WILKES-BARRE, Pa. (news agencies) — Former President Donald Trump on Saturday repeatedly swerved from a message focused on the economy into non sequiturs and personal attacks, including thrice declaring that he was better looking than Vice President Kamala Harris.
Trump wound back and forth between hitting his points on economic policy and delivering a smattering of insults and impressions of President Joe Biden and French President Emmanuel Macron as he held a rally in northeastern Pennsylvania.
The former president has seemed to struggle to adjust to his new opponent after Democrats replaced their nominee. Over the past week, he has diverged during campaign appearances away from the policies he was billed to speak about and instead diverted to a rotation of familiar attack lines and insults.
As he attacked Democrats for inflation at the top of his speech, Trump asked his crowd of supporters, “You don’t mind if I go off teleprompter for a second, do you? Joe Biden hates her.”
Joseph Costello, a spokesperson for the Harris campaign, responded to Trump in a statement by saying, “Another rally, same old show” and that Trump “ resorts to lies, name-calling, and confused rants,” because he can’t sell his agenda.
“The more Americans hear Trump speak, the clearer the choice this November: Vice President Harris is unifying voters with her positive vision to protect our freedoms, build up the middle class, and move America forward — and Donald Trump is trying to take us backwards,” Costello said.
Trump’s rally in Wilkes-Barre was in a swath of a pivotal battleground state where he hopes conservative, white working-class voters near Biden’s hometown of Scranton will boost the Republican’s chances of winning back the White House.
His remarks Saturday came as Democrats prepare for their four-day national convention that kicks off Monday in Chicago and will mark the party’s welcoming of Harris as their nominee. Her replacement of Biden less than four months before the November election has reinvigorated Democrats and their coalition. It has also presented a new challenge for Trump.
Trump hammered Harris on the economy, associating her with the Biden administration’s inflation woes and likening her latest proposal against price gouging to measures in communist nations. Trump has said a federal ban on price gouging for groceries would lead to food shortages, rationing and hunger. On Saturday asked why she hadn’t worked to solve prices when she and Biden were sworn into office in 2021.
“Day one for Kamala was three and a half years ago. So why didn’t she do it then? So this is day 1,305,” Trump said.
To address high prices, Trump said he would sign an executive order on his first day sworn in as president “directing every cabinet secretary and agency head to use every power we have to drive prices down, but we’re going to drive them down in a capitalist way, not in a communist way,” he said.
He predicted financial ruin for the country, and Pennsylvania in particular, if Harris wins, citing her past opposition to fracking, an oil and gas extraction process commonly used in the state. Her campaign has tried to soften her stance on fracking, saying she would not ban it, even though that was her position when she was seeking the 2020 presidential nomination.
“Your state’s going to be ruined anyway. She’s totally anti-fracking,” Trump said.
But he also meandered, going from ripping the chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021 to doing impressions of Macron’s French accent.
Trump laced in attacks on Harris’ laugh and said she was “not a very good wordsmith” and mocked the names of the CNN anchors who moderated the debate he had with Biden in June.
When he began musing on Harris’ recent image on the cover of Time magazine, he commented on the picture’s resemblance to classic Hollywood icons Sophia Loren and Elizabeth Taylor and then took issue with a Wall Street Journal columnist remarking earlier this month on Harris’ beauty.
“I am much better looking than her,” Trump said, drawing laughs from the crowd. “I’m a better looking person than Kamala.”
He also took issue with the way his style is typically portrayed in news reports.
“They will say he’s rambling. I don’t ramble. I’m a really smart guy,” he said.
Trump’s Saturday rally was his fifth at the arena in Wilkes-Barre, the largest city in Luzerne County, where he has had victories in the past two elections. Biden bested Trump in neighboring Lackawanna County, where the Democrat has long promoted his working-class roots in Scranton.
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