It goes back and forth between economic policy and false claims and personal attacks.
Harris is repeatedly criticized and belittled by putting forth economic policies at every campaign rally
Former President Donald Trump, the Republican presidential candidate, went back and forth between personal attacks on Democratic candidate Kamala Harris and making false claims during a campaign speech in Pennsylvania, a northeastern U.S. state, on the 17th (local time) while talking about his previously announced economic policies.
Trump flustered the crowd as he shifted his focus from his economic policies to insulting President Joe Biden and even giving a negative review of French President Emmanuel Macaron.
Former President Trump has seemed desperate to adjust to the situation since the Democratic Party announced that it would replace Biden with Vice President Kamala Harris as its presidential candidate. At various rallies last week, he has veered away from his previously announced policy announcements and instead resorted to his usual aggressive rhetoric and insults against his opponents.
At one point, at the height of his speech, he attacked the Democrats as the cause of inflation, telling his supporters:
“Folks, can I step away from the teleprompter for a moment and say this? Joe Biden actually hates her,” he said.
Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, where Trump campaigned that day, is close to Biden’s hometown of Scranton, and was one of the key areas where Trump was trying to win the support of conservative, white working-class voters and re-enter the White House.
He made the comments Saturday, just before the Democratic Party holds its four-day national convention in Chicago on May 19 and is expected to declare Harris as its new presidential candidate.
But Harris, who was replaced just four months before November’s election, is breathing new life into the Democratic Party and its supporters while also putting added pressure on Trump to face a new challenge.
Trump has attacked Harris for the Biden administration’s rising inflation, saying her recent policies to curb inflation, including crackdowns on grocery bag prices, sound like something only a communist country would do.
Trump claimed that federal government restraints on food price increases would ultimately lead to food shortages, rationing, and hunger.
Meanwhile, in his speech on the 17th, he attacked Harris and Biden for not solving the inflation problem since they took office in 2021.
“Why didn’t Harris do what she was supposed to do on her first day in office three and a half years ago? Today is her 1,305th day in office,” Trump shouted.
He stressed that from his first day in office, he would mobilize the full power of his cabinet ministers and all public officials to control prices, and that he would do so in a capitalist, not a communist, manner.
He said that if the Democrats win, the entire country will be economically devastated, and that Pennsylvania in particular will be completely ruined, citing Harris’s opposition to fracking, a common method of producing oil in the U.S. during her 2020 presidential campaign.
Meanwhile, he mocked Kamala Harris’s laughter and even her speech. He also criticized a recent Time magazine cover photo of Harris, saying she looked like Sophia Loren and Elizabeth Taylor, and even a Wall Street Journal columnist who commented on Harris’s beauty earlier this month.
“I’m a lot better looking than Harris. I’m a lot better looking than Kamala,” he repeated, drawing laughter and support from the crowd.
Harris will begin her bus tour in Pittsburgh on Sunday, the 18th, and stop in the northern city of Rochester to speak. Trump is scheduled to visit a nuclear fuel production plant in York on the 17th to speak.
Trump’s running mate JD Vance is campaigning today in Philadelphia, home to his working-class roots.
Biden loyalists in Scranton, a former industrial city of 76,000, are angry that Democrats are pressuring Biden to drop his candidacy.
A supporter named Diane Munray (63) criticized the Democratic members of Congress for failing to protect Biden’s candidacy, but ultimately came out in support of Harris, saying she respected President Biden’s own decision.
Robert Bridey (64), a laborer from Shamokin, Pennsylvania, showed up to Trump’s rally on the 17th to support him. He said his union and close friends all tried to persuade him to back Harris and the Democrats in this close race, but he has voted for Trump since 2016.
Bridey said Trump originally came from a working-class background like them and made his fortune in real estate and is now a billionaire.
He reaffirmed his support, saying, “Trump is a fighter. I like border closures. Trump is the kind of person who goes straight ahead in the direction he should go without taking any detours.”
[윌크스배리( 미 펜실베이니아주)= AP/뉴시스]
2024-08-18 02:28:08