Former U.S. President Donald Trump, the Republican presidential nominee, speaks during a campaign rally October 9, 2024 in Scranton (Photo by Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images)
READING— As the 2024 campaign enters its final weeks, former President Donald Trump campaigned in eastern Pennsylvania on Wednesday, making his first stop of the day in President Joe Biden’s childhood hometown of Scranton.
“It’s great to be back in the beautiful commonwealth with thousands of proud hard working American patriots,” Trump told an audience at Riverfront Sports arena in Scranton. “Just 27 days from now we are going to win Pennsylvania, we are going to defeat lying Kamala Harris.”
During his 80-plus minute address in Scranton, he criticized Harris on a wide range of policies, while also claiming he “didn’t like her,” and said someone approached him telling him to be nicer to Harris, adding women won’t like it.
“A guy came up to me today, he said “sir, you really should be nicer, the women won’t like it,” Trump said. “The women want safety and the women want to have a country that they can be proud of, I think.”
He took a jab at Biden, who dropped out of the race in July after a poor debate performance against Trump, and endorsed Harris’ candidacy. “I’m telling you, as I said, he looks better now than I’ve ever seen him looking. He’s angry, he’s angry at her,” Trump said of Biden, without offering evidence.
Biden has campaigned alongside Harris in Pennsylvania.
Harris and Biden campaign in Pittsburgh as presidential race enters the home stretch
Trump touted his support for lowering the corporate tax rate from 21% to 15% for companies that make products in America, and his support of tariffs, claiming the country was at its richest when the U.S. imposed stiff tariffs.
During his evening rally in Reading, he also boosted his proposal to “pass large tax cuts for workers and we will have no tax on tips, no tax on overtime, and no tax on Social Security benefits for our great seniors.”
Trump recently received pushback from Democrats after saying he “hated” to pay overtime at a rally in Erie , a line he repeated at a rally in Michigan a few days later.
He also spent a great deal of time in Reading reiterating his claims about an “invasion” of undocumented immigrants who he said were affecting “Black population jobs, Hispanic population jobs, and attacking union jobs.” He has been roundly criticized for making similar remarks about “Black jobs” in previous settings.
Harris has earned support from local labor unions, even though the Teamsters and International Association of Fire Fighters announced they were not endorsing a candidate in the race for president. Both had backed Biden during his 2020 campaign. Trump celebrated these non-endorsements on Wednesday, saying he believed his “pro America trade policies” were a major reason.
“We ended the NAFTA disaster, canceled the TPP, which would have taken all of your business out of Pennsylvania, withdrew from the ridiculous Paris Climate Accord,” Trump said to applause. “I want to call it the Pennsylvania Climate Accord.”
A press call set up by the Pennsylvania Democratic Party on Wednesday prior to Trump’s visit included comments from labor union members who criticized Trump’s record, saying he would “destroy the union way of life.”
Laborers’ Local 57 Union Member Billy Williams said “Donald Trump put union busters in charge and rolled back critical protections for workers. He gave CEOs tax cuts while leaving Pennsylvania workers in the dust. Trump can tell as many lies as he wants but he can’t hide who he is.”
Trump ramps up personal attacks on Harris during Erie rally, and says he ‘hated’ paying overtime
Trump criticized Harris’ running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, for saying Tuesday at a private fundraiser that “the electoral college needs to go.”
“They want to abolish the electoral college,” Trump said. “Taking away all electoral power from, basically, from the voters of places like Pennsylvania.”
CBS News reported that the Harris-Walz campaign said in a statement that Walz “believes that every vote matters in the Electoral College and he is honored to be traveling the country and battleground states working to earn support for the Harris-Walz ticket. He was commenting to a crowd of strong supporters about how the campaign is built to win 270 electoral votes. And, he was thanking them for their support that is helping fund those efforts.”
Former Philadelphia Mayor Jim Kenney, a Democrat, said during a call with reporters ahead of Trump’s visit that he couldn’t imagine having the former president back in the White House.
“A guy like Donald Trump never had a summer job. He never worked after school. He never struggled. He got handed an envelope full of money from his father to start a business,” Kenney said during a call with reporters ahead of Trump’s visit. “Vote for Harris and Walz and, as Vice President Harris has said recently, ‘turn the page’ on this nightmare.”
Trump referenced the recent rally in Butler during his speech in Scranton and touted having the support of billionaire Tesla CEO and X (formerly Twitter) owner Elon Musk, who has said he will campaign for the former president in Pennsylvania.
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Trump played multiple videos during his rally in Reading that drew cheers and jeers from the audience. One of the videos showed Harris being interviewed on The View and saying that “nothing comes to mind” when asked if she’d change anything from the previous four years.
In another video, Trump showed clips from the movie Full Metal Jacket with a side-by-side of various videos, including a clip of former Pennsylvania Secretary of Health, Admiral Rachel Levine , who is now Assistant Secretary for Health for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Levine is transgender. The video of her garnered boos from the audience.
During his evening rally in Reading, Trump also criticized radio show host Howard Stern and actress Whoopi Goldberg.
