Trump campaign reset goes awry in Pennsylvania as he attacks
Harris
Ex-president
quickly broke away from prepared speech to accuse vice-president of being a
communist and a fascist
Chris
McGreal in Wilkes-Barre
Sun 18 Aug
2024 00.49 BST
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/aug/17/trump-pennsylvania-rally
Donald Trump
tried to reset his campaign at a rally in battleground Pennsylvania on Saturday
as polls show Kamala Harris pulling ahead in key swing states.
But the
former president quickly broke away from the prepared speech about economic
issues to launch personal attacks on Harris including accusations that her
agenda is both communist and fascist, and that she has “the laugh of a crazy
person”.
Trump’s
written speech before a mostly filled 8,000-seat indoor arena in Wilkes-Barre
focussed on economic policy, although a part of the audience left before he
finished speaking. Some Republican strategists had hoped the former president
could regain the initiative by zeroing in on issues on which opinion polls say
voters have greater trust in Trump than the Democrats, such as inflation.
Trump
attacked Harris as part of the Biden administration for the surge in prices
that has hit many Americans hard and described increased household costs as
“the Kamala Harris inflation tax”.
“She was
there for everything,” he said in attempting to pin Biden’s policies on her.
Trump also
likened Harris’s pledge on Friday to tackle high grocery costs by targeting
profiteering by food corporations, and to bring down housing and prescription
drug costs, to the Soviet Union’s economic system.
“In her
speech yesterday, Kamala went full communist,” he said. “Comrade Kamala
announced that she wants to institute socialist price controls. You saw that
never worked before … It will cause rationing, hunger and skyrocketing prices.”
The former
president challenged voters to ask themselves whether they were “better off
with Kamala and Biden than you were under President Donald J Trump”, a question
that many in Pennsylvania might answer in his favour.
But the
impact was soon lost as Trump once again veered repeatedly away from the script
with rambling discourses from immigration to China and trans people, often
based on outright falsehoods.
At one
point, he even acknowledged that was what he was doing.
“They’ll say
he was rambling. I don’t ramble. I’m a really smart guy, you know, really
smart. I don’t ramble. But the other day, anytime I hit too hard, they say he
was rambling, rambling,” he said.
The
audience, some wearing T-shirts proclaiming “I’m voting for a convicted felon”
and chanting “Fight, fight, fight” in reference to the former president’s words
shortly after he narrowly escaped an assassination attempt last month, urged
Trump on.
When he
returned to the script, Trump attacked Harris for her previous opposition to
fracking, an unpopular stance in Pennsylvania, which is a major fracker, but he
will not have helped himself in the Rust belt by saying he would cut spending
on infrastructure such as renewing bridges and roads, which has provided jobs
in the region.
Trump also
challenged Harris’s legitimacy as the Democratic presidential candidate,
describing it as “a coup” against Biden.
“Joe Biden
hates her. This was an overthrow of a president,” he said.
Trump
confused some in the audience with what appeared to be a claim that if Harris
could become the candidate without a primary election, then so should he
because he is so popular among Republicans.
“I said, so
why are we having an election? They didn’t have an election. Why are we having
an election?” he said.
Trump
described Harris’s decision to pass over Pennsylvania’s governor, Josh Shapiro,
as her running mate, as antisemitism in an apparent reference to debate about
whether Shapiro’s support for Israel, including work for the Israel embassy in
the past, would damage the Democratic campaign because of the war in Gaza .
“They turned
him down because he’s Jewish. That’s why they turned him down. Now, we can be
politically correct and not say that. I could say, well, they turned him down
for various reasons. No, no, they turned him down because he’s Jewish,” said
Trump.
“And I’ll
tell you this, any Jewish person that votes for her or a Democrat has to go out
and have their head examined.”
Through it
all, Trump repeatedly returned to personal attacks on Harris, including a
bizarre discourse on how she laughs, a mannerism that has proven popular among
many younger voters in particular.
“Have you
heard her laugh? That is the laugh of a crazy person. That is the laugh of a
crazy, the laugh of a lunatic,” he said.
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