SCRANTON, Pa. \u2014 Donald Trump can\u2019t stop running against President Joe Biden.<\/p>\n
At a campaign event in the president\u2019s boyhood hometown Wednesday, Trump mentioned their June 27 debate, questioned his former opponent\u2019s mental competence and misleadingly characterized Vice President Kamala Harris\u2019s selection as the Democratic nominee as a \u201ccoup.\u201d<\/p>\n
Trump has spent weeks trying to tie Harris, who holds a narrow lead in national polling, to Biden, who trailed Trump in polls. But his comments about Biden often have focused narrowly on his account of the president\u2019s flaws and his own frustrations with the Democratic switch. And in Pennsylvania on Wednesday, the allure of Biden-bashing appeared to be fading with some of the Trump faithful.<\/p>\n
Now that Harris is her party\u2019s standard-bearer, Trump mentions her nearly three times as frequently as he drops Biden\u2019s name, according to a Washington Post analysis of his public speeches. But Trump still has mentioned his onetime opponent \u2014 who has otherwise been all but absent from the campaign trail \u2014 over 500 times in 46 public speeches tracked by The Post since Harris became the nominee. Trump clearly sees political gain in mentioning his former opponent: recent polling shows that the majority of voters believe the country is on the wrong track.<\/p>\n
Trump kept up the habit Wednesday in this Pennsylvania city Biden has made central to his political identity. Less than 10 minutes into his speech, Trump began to talk about \u201cSleepy Joe.\u201d<\/p>\n
In recent weeks, Trump has repeatedly suggested that Democrats were wrong to ditch Biden for Harris.<\/p>\n
\u201cJoe\u2019s looking pretty good lately, I tell you, he\u2019s looking pretty good compared to Kamala,\u201d Trump, who spent months calling Biden incompetent to serve as president, said in Scranton on Wednesday.<\/p>\n
He proceeded to offer his own version of why Biden decided to not seek reelection, baselessly claiming that Biden was \u201cangry\u201d at Harris and describing his replacement at the top of the Democratic ticket as an \u201coverthrow.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThey said, \u2018You\u2019re sick, you\u2019re not going to go on, \u2019\u201d Trump said, adding, \u201cThis was the first coup in the history of America.\u201d<\/p>\n
It was within the Democratic Party\u2019s powers to replace Biden with Harris. Though primary voters chose Biden, they technically elected a slate of delegates to choose their nominee. After Biden dropped out, those delegates were free to pick a replacement, and they almost unanimously selected Harris.<\/p>\n
Biden stepped aside in July, after weeks of pressure from Democrats who warned he had no path to victory after his disastrous debate performance against Trump, in which Biden appeared at times to lose his train of thought.<\/p>\n
Trump has both publicly and privately lamented Harris\u2019s ascension, even as he has also tried to portray her as an easier opponent to beat. (The Post polling average has Harris leading Trump in four of the seven battleground states.) He has complained about the amount of money and resources his campaign poured into beating Biden ($150 million, he says) only to have to start over with Harris. At a recent rally in Erie, Pa., Trump even suggested without evidence that Democrats might bring Biden back as their nominee.<\/p>\n
In Pennsylvania, where Trump was scheduled to appear at a second campaign event Wednesday evening, Harris is leading in polls by three points, according to The Post\u2019s polling average. The state is critical to both Harris\u2019s and Trump\u2019s paths to the White House.<\/p>\n
Outside the venue, the anti-Biden merchandise was sparser than it once was. But it was still there. Vendors sold magnets with profane jabs at Biden: \u201cFJB,\u201d \u201cLet\u2019s go, Brandon\u201d and an image of Biden in a chef\u2019s hat accompanied by a message with an expletive.<\/p>\n
Attendees said they agreed with Trump\u2019s pique at Democrats\u2019 last-minute move to replace Biden. \u201cWhat happened with Joe Biden dropping out \u2026 is the opposite of democracy,\u201d said Rob Neishman, 49, who described himself as a onetime Democrat, adding that he and his family grew alienated from the party around the same time Trump crashed into the political scene.<\/p>\n
He brushed off suggestions that Harris\u2019s ascension had made Trump\u2019s path to reelection harder.<\/p>\n
For Marvin Batista, a 36-year-old correctional officer from Reading, Pa., who showed up for Trump\u2019s rally there Wednesday evening, the election represents a choice between Trump and Biden administration politics.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn 2024, you get to choose. You got to live four years of Kamala and Biden, and you got to live four years of Trump,\u201d he said. \u201cObviously you were better off four years ago.\u201d<\/p>\n
Clara Ence Morse contributed to this report.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
SCRANTON, Pa. \u2014 Donald Trump can\u2019t stop running against President Joe Biden. At a campaign event in the president\u2019s boyhood hometown Wednesday, Trump mentioned their June 27 debate, questioned his former opponent\u2019s mental competence and misleadingly characterized Vice President Kamala Harris\u2019s selection as the Democratic nominee as a \u201ccoup.\u201d Trump has spent weeks trying to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":10874,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10873","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10873","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10873"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10873\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10874"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10873"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10873"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10873"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}