Republican Donald Trump says he believes 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 November 5 presidential election.
Trump, the former president, held a rally on Saturday in Wilkes-Barre in the northeastern part of 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."
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.
Pennsylvania was one of three Rust Belt states, along with Wisconsin and Michigan, that helped power Trump's upset victory in the 2016 election. President Joe Biden, who grew up in Scranton, Pennsylvania, flipped the trio back to the Democrats in 2020.
The three states are true bellwethers - the only US states to have voted for the eventual winner of the presidential race in every cycle since 2008.
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.
A statistical model created by Nate Silver, an election forecaster, estimates that Pennsylvania is more than twice as likely as any other to be the "tipping point" state - the one whose electoral votes push either Harris or Trump over the top.
Harris' entry into the race after Biden ended his re-election bid last month has upended the contest, erasing the lead Trump built during the final weeks of Biden's shaky campaign. Harris is leading Trump by more than two percentage points in Pennsylvania, according to the poll tracking website FiveThirtyEight.
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 per cent margin.
Both campaigns have made the state a top priority, blanketing the airwaves with advertisements. Of the more than $US110 million spent on advertising in seven battleground states since Biden dropped out in late July, roughly $US42 million was spent in Pennsylvania, more than twice any other state, the Wall Street Journal reported, citing data from the tracking site AdImpact.
Democratic and Republican groups have already reserved $US114 million in ad time in Pennsylvania from late August through the election, more than twice as much as the $US55 million reserved in Arizona, the next highest total, according to AdImpact.
The Harris campaign said on Saturday it planned to spend at least $US370 million on digital and television ads nationwide between the Labor Day holiday on September 2 and election day.
Trump and Harris have visited Pennsylvania more than half a dozen times each this year. Trump was wounded during an assassination attempt at his rally near Butler, Pennsylvania, on July 13.
He has said he will return to Butler in October, and also announced he will give remarks on the economy at a campaign event in York, Pennsylvania, on Monday. Trump's running mate, US Senator JD Vance, will deliver remarks in Philadelphia that day as well.
Harris and her running mate, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, will make multiple stops across Allegheny and Beaver counties on Sunday, the campaign said.