Vivek Ramaswamy, a former presidential GOP candidate who has been a staunch ally of Trump’s as soon as he ended his own candidacy, said the nation was in the middle of a “national identity crisis” during the campaign event in Scranton.
Ramaswamy reiterated his belief that the nation is in a “1776 moment” and likened Elon Musk to being the “modern Benjamin Franklin,” and compared U.S. Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio), Trump’s running mate, to the nation’s first vice president, John Adams.
“And the man who’s going to lead us from the front is the George Washington of our era,” Ramaswamy said. “That’s who Donald Trump is. He’s the George Washington of our 1776 moment.”
The Harris campaign noted after Trump’s Scranton rally that it had taken him more than an hour to mention Hurricane Milton, which is approaching Florida. Trump mentioned the storm that had residents evacuating on Wednesday, within the first minute of the rally in Reading, however.
Dave McCormick, Republican candidate for U.S. Senate, delivered his usual stump speech during the event in Scranton about why he’s challenging U.S. Sen. Bob Casey (D-Pa.).
“He has been weak when we need strength, and he has voted time and again on the most liberal policies, so Bob Casey, he went to the Senate to change Washington, Washington changed Bob Casey,” McCormick said. “He’s not the guy you elected thirty years ago, eighteen years ago.”
Casey was joined by Biden on Tuesday for a private fundraiser in the Philadelphia area , where the president said that “Bob Casey never left Pennsylvania…it’s part of who he is, but his opponent left Pennsylvania, and Pennsylvania sure as hell left him,” according to pool reports.
Biden campaigns for Casey in Pennsylvania at private fundraiser
“As David McCormick continues to campaign with Donald Trump, he can’t escape Trump slamming him for ‘managing money for communist China,” TaNisha Cameron, Pennsylvania Democratic Party spokesperson said.
Trump’s visit to Scranton was his first event in Biden’s hometown of the 2024 campaign, although it’s not his first visit to Northeast Pennsylvania. On Aug. 17, Trump held a rally in nearby Wilkes-Barre , where he blasted Biden and Harris over the economy. Harris also has made one appearance in the Northeast, holding a rally in Wilkes-Barre on Sept. 13 .
Heading to Reading
Trump’s rally in Reading will be the first time a candidate at the top of either ticket is visiting Berks County in 2024, although both candidates for vice president have made appearances there.
Reading, where the evening rally will be held, has a Hispanic population of 69%, according to 2020 Census data . 23.2% of Berks County residents are Hispanic , which makes the county home to the second largest Latino population in the state, only trailing Lehigh County at 25.9%.
Both campaigns are attempting to appeal to Latino voters.
In June, the Trump campaign opened a campaign office in Reading with the intention of winning over Latino voters . On Wednesday, the Harris campaign announced the launch of its “Hombres con Harris,” aimed at mobilizing support to Latino men, with events planned in three battleground states, including Philadelphia and the Lehigh Valley in Pennsylvania.
During his rally in Reading, Trump said he saw a poll that showed him leading with Hispanic voters and took a jab at former GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney for how he performed with those voters.
The latest Economist/YouGov poll conducted on Oct. 6 and 7 showed Trump gaining ground with Latino voters, but still trailing Harris nationwide with 48% to Trump’s 43%. Other national polling indicates that Trump has gained ground with Latino voters , although the margin varies by the poll.
While Biden carried Lackawanna County, Trump won Berks County in 2020 , winning 53% of the vote there.
Several members of the state’s congressional delegation were in attendance for Trump’s rally in Reading including U.S. Reps. Dan Meuser, John Joyce, and Lloyd Smucker. Stephen Miller, a former senior advisor to Trump, also spoke before Trump took the stage.
Northeast Pennsylvania has played a significant role in the two presidential elections with Trump at the top of the GOP ticket. During Trump’s successful bid in 2016 over Democrat Hillary Clinton, he flipped Luzerne County red , home to Wilkes-Barre, winning it by 20 points just four years after President Barack Obama won the county by 5 points over Republican Mitt Romney. Trump didn’t win Lackawanna County in 2016, but only lost the county by 3.5 points, while Obama carried the county by 27 points.
Biden improved the margins in his home region during the 2020 campaign . Biden won Lackawanna County by 8 points and lost Luzerne County by 14 points.
The blitz throughout the state continues after Wednesday for both campaigns.
- On Thursday, former President Barack Obama will campaign for the Harris ticket in Pittsburgh.
- On Saturday, Vance will deliver a speech in Johnstown.
- On Monday, Harris will reportedly make her first appearance in Erie of the campaign cycle, a bellwether county in the northwest.
The latest polling continues to show Harris and Trump in a dead heat, while most national ratings outlets continues to describe the race in the Keystone State as a “toss-up.”
While Pennsylvania remains in the limelight for the election, Trump also told the crowd that he’s going to be holding an event in Madison Square Garden in New York City and claimed that his campaign is also going to make a play for New Jersey, Virginia, New York, New Mexico, and Minnesota, all states that Biden won in 2020.
Th is article was updated Oct. 9, 2024 at 10 p.m. with details from Trump’s rally in Reading.
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