In likely one of his last times onstage as a presidential candidate, Donald Trump said his opponent ‘has embarrassed us’ and ‘doesn’t have what it takes.’
Allentown, Pa. — One week out from Election Day, former president Donald Trump made his closing argument to voters in Pennsylvania: safety, security, and prosperity under a second Trump administration versus chaos, inflation, and weakness under his Democratic opponent.
Trump took the stage Tuesday evening in the eastern corner of the state around 7:45 p.m. to his favorite walk-on song — Lee Greenwood’s “God Bless the U.S.A.” — for what will likely be one of his last times onstage as a candidate for president of the United States. Speaking about himself in the third person and interspersing his remarks with characteristically winding anecdotes, an upbeat GOP nominee made the case to Tuesday’s crowd in the majority-Hispanic city of Allentown that a second Trump administration would usher in a “golden age” in America that would make the country stronger, safer, bolder, and greater “than ever before.” His opponent, “communist” vice president Kamala Harris, “has embarrassed us” while in office and “doesn’t have what it takes” to call the shots inside 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
This is the GOP message that voters who haven’t yet cast their ballots early or by mail will take to the polls next Tuesday in Pennsylvania, a must-win state whose coveted 19 electoral votes may very well determine the winner of this year’s presidential election. Surveys continue to suggest that the race is a dead heat here into the final week of the race.
The mood was as enthusiastic as ever at the campaign venue. Before Trump took the stage, the loudspeakers blasted the former president’s favorite jams, and the stadium screens flashed a series of all-caps messages throughout the night — “Dream Big Again,” Trump Will Fix It,” “No Tax on Tips.” Speaker after speaker tore into Harris for having countless opportunities to make Americans’ lives better as vice president and, in their view, failing to deliver. Under the Biden-Harris administration, they said, the world is less safe, the cost of everyday essentials have skyrocketed, and every state is now a border state.
Roughly 150 miles away, in Washington, D.C., Harris delivered closing message of her own not in a swing state but at the Ellipse on the National Mall: A second Trump administration, she told the large crowd, will be more unhinged and vengeful than the first. The Harris campaign believes that the symbolic nature of this location — a hop and a skip from where Trump’s supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol nearly four years ago — will crystallize for Americans the choice between what her campaign calls a forward-looking vision and the grievance-filled agenda of her “unstable” opponent, whom she called a “petty tyrant.”
In Allentown Tuesday evening, there were multiple Puerto Rican and Hispanic speakers who took the stage ahead of Trump’s remarks, a clear effort to highlight the former president’s support among Latino voters after comedian Tony Hinchcliffe called Puerto Rico an island of “floating garbage” during the GOP nominee’s weekend rally in New York City. Many Trump allies and Republican lawmakers immediately criticized the comedian’s remarks, and one of the GOP nominee’s 2024 advisers said the joke “does not reflect the views of President Trump or the campaign.” Riffing off the Democratic establishment’s nonstop chatter about the comedian’s poorly received joke, President Joe Biden said Trump “doesn’t give a damn about the Latino community” and that “the only garbage I see floating out there is his supporters.” (A Biden spokesman maintains he said “supporter’s,” singular, and that his remarks referred to the comedian who told the joke.)
“Please forgive him, for he not knoweth what he said,” Trump said onstage of Biden’s quip, arguing that it was “worse” than Hillary Clinton’s “basket of deplorables” insult from the 2016 campaign.
Also featured in last night’s speaker lineup was running-mate finalist and U.S. senator Marco Rubio (R., Fla.), who is likely to be tapped for a high-profile role in the administration should the GOP ticket win. “This is nasty stuff,” Rubio said of the Harris campaign’s use of the word “fascist” to describe Trump in the final days of the campaign, also chastising Minnesota governor Tim Walz for comparing Trump’s Madison Square Garden rally over the weekend to a Nazi rally. As Rubio sees it, the name-calling from the Democrats is a thinly veiled effort to distract from her governing record.
Republican voters think most Americans can see through Harris’s democracy-focused shtick, too. “She can’t talk about herself, right? So, she has to talk about somebody else,” says Trump-rally attendee Tom Barker, a resident of Bethlehem, Pa. Barker said the electoral calculation for him and everyone he knows this cycle is simple: high taxes and high gas and grocery prices under Harris, or low taxes and a low cost of living under Trump. “I can afford it,” he says. But “I feel bad for” the people who work hard and still can’t.
“When Donald Trump was in office, the black community and the Latino community, we were doing phenomenal,” says rally attendee Benjamin Jacques, a Hispanic Trump supporter who is originally from the “hood” in Paterson, N.J., and now lives in the Lehigh Valley. He spends much of his time these days juicing voter turnout for Trump, including in the “rougher areas.”
“What’s your food on the plate at dinnertime looking like compared to what it was four years ago?” he asks his fellow Latino voters. “Food prices are through the roof. Gas is through the roof” he says, and “feeding your family is harder, much harder.”