Urged to focus on the economy, Trump leans into attacks of Harris

WILKES-BARRE, Pa. — Former President Donald Trump in a campaign speech Saturday bounced among complaints about the economy and immigration, wide-ranging digressions and a number of personal attacks on Vice President Kamala Harris, including jabs at her appearance and her laugh.

At a rally in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, Trump swung from talking points on inflation and criticisms of Democratic policy as “fascist” and “Marxist” to calling immigrants living in the country without legal permission “savage monsters” and saying that rising sea levels would create more beachfront property.

Trump blamed Harris for high prices, in what was effectively an inversion of her remarks at her rally in Raleigh, North Carolina, on Friday, where she said Trump’s proposed import tariffs would amount to a “Trump tax” on groceries. The former president argued that she had placed a “Kamala Harris inflation tax” on average Americans over the course of her term as vice president and that, if elected, he would lower prices on consumer goods, just as she has said she would do.

“Yesterday, she got up, she started ranting and raving,” Trump said of Harris’ explanation of her economic agenda in North Carolina. He mocked her remarks that, he said, suggested he would tax “every single thing that was ever invented.”

Trump’s advisers have urged him to emphasize his economic policy plans, which, according to polling, many voters trust more than Harris’, and some Republicans have hoped he would leave behind his characteristic personal attacks, including his frequent insults of Harris’ intelligence and appearance.

But at two events this week — a speech in Asheville, North Carolina, and a news conference in Bedminster, New Jersey — both billed as opportunities to discuss the economy, Trump veered into personal attacks against Harris, which he said he was “entitled” to do.

Trump opened his rally in Pennsylvania, his final one before the Democratic National Convention begins in Chicago on Monday, by addressing inflation and the economy. But he quickly said, “You don’t mind if I go off teleprompter for a second, do you?” adding of Harris, “Joe Biden hates her.”

He went on to attack Harris for having a “crazy” laugh and said that he was “much better looking than her,” a line that drew cheers from the thousands of rallygoers gathered in the Mohegan Sun Arena.

In a statement, a Harris campaign spokesperson, Joseph Costello, said that Trump was trying to distract from his “dangerous” agenda by resorting “to lies, name-calling and confused rants.”

Trump also said that Democrats would be hosting a “rigged convention” next week because of Harris’ entry into the race after a primary season in which millions of voters cast their votes for Biden. Biden dropped out of the race in July and endorsed the vice president, who moved quickly to unite delegates behind her.

Trump repeated his campaign promise to increase oil and gas production, and then attacked Harris for calling for a ban on hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, during her 2020 presidential campaign.

Harris’ campaign has said that she no longer supports such a ban. Pennsylvania, a large producer of natural gas, could see an economic benefit from increased fracking even as the process risks air and water pollution. And Trump’s calls to “drill, baby, drill” were particularly salient in Wilkes-Barre, in a region of northeast Pennsylvania that was historically defined by anthracite coal mining.

Trump also continued his effort to try to peel off American Jews, a substantial majority of whom are liberal, from the Democratic Party. He claimed that Pennsylvania’s Democratic governor, Josh Shapiro, was not chosen as Harris’ running mate because of his religion.

“They turned him down because he’s Jewish,” Trump said, adding, “I don’t think he’s a good person.”

As Harris was choosing her running mate, Shapiro faced a pressure campaign from activists who considered him too sympathetic to Israel. Shapiro has rejected the idea that his religious identity played into Harris’ decision.

Still, Trump, who during his presidency was accused of emboldening white supremacists, invoked the Holocaust as he warned of broad antisemitism in America and insisted, as he has before, that Jews who vote for Democrats “should have their head examined.”

Both Trump and Harris are particularly focused on Pennsylvania, a swing state with the potential to decide the election. Trump won the state by a slim margin in 2016, but he lost it to Biden in 2020.

Both campaigns are holding events in the state in the coming days. On Sunday, Harris and her running mate, Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota, will embark on a bus tour of western Pennsylvania. On Monday, Trump and his running mate, Sen. JD Vance of Ohio, will make separate campaign stops in York, Pennsylvania, and Philadelphia.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

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