Trump says Harris easier to beat than Biden; calls her ‘lunatic
Even while several surveys indicated Democrat Kamala Harris gaining ground in the fight for the Nov. 5 presidential election, Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump stated on Saturday that he thought she would be easier to defeat than President Joe Biden.
The former president, Trump, gave a speech at a rally in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, which is in northeastern region and is significant to the campaign. Starting in Pittsburgh on Sunday, Vice President Harris will do a bus tour of western Pennsylvania in advance of Monday’s Democratic National Convention opening in Chicago.
Trump called her “radical” and a “lunatic,” saying, “I think she will be easier to beat than him.”
Trump has sought to portray Harris as far left on a number of policies. At the rally, he highlighted her previous call for a ban on fracking, an industry important to the state. Harris’ campaign has recently indicated she would not support a ban.
He also continued to attack Harris on personal terms, even as some political analysts say such comments could hurt Trump with moderate voters.
Did you hear her laugh? “That’s the laugh of a crazy person,” Trump remarked, expressing his displeasure with the picture of Harris that appeared on the cover of the most recent issue of Time magazine. “I’m much better looking than her.”
In a meandering address, Trump restated his disingenuous claims that he was the victim of fraud in the 2020 election, downplayed the severity of climate change, and claimed—a notion that most economists dispute—that his proposal to impose universal tariffs on imports would not be considered a tax on American consumers.
With a seating capacity of about 8,000, the Mohegan Sun Arena was almost full as Trump took the stage. But after an hour, the throng started to thin out.
Trump said Harris should have done more to tackle inflation and other issues since she and Biden took office. If reelected he said he would sign an executive order directing cabinet secretaries and agency heads to take action to lower prices.
“Another rally, same old show,” Joseph Costello, a spokesperson for the Harris campaign, said in a statement responding to Trump’s rally speech, which he described as filled with “lies, name-calling, and confused rants.”
Pennsylvania was one of three Rust Belt states, along with Wisconsin and Michigan, that helped power Trump’s upset victory in 2016. Biden, who grew up in Scranton, Pennsylvania, flipped the trio back to the Democrats in 2020.
With 19 electoral votes out of the 270 required to win the presidency, Pennsylvania has more than any other state in the race—15 in Michigan and 10 in Wisconsin—and might swing the election in any candidate’s favor.
Trump’s advantage, which Biden had established in the last several weeks of his campaign, has been erased by Harris’s entry into the race following Biden’s withdrawal of his reelection attempt last month. According to the poll tracking website FiveThirtyEight, Harris is ahead of Trump in Pennsylvania by a margin of more than two percentage points.
In 2020, Biden won Pennsylvania by a margin of little over 80,000 votes, or 1.2 percentage points, whereas Trump won the state by over 44,000 votes, or less than one percentage point, in 2016.
Both campaigns have made the state a top priority, blanketing the airwaves with advertisements. Of the more than $110 million spent on advertising in seven battleground states since Biden dropped out in late July, roughly $42 million was in Pennsylvania, more than twice any other state, the Wall Street Journal reported on Friday, citing data from the tracking site AdImpact.
Democratic and Republican groups have already reserved $114 million in ad time in Pennsylvania from late August through the election, more than twice as much as the $55 million reserved in Arizona, the next highest total, according to AdImpact.
The Harris campaign said on Saturday it planned to spend at least $370 million on digital and television ads nationwide between the Labor Day holiday on Sept. 2 and Election Day.
The battleground states—Arizona, North Carolina, Nevada, and Georgia—are also seen to be crucial for winning the election.
According to recent polls released by the New York Times on Saturday, Harris is now ahead of Trump among likely voters in Arizona (50%) and North Carolina (49% to 47%). The former president’s margins in Nevada (47%) and Georgia (46%) have also shrunk. The Republican candidate’s support was understated in the survey findings, according to a pollster for the Trump team.
On Monday, during a campaign rally in York, Pennsylvania, Trump will discuss the state of the economy. Senator JD Vance, his campaign companion, will also have an appearance in Philadelphia on same day.
Trump’s visit to Wilkes-Barre in Luzerne County aimed to gain support from white, non-college-educated voters who supported him in 2016.
Harris and Minnesota Governor Tim Walz will make multiple stops across Allegheny and Beaver counties on Sunday, marking the first time they have campaigned together since their first rally as a presidential ticket in Philadelphia earlier this month.