HARRISBURG, Pa. — Former President Donald Trump made his first foray this year to the election battlefront of Pennsylvania, planting a flag in a state President Biden is banking on for his reelection.
Mr Trump’s address to thousands of National Rifle Association members in the state capital of Harrisburg was a harbinger of the expected rematch this year in the state that helped propel him to the White House but Mr. Biden managed to put back in the blue column in 2020.
“Pennsylvania is one of the most important battleground states in the nation,” Mr. Trump told the cheering NRA crowd. “You know, when I won Pennsylvania in 2016, remember they said, ‘No, Pennsylvania won’t be able to be won.’”
His most feverish supporters still believe that he won Pennsylvania in 2020 before Democrats stole it — a point Mr. Trump made during his speech.
For Mr. Biden, losing Pennsylvania would be an embarrassment and devastating to his reelection bid, and he has made the state a focal point of the race. He set up his campaign headquarters in Philadelphia and has already logged three trips to the state this year.
Nine months out from the November election, polls show Mr. Biden with a slim lead over Mr. Trump in Pennsylvania. But the same negatives that haunt Mr. Biden in national surveys threaten him in the Keystone State, and doubts about the 81-year-old president’s mental acuity only deepened with special counsel Robert Hur’s report last week that described him as an “elderly man with a poor memory” who isn’t worth prosecuting for mishandling government secrets.
Mr. Trump seized on that report at the NRA event, spending much of his speech dismantling Mr. Biden’s presidency and criticizing his diminished memory.
“Joe Biden is the worst and most incompetent and most corrupt president in the history of our country,” Mr. Trump said. “If Crooked Joe gets four more years, his second term will make his first term look like paradise. We’re not going to have a country left anymore. We’re not going to let it happen. We can never ever let that happen.”
Mr. Trump is the prohibitive favorite to win the Republican presidential nomination with only Nikki Haley still mounting a long-shot challenge.
For the NRA crowd, Mr. Trump previewed a likely refrain from his general election stump speech, accusing Mr. Biden of being a mere figurehead in the Oval Office. He mused about who is calling the shots in the Biden administration.
“I don’t know that it’s Biden, because I don’t think he knows he’s alive,” Mr. Trump said.
He promised that, if returned to the White House, he would “completely overhaul” the Justice Department which he said was weaponized against him and other Republicans by the Biden administration.
Mr. Trump also told the NRA members that “no one will lay a finger on your firearms” if he wins the presidency, and promised to roll back gun restrictions imposed by Mr. Biden.
“Every single Biden attack on gun owners and manufacturers will be terminated on my very first week back in office, perhaps my first day,” Mr. Trump said.
For example, he said he would undo regulations on pistol braces.
Pennsylvania could be one of the more difficult “blue wall” states for Mr. Trump to recapture. His historic win in 2016 put Pennsylvania in the red column for the first time since 1988. The state has rebounded blue since 2016, not only ending up in the Biden column in 2020 but also sending Democrats to the governor’s mansion and the U.S. Senate.
Mr. Biden has used Pennsylvania as the backdrop for major speeches since taking office and delivered his first campaign speech this year near Valley Forge.
In the campaign speech, he set the tone for his reelection run against Mr. Trump, describing the ex-president and his MAGA movement as the already-lit sticks of dynamite that could blow to pieces America’s fragile democratic institution should Mr. Trump win a second term.
“Whether democracy is still America’s sacred cause is what the 2024 election is all about,” Mr. Biden said. “The choice is clear: Donald Trump‘s campaign is about him, not America, not you. Donald Trump‘s campaign is obsessed with the past, not the future. He’s willing to sacrifice our democracy to put himself in power. Our campaign is different.”
In the arena in Harrisburg, Mr. Trump’s popularity was at a fever pitch. The crowd roared often during the spectacle, including when a t-shirt cannon appeared, when NRA spokesman Billy McLaughlin called the media anti-gun, and when Mr. Trump took the stage.
“We have to swamp them with so many votes that they can’t rig it, or they can’t steal it,” Mr. Trump said. “You know, under a certain level they can’t rig it anymore.”
• Alex Miller can be reached at amiller@washingtontimes.com.