An earlier edition of this article incorrectly stated the day President Biden withdrew from the race: July 21 and not July 23.
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Simon J. Levien and Michael Gold
Simon J. Levien reported from Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania. Michael Gold reported from New York.
Former President Donald J. Trump, in a crossover speech Saturday, jumped between court cases on the economy and immigration, wide-ranging digressions and a series of attacks on Vice President Kamala Harris, adding that it included complaints about her appearance and her laugh.
At a rally in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, Trump went from talking about inflation issues and criticizing Democratic policies as “fascist” and “Marxist,” to calling illegal immigrants “wild monsters” and claiming that rising sea levels would create more illegal immigration. Beachfront property.
Trump blamed Harris for the high costs, in what was a reversal of his comments at his rally in Raleigh, North Carolina, on Friday, where he said Trump’s proposed import price lists would amount to a “Trump tax” on groceries. The former president has argued that she imposed a “Kamala Harris inflationary tax” on average Americans during her tenure as vice president and that, if elected, it would lower the costs of customers’ goods, just as she had announced.
“Yesterday she gave up, declaimed and raved,” Trump said of Harris’ explanation of her economic program in North Carolina. He mocked his comments, which he said advised taxing “everything that has been invented. “
Trump’s advisers have suggested that she focus on her economic policy plans, which polls show many voters accept as true to a greater extent than Harris’s, and some Republicans expected her to put her trademark private attacks behind her, adding common insults to Harris. ‘ Intelligence and appearance.
But at two events earlier this week — a speech in Asheville, North Carolina, and a news conference in Bedminster, New Jersey — both billed as opportunities to talk about the economy, Trump launched private attacks on Harris. which he said he had a “right” to do.
Trump opened his rally in Pennsylvania, the last before the start of the Democratic National Convention in Chicago on Monday, addressing inflation and the economy. But he temporarily said, “Don’t worry if I turn off the teleprompter for a second. “And you? Ms. Harris’ addition: “Joe Biden hates her. “
She then attacked Harris for having a “crazy” laugh and said she was “much prettier than her,” a word that drew cheers from the thousands of attendees packed into the Mohegan Sun Arena.
In a statement, a spokesman for Harris’ campaign, Joseph Costello, said Trump sought to divert attention from his “dangerous” schedule by resorting to “lies, insults and diatribes. “
Trump also said Democrats would hold a “rigged convention” next week due to Harris entering the race after a first season in which millions of voters voted for President Biden. Biden dropped out of the race in July and endorsed the vice president, who acted temporarily to join her delegates.
Trump reiterated his crusade pledge to increase oil and fuel production, then attacked Harris for calling for a ban on hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, his 2020 presidential crusade.
Ms Harris’ crusader said she no longer supported such a ban. Pennsylvania, a major producer of natural fuels, could reap economic benefits from improved fracking, although the process risks polluting air and water. And Trump’s calls to “drill, drill, drill” were especially prominent in Wilkes-Barre, in a region of northeastern Pennsylvania traditionally accounted for by anthracite coal mining.
Trump has also continued his efforts to try to distance American Jews, the vast majority of whom are liberals, from the Democratic Party. He claimed that Pennsylvania’s Democratic governor, Josh Shapiro, was not selected as Harris’ vice presidential candidate because of his religion.
“He was rejected because he’s Jewish,” Trump said, adding, “I don’t think he’s an intelligent person. “
When Harris chose her vice presidential candidate, Shapiro faced a crusade of tension from activists who saw him as too sympathetic to Israel. Shapiro rejected the concept that his identity played a role in Harris’ decision.
But Trump, who was accused during his presidency of emboldening white supremacists, invoked the Holocaust as a precaution against widespread anti-Semitism in the United States and insisted, as he has done before, that Jews who vote for Democrats “must have their heads examined. “
Trump and Harris are specifically targeting Pennsylvania, an undecided state that has a chance of winning the election. Trump won the state by a narrow margin in 2016 but lost it to Biden in 2020.
Both crusades will be held in the state in the coming days. On Sunday, Harris and his partner, Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota, will embark on a bus tour of western Pennsylvania. On Monday, Trump and his partner, Sen. J. D. Vance of Ohio will make separate stops on his crusade in York, Pennsylvania, and Philadelphia.
Heather Knight and Shawn Hubler
Reporting from San Francisco and Sacramento
Willie Brown, former mayor of San Francisco, had a message for former President Donald J. Trump on Saturday afternoon: Keep this out of your mouth or you’ll get sued.
He stood next to his longtime lawyer, Joe Cotchett, on a downtown San Francisco sidewalk outside John’s Grill, Brown’s Saturday lunch spot, and told reporters he would sue Trump for slander and defamation if he repeated his speech. I once made up a story about a helicopter.
“He has never filed a lawsuit in his life,” Mr. Cotchett said of Mr. Brown. But do you know who pushes him to do that? A guy through Trump’s call.
