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MARTINSBURG (AFP) – On Monday (October 26) President Donald Trump swept Pennsylvania with three mass demonstrations on Monday and his Democratic opponent also made a surprise appearance, hoping to defend his advantage in an indecisive state that might well decide the election result in eight days.
Jumping from rally to rally, Trump showed just how badly he wants to reclaim the state on Nov. 3, telling large and enthusiastic crowds of supporters to ignore polls showing Biden leading there and in other battle states.
“We have Pennsylvania, we win everything,” he said in Allentown, before flying to another rally in Lititz, and then to a final event in Martinsburg for the night.
Trump touted a Rasmussen poll, which has long gone against the flow of more established polling companies to give it favorable figures, and said that many “hidden Trump voters” would back him at the polls on Nov. 3.
Biden, who has kept a surprisingly low profile during his campaign, made a surprise appearance in the Pennsylvania town of Chester, taking a short trip from his home in neighboring Delaware, where he was scheduled to spend the day without public events.
Following the main theme of his campaign, he criticized Trump’s response to the Covid-19 pandemic, accusing him of giving up on dominating the virus.
“He said we’re not going to control him. The bottom line is that Donald Trump is the worst possible president, the worst possible person to try to guide us through this pandemic,” Biden said.
Trump “has no idea what to do or just doesn’t care.” “Mr. President, you have to be a little embarrassed, just a little embarrassed, because people are dying,” Biden said.
At rallies, Trump shed an optimistic light on his fight for the campaign, predicting that his surprise 2016 victory over Hillary Clinton would be repeated.
“The same thing is happening,” he said: “a similar result and maybe even a higher margin.” Trump’s message largely ignored the Covid-19 crisis, with infections spike across the country, and instead focused on what he said would be a strong economic comeback.
Following on from Biden’s promises to encourage a shift to renewable energy, Trump told each of the rallies in Pennsylvania, a major natural gas producing area, that the Democrat would “abolish the entire US oil industry.”
“The Biden plan is an economic death sentence for Pennsylvania’s energy sector,” he said.
Clearly irritated by Trump’s message, Biden used his own quick appearance in Chester to insist: “I’m not shutting down oil fields, I’m not eliminating fracking. I’m investing in clean energy.”
Trump also escalated his personal insults, calling Biden “sleepy” and unable to deal with foreign leaders who are “100 percent sharp.”
And the former reality TV actor showcased his talents as an entertainer with a series of exaggerated and colorful warnings about life under a Democratic presidency.
“It will have a depression like we’ve never seen it outside, maybe in 1929,” he said, predicting that Americans would no longer have air conditioning and that Democrats would ban cows.
Biden was in Pennsylvania on Saturday and is due to campaign Thursday in Florida, another critical state of great importance, before traveling to Iowa and Wisconsin on Friday.
But many days he’s huddled at home video conferencing online or sending allies like popular former President Barack Obama to campaign on his behalf, making him the fewest-traveled presidential candidate in recent history.
By contrast, Trump now flies Air Force One to two or three major rallies a day, with a plan to climb to at least five in the final sprint.
Biden argues that he is adhering to medical guidelines on Covid-19, while Trump, who was hospitalized this month for the coronavirus, regularly gathers thousands of people without masks.
“I don’t have much confidence in anything,” Biden told reporters. “The big difference between us and the reason it seems like we’re not traveling: we’re not getting super spreaders.”
Trump, however, mocked Biden during his Lititz speech, highlighting his own frenzy and saying that if Biden “loses, he should be ashamed of himself because he didn’t work.”
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