Former President Donald Trump repeatedly veered Saturday from an economy-focused message to non-sequiturs and personal attacks, including repeatedly saying he was better looking than Vice President Kamala Harris.
Trump has vacillated between his arguments on economic policy and launched a series of insults and impressions about President Biden and French President Emmanuel Macron while holding a rally in northeastern Pennsylvania.
The former president appears to be struggling to adjust to his new opponent after Democrats replaced their nominee. Over the past week, he has veered away from the policies he was supposed to address in campaign appearances and instead turned to a barrage of insults.
Trump appeared to spend more of his Saturday rally than usual sticking to the script, but he strayed early and often from the topic.
As he attacked Democrats for their inflation at the beginning of his speech, he asked his supporters: “You don’t mind if I leave the teleprompter for a second, do you? Joe Biden hates it.”
Trump’s rally was held in an area of the swing state where he hopes conservative, white working-class voters near Mr. Biden’s hometown will boost the Republican’s chances of winning back the White House.
Her remarks Saturday came as Democrats prepare for their four-day national convention that begins Monday in Chicago and will mark the party’s welcome of Harris as its nominee. His replacement for Mr. Biden Less than four months before the November election, Democrats and their coalition have been reinvigorated and have presented a new challenge to Trump.
On Saturday, Trump blasted Harris on the economy, linking her to the Biden administration’s inflation problems and comparing her latest proposal to price hikes to measures taken by communist countries. Trump has said a federal ban on food price hikes would lead to food shortages, rationing and hunger, and he asked her Saturday why she didn’t work to address the price problem when she and Biden were sworn in in 2021.
“Kamala’s first day 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 rising prices, Trump said he would sign an executive order on his first day in office, “directing every cabinet secretary and agency head to use every power we have to lower prices, but we’re going to lower them in a capitalist way, not a communist way,” he said.
But he mumbled through his remarks, addressing the chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021 He tried to imitate Macron’s French accent. But he criticized the way his free-spirited style is usually portrayed in news reports.
“They’ll say he’s rambling. I’m not rambling. I’m a very smart guy. I’m not rambling.”
Trump attacked Harris’ laughter and said she was “not a very good wordsmith” and mocked the names of the CNN anchors who moderated the debate he had with Mr Biden in June.
When he began to reflect on Harris’ recent image on the cover of Time magazine, he digressed, commenting on the photo’s resemblance to classic Hollywood icons Sophia Loren and Elizabeth Taylor, then lashing out at a Wall Street Journal columnist who had remarked earlier this month about Harris’ beauty.
“I’m a lot more beautiful than she is,” Trump said, prompting laughter from the crowd. “I’m a more beautiful person than Kamala.”
He predicted financial ruin for the country and Pennsylvania in particular if Harris won, citing her past opposition to hydraulic fracturing, a process of extracting oil and gas.
“Your state is going to be ruined anyway. She’s totally anti-fracking,” Trump said.
In 2016 and 2020, Trump crushed his Democratic rivals in the county that includes the working-class city of Wilkes-Barre. The Rust Belt region, home to Mr. Biden’s hometown of Scranton, offers hope to Trump and helps him expose Democrats’ vulnerabilities after the president ended his reelection campaign and Harris launched her campaign.
His campaign tried to soften his position on fracking, saying she would not ban it, even though that was her position when she ran for the 2020 presidential nomination.
Some Pennsylvania Democrats acknowledge the challenges, but say the economy is what most people in the region are concerned about.
On Sunday, Harris plans a bus tour from Pittsburgh, with a stop in Rochester, a small city to the north. Trump plans to tour a plant that makes nuclear fuel containers in York on Monday. His running mate, J.D. Vance, is expected to be in Philadelphia that day.
Trump’s rally Saturday was his fifth at the arena in Wilkes-Barre, the largest city in Luzerne County, where he has won the last two elections. Mr. Biden beat Trump in neighboring Lackawanna County, where the Democrat has long promoted his working-class roots in Scranton.
Some of Mr. Biden’s loyal supporters in this former industrial city of 76,000 were upset to see party leaders pressuring the president to step down.
Diane Munley, 63, said she called dozens of members of Congress to vouch for Mr. Biden. Munley eventually accepted Mr. Biden’s decision and now strongly supports Harris.
“I can’t deny the excitement that’s around this ticket right now. I’m really attached to it,” Munley said. “It just wasn’t possible with Joe, and I couldn’t see it at the time because I was so attached to him.”
Robert A. Bridy, 64, a factory worker from Shamokin, Pennsylvania, went to the rally Saturday to show his support for Trump. He said the election appeared close in the state and said his union and a close friend were trying to convince him to vote for Harris and other Democrats, but he has voted for Trump since 2016.
Bridy called Trump a “working-class guy like us.” Trump is a billionaire who built his fortune in real estate.
“He’s a fighter,” Bridy said. “I’d like to see the borders closed. He doesn’t mess around. He gets right to it and takes care of business the right way.”