Trump and Brown have been verbally feuding since Trump falsely claimed at an Aug. 8 news convention at his Mar-a-Lago club in Florida that he nearly died on a helicopter flight with Brown.
Trump also said that Brown, who dated Vice President Kamala Harris in 1994 and 1995, said “terrible things” about Harris before collapsing nearly to death.
“He wasn’t a fan of hers at the time,” M. Trump said.
Mr. Brown was quick to call the story a lie, claiming that he had never been in a helicopter with Mr. Trump and had never said derogatory things to him about Mr. Harris. In fact, she continually told reporters that she respected her and that she was desperately there. hoping he’d beat the guy he’d never been in a helicopter with.
Trump reiterated his claims on his social media site, Truth Social, and threatened to sue the New York Times for reporting that the helicopter story was fabricated. “Now Willie Brown doesn’t remember?” Trump wrote.
That’s when Nate Holden, a former Los Angeles councilman and state senator, said he had had a complicated helicopter vacation with Trump in 1990 and speculated that the former president might have it with Brown. Both California politicians are black.
Trump has not spoken about the helicopter incident since Holden showed up. But Mr. Brown and Mr. Cotchett said they wanted to make sure he remained silent.
When asked if he asked for an apology from Mr. Brown replied that he would prefer not to hear it at all.
“No, I don’t understand your apology,” Brown said. “I’m not asking you to say my name. “
Asked for comment, a Trump spokesman pointed to the former president’s risk of suing the Times, but he responded to Brown.
On Saturday, Holden applauded Holden. Brown’s threat.
“If you spread a lie, you will be held accountable,” Holden told Trump in a phone call Saturday from his home in Los Angeles. “I’m 95 and Willie 90, and he assumed we wouldn’t be here. “No one would question it anymore. Well, we’re alive and kicking.
Maggie Haberman contributed reporting.
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Jazmín Ulloa
Reporting from La Vista, Nebraska.
Cinnamon and chili buns. The Yale of the Midwest. A runza.
Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota, at his home in Nebraska on Saturday, made his same old appeals for joy and freedom, as well as some jabs at former President Donald J. Trump and his running mate, Senator J. D. Vance of Ohio, this time, added a touch of his Nebraska roots and the wisdom of the state’s culture.
Walz talked about growing up in the small town of Butte, graduating from Chadron State College (“the Yale of the Midwest,” he says with a laugh) and serving in the state National Guard, which he enlisted at age 17. He was introduced through one of his former top school students in the state and had former Butte classmates in the audience.
“We have a slogan here: Nebraska, it’s not for everyone,” he told a raucous audience at a theater in the Omaha suburb of La Vista, Nebraska. “Well, it’s not for Donald Trump, I’ll tell you. “
The ruling in his home state gave Walz a chance to win among rural, working-class and moderate voters as he and Vice President Kamala Harris present themselves as middle-class fighters.
Nebraska is one of only two states (along with Maine) to award an electoral vote to the winner of the congressional district. A presidential candidate can lose the state and still win electoral votes there.
Nebraska is solidly Republican, its 2nd District, which encompasses Omaha and is known as Nebraska’s blue dot, is a pivotal region that voted for Barack Obama in 2008 and Joseph R. Biden Jr. in 2020. Biden won with 56, 4% of the votes.
In the spring, Nebraska Republicans, under pressure from Trump; the state governor, Jim Pillen; and conservative activists, have renewed efforts to move to a winner-take-all formula in presidential elections. State lawmakers voted overwhelmingly against the proposal.
“It’s not just symbolic,” Omaha City Council President Pete Festersen said of Walz’s intervention in the state. “He proves that they can compete throughout the Midwest and for our electoral vote and that can make the difference in this election. “
Vance will attend a fundraiser in Omaha this month.
In a statement, Trump campaign spokesman Steven Cheung criticized Walz’s timeline and record, saying Walz and Harris “had nothing more to offer other Americans than their radical, communist ideas. “
Mr. Walz was born in West Point, a rural town of about 3,500 people northwest of Omaha, and spent much of his youth in Butte and Valentine, Nebraska. His mother, a networking activist, and his father, a public school administrator, and he became an instructor and coach at one of Nebraska’s top schools after a year of training in China. He met his wife, Gwen, also an instructor, at school in Nebraska, and the two moved to their local Minnesota in 1996.
Onstage, Walz joked that Vance would call the runza (a bread bag filled with beef, cabbage or sauerkraut and a regional specialty) “a Hot Pocket. ” He said his parents and the communities in which he grew up taught him to “be generous to others,” “work for the smartest” and that chili cinnamon rolls, a sweet and very spicy Nebraska favorite, are a smart combination.
He promised that a Harris administration would cut taxes, and “not for billionaires,” lower rent and prescription drug costs, and paints to ease medical debt for families. He argued that it was the Harris-Walz crusade that embodied small-town values. .
“Since we stand for those values, let’s bring them to the White House,” he said.
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