WILKES-BARRE, Pa. – Former President Donald Trump repeatedly digressed from his economy-focused message Saturday, as an alternative delivering illogical statements and private attacks, including declaring thrice that he looks higher than Vice President Kamala Harris.
At a rally in northeastern Pennsylvania, Trump alternated between making his economic case and making a number of insults and imitations of President Joe Biden and French President Emmanuel Macron.
The former president seemed to be struggling to regulate to his latest opponent after Democrats replaced their nominee. During campaign appearances last week, he deviated from the policies he was purported to be talking about and as an alternative resorted to a series of familiar attack lines and insults.
As he began his speech attacking Democrats over inflation, Trump asked his supporters: “You don't mind if I lose the teleprompter for a second, do you? Joe Biden hates them.”
Joseph Costello, a spokesman for the Harris campaign, responded to Trump in a press release, saying: “Another rally, same old show” and that Trump “resorts to lies, insults and confused tirades” because he cannot sell his agenda.
“The more Americans hear Trump speak, the clearer the choice becomes this November: Vice President Harris is uniting voters with her positive vision of protecting our freedoms, building the middle class and moving America forward – and Donald Trump is trying to set us back,” Costello said.
Trump's rally in Wilkes-Barre took place partially of a vital swing state where he hopes conservative, white working-class voters near Biden's hometown of Scranton will boost Republicans' probabilities of retaking the White House.
His comments on Saturday got here as Democrats prepare for his or her four-day convention, which begins Monday in Chicago and can mark the welcome of Harris as their nominee. Her substitute of Biden lower than 4 months before the November election has given latest momentum to the Democrats and their coalition, but in addition represents a brand new challenge for Trump.
Trump attacked Harris on economic issues, linking her to the Biden administration's inflation problems and comparing her recent anti-price gouging proposal to measures in communist countries. Trump said a federal ban on food price gouging would result in food shortages, rationing and hunger. On Saturday, he was asked why she had not worked on an answer to the value problem when she and Biden were sworn in in 2021.
“Day one for Kamala was three and a half years ago. Why didn't she do it then? So today is day 1,305,” Trump said.
To counter high prices, Trump announced that on the primary day of his swearing-in as president, he would sign an executive order “directing all Cabinet secretaries and agency heads to use every power at our disposal to bring prices down. But we're going to bring them down in a capitalist way, not a communist way,” he said.
He predicted bankruptcy for the country, and Pennsylvania specifically, if Harris won, citing her past opposition to fracking, a widely used approach to oil and gas extraction within the state. Her campaign has tried to melt her stance on fracking by saying she’s going to not ban it, despite the fact that that was her position when she ran for president in 2020.
“Her country is going to be ruined anyway. She is totally against fracking,” Trump said.
But he also vacillated between criticism of the chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021 and imitations of Macron's French accent.
Trump attacked Harris' laughter, saying she was “not a very good wordsmith,” and mocked the names of the CNN moderators who moderated the controversy between him and Biden in June.
As he began to reflect on Harris' recent image on the duvet of Time magazine, he commented on the image's resemblance to classic Hollywood icons Sophia Loren and Elizabeth Taylor, after which criticized a Wall Street Journal columnist who commented on Harris' beauty earlier this month.
“I look much better than her,” Trump said, drawing laughter from the gang. “I'm a better looking person than Kamala.”
He also had an issue with the way in which his style was typically portrayed in news reports.
“They'll say he's rambling. I'm not rambling. I'm a really smart guy,” he said.
Trump's rally on Saturday was his fifth at the world in Wilkes-Barre, the biggest city in Luzerne County, where he won the last two elections. Biden defeated Trump in neighboring Lackawanna County, where the Democrat has long emphasized his working-class roots in Scranton.
On Sunday, Harris is planning a bus trip that may begin in Pittsburgh and stop in Rochester, a small town further north. Trump has planned a visit to a factory in York that makes containers for nuclear fuel on Monday. Trump's running mate JD Vance is predicted in Philadelphia that day.
Some of Biden's loyal supporters in Scranton, a former industrial city of 76,000, were offended that party leadership was attempting to pressure the president to resign.
Diane Munley, 63, says she called dozens of members of Congress to lobby for Biden. Munley eventually got here to terms with Biden's decision and is now a robust supporter of Harris.
“I can't deny the excitement that exists right now for this ticket. I'm so excited,” Munley said. “It just didn't work out for Joe, and I couldn't see it at the time because I was so close to him.”
Bridy called Trump a “working man like us.” Trump is a billionaire who made his fortune in real estate.
“He's a fighter,” Bridy said. “I would like to see closed borders. He doesn't waste time. He gets straight to work and takes care of things the way they should be done.”
Price reported from New York. Associated Press writers Bill Barrow in Atlanta and Darlene Superville in Arlington, Virginia, contributed to this report.
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