"He left," President Trump told a crowd about former vice president Joe Biden near his birthplace. "He abandoned Pennsylvania. He abandoned Scranton. He was here for a short period of time, and he didn't even know it." Biden was 10 years old when his family moved to Delaware for his father's job. Trump was getting his criticisms in hours before Biden was to give his nomination acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention. The president spoke at a family-owned remodeling business in Old Forge next to Scranton, the Washington Post reports. U.S. Sen. Bob Casey, a Democrat who also is from Scranton, told reporters Thursday that Biden "has the values and the spirit of Scranton in his heart," per the Philadelphia Inquirer. "Donald Trump doesn’t know the first thing about Scranton, about Lackawanna County, or about Northeastern Pennsylvania," Casey said. "He doesn’t relate to us, he doesn’t share our values."
In other shots at Biden and his running mate, Sen. Kamala Harris, Trump said:
- "If you want a vision of your life under a Biden presidency, think of the smoldering ruins of Minneapolis, the violent anarchy of Portland, the bloodstained sidewalks of Chicago, and imagine the mayhem coming to your town."
- "Joe Biden and Kamala—she's another beauty—also strongly support the deadly sanctuary cities that have been so bad for you and everyone else. ... We believe our country should be sanctuary for law-abiding Americans, not for criminal aliens."
- "He's going to make a speech tonight. ... I really hope does well, but I also want him to tell the truth. He's got to tell the truth about things, and he's going to do a lot better if he does, but hopefully, not well enough."
Trump won Pennsylvania by less than a percentage point in 2016; polls show him trailing now. The president's convention counterprogramming is to continue Thursday night, per
ABC, when he's scheduled to do a live interview with Fox News' Sean Hannity as the Democrats' broadcast begins. (More
Election 2020 stories.)
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