We're going to be getting rid of regulations,' Trump continued. 'The regulations are going to be gone ... we need them for security or we need them for certain things like the environment, but our regulations are just taking over our companies. We can't compete anymore.'

'We're going to be terminating, repealing and replacing Obamacare. We're going to be saving our Second Amendment, There are a lot of things, Sean. It's gonna be - I think it's gonna be very special.'

At about the same time, his campaign blasted out a fundraising email signed by his middle son Eric.

'Here is what my father is determined to do in his first 100 days in office,' the email read. 'This is what we're fighting for.'

Trump is engaging in a full-court press of Clinton with a dizzying schedule of 3 to 4 rallies per day, often in as many different states

The Republican drew close to 7,000 people in Pennsylvania's rust-belt town of Johnstown on Friday afternoon, drawn to his message about recovering jobs lost to a global economy

His list, too, was short on specifics. It included pledges to 'appoint judges who will uphold our Constitution,' 'negotiate better trade deals' and 'open up energy production.'

A second senior campaign aide on Friday night's conference call compared Trump's promised policy brain-dump to a famous 1994 Republican congressional gambit responsible in part for the GOP taking over the lower chamber of Congress after 40 years in the minority.

'I worked on the original "Contract with America" back in the mid-'90s,' that second aide said.

'And I think the most important aspect from that contract, in addition to the 10 principles, was the accountability provision – that basically the Republican candidates in 1994 said, "If we fail to bring these to a vote in the first 100 days, you can kick us out".'

One senior Trump aide compared Saturday's policy rollout to the Republicans' 1994 'Contract with America,' which then-House Speaker Newt Gingrich – now a Trump adviser – introduced as a way to put lawmakers' feet to the fire

Acknowledging that 'it's a little bit different when you're the president,' the second aide said that 'the sentiment will be the same, which is that changes need to come very rapidly. And progress needs to come very rapidly.'

The policy proposals Trump will unveil Saturday, the aide said, 'are not going to wait until deep into his term, or in his second term.'

The comparison with the Contract with America could be fraught with trouble, even though its architect Newt Gingrich is advising Trump's campaign.

When Gingrich became Speaker of the House, his rank-and-file pledged to enact eight budget reforms and bring 10 specific bills to a vote.

The bills met with varying levels of success: Some became law while others died in the U.S. Senate or met the business end of President Bill Clinton's veto pen. The U.S. Supreme Court later ruled one was unconstitutional.

By 2000 the president of the libertarian Cato Institute determined that the 'Contract' never accomplished what its authors set out to.

'The combined budgets of the 95 major programs that the Contract with America promised to eliminate,' Ed Crane wrote, 'have increased by 13%.'

Like the GOP prior to 1994's electoral takeover, much of Trump's October has been spent on defense. But the aide suggested he's jumping back on offense while the Clinton campaign is trying to coast to victory.

'We're just running two different campaigns in the home stretch,' the aide said.

'They're going to sit on their lead. They're going to wait out the clock. You have a lot of folks commenting that she doesn't have to do anything except show up or not show up.

'We just have a different take on it. We just think that taking the case directly to the voters ... is really the way to go.'

'If you listen to them out on the stump – Vice President Biden today, Senator Kaine, President Obama – they're talking most predominantly about Donald Trump,' the aide said.

'And Donald Trump wants to talk predominantly about issues that affect everyday Americans. And that is the difference, and that will continue to be the difference.'