Trump says Harris easier than Biden to beat as race for Pennsylvania heats up

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump said on Saturday he believed Democrat Kamala Harris will be easier to beat than President Joe Biden even as some polls showed her edging ahead in the race for the Nov. 5 presidential election.

Trump, the former president, spoke at a rally in Wilkes-Barre in northeastern Pennsylvania, a state looming large in the campaign. Vice President Harris will conduct a bus tour of western Pennsylvania starting in Pittsburgh on Sunday, ahead of the kickoff of the Democratic National Convention on Monday in Chicago.

"I believe she will be easier to beat than him," said Trump, referring to her as "radical" and a "lunatic."  

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.

"Have you heard her laugh? That is the laugh of a crazy person," Trump said, adding that he was displeased by the illustration of Harris on the cover of the latest issue of Time magazine. "I'm much better looking than her." 

In a meandering speech, Trump repeated his false claim that he lost the 2020 election due to fraud, dismissed the threat of climate change and said his plan to impose across-the-board tariffs on foreign goods would not act as a tax on US consumers, an assertion that most economists contest.

The Mohegan Sun Arena, where Trump appeared, has a capacity of roughly 8,000 and was nearly full when he started speaking. But the crowd began to thin after the one-hour mark. He spoke for more than 100 minutes in total.

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 needed to secure the White House, compared with 15 in Michigan and 10 in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania may be the biggest prize in this year's election and potentially tip the balance for either candidate.

Harris' entry into the race after Biden ended his reelection bid last month has upended the contest, erasing the lead Trump built in the final weeks of Biden's campaign. Harris is leading Trump by more than two percentage points in Pennsylvania, according to the poll tracking website FiveThirtyEight.

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Trump won Pennsylvania in 2016 by about 44,000 votes, a margin of less than one percentage point, while Biden prevailed by just over 80,000 votes in 2020, a 1.2-point margin.

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 - seen as critical for winning the election - also include Arizona, North Carolina, Nevada and Georgia. 

New polls published on Saturday by the New York Times found Harris leading Trump among likely voters in Arizona, 50% to 45%, and in North Carolina, 49% to 47%, and narrowing the former president's leads in Nevada, 47% to 49%, and in Georgia, 46% to 50%. A pollster from the Trump campaign said the poll results underestimated the Republican candidate's support.

Trump will give remarks on the economy at a campaign event in York, Pennsylvania, on Monday. His running mate, US Senator JD Vance, will hold an event in Philadelphia that day as well.

Trump's trip to Wilkes-Barre in Luzerne County was aimed at solidifying support among the white, non-college-educated voters who lifted him to victory in 2016. The blue-collar county voted Democratic for decades before swinging heavily toward Trump in 2016, mirroring other similar regions around the country. 

Harris and her running mate, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, will make multiple stops across Allegheny and Beaver counties on Sunday, the campaign said. The tour is the first time Harris, Walz and their spouses have campaigned together since their first rally as a presidential ticket in Philadelphia earlier this month.