Wilkes Barre, Pennsylvania. — Former President Donald Trump repeatedly deviated from his economic message on Saturday and turned to disparaging statements and personal attacks, including declaring three times that he looked better than Vice President Kamala Harris.
At a rally in northeastern Pennsylvania, Trump alternated between making his economic case and making a few insults and imitations of President Joe Biden and French President Emmanuel Macron.
The former president appeared to be struggling to adjust to his new opponent after Democrats replaced their nominee. During campaign appearances last week, he deviated from the policies he was supposed to be talking about and instead 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.”
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Trump’s rally in Wilkes-Barre took place in part of a crucial swing state where he hopes conservative working-class voters near Biden’s hometown of Scranton will boost Republicans’ chances of retaking the White House.
His comments on Saturday came as Democrats prepare for their four-day convention, which begins Monday in Chicago and will mark the welcome of Harris as their nominee. Her replacement of Biden less than four months before the November election has given new momentum to the Democrats and their coalition, but also represents a 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 lead to food shortages, rationing and hunger. On Saturday, he was asked why she had not worked on a solution to the price 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 first 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 financial ruin for the country, and Pennsylvania in particular, if Harris won, citing her past opposition to fracking, a widely used method of oil and gas extraction in the state. Her campaign has tried to soften her stance on fracking by saying she will not ban it, even though 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 debate between him and Biden in June.
As he began to reflect on Harris’ recent image on the cover of Time magazine, he commented on the image’s resemblance to classic Hollywood icons Sophia Loren and Elizabeth Taylor, and then 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 crowd. “I’m a better looking person than Kamala.”
He also had a problem with the way 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 arena in Wilkes-Barre, the largest 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.
Robert A. Bridy, 64, a laborer from Shamokin, Pennsylvania, traveled to the rally Saturday to show his support for Trump. He said the election in that state was close, adding that his union and a close friend were trying to convince him to vote for Harris and other Democrats, but he had voted for Trump since 2016.
Bridy called Trump a “working-class guy 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.”
