By EFE
01 Aug 2024, 01:36 AM EDT
Former US President and Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump has returned to Pennsylvania for the first time since the July 13 assassination attempt on his life and has vowed to return to the town where he was wounded and continue holding outdoor rallies.
Trump only used his first minutes in Harrisburg, the capital of Pennsylvania, to recall the attack in Butler, in which he was hit by a bullet in the right ear and in which one of his supporters died: “I should not be here today,” said the former president.
He promised to return to Butler
The Republican candidate promised to return to Butler soon and to continue organizing outdoor rallies, something he has not done since the attack.
The Republican called for a moment of silence for the death of Corey Comperatore, the person who died in the crowd after being shot by Thomas Crooks, a 20-year-old who tried to assassinate the Republican and was shot down by a Secret Service sniper.
Against Harris
After that moment of contemplation, the Republican went on the attack against Kamala Harris, in front of some 14,000 attendees at the New Holland Arena, a stadium designed for livestock shows and rodeos, which Trump compared to Madison Square Garden.
“After the shooting, they thought it was going to be nicer,” Trump joked to this group of voters from an industrial area to whom he promised to eliminate tip taxes and defund schools with childhood vaccination mandates.
The former president once again used immigration to whip up fear in this election campaign, promising, to the applause of the public, “the largest deportation in our history” and criticizing Democrats for allowing criminal groups like the Venezuelan “Tren de Aragua” to kill police officers in the United States.
The Republican, who is tied in the polls in the crucial state of Pennsylvania with Kamala Harris, said that the Democrats “want to turn us into a communist country” and that they are “reinventing” their virtual candidate. “Suddenly she is a new Margaret Thatcher,” the late British conservative prime minister, he said.
He asked for early voting
Trump said his victory in November would be “too big to fail,” while screens urged his supporters to vote early, a practice that the former president called fraudulent four years ago and which is now vital in one of the first states in the country to begin voting by mail and in advance.
He also called his likely rival in the presidential election “anti-American” and a “radical leftist,” just hours after suggesting in Chicago, in front of a gathering of black journalists, that he had begun using his African-American identity for electoral purposes.
“Donor-controlled Harris”
The White House called the comments “repulsive,” and just before Trump took the stage in Harrisburg, organizers hammered home the controversy by showing headlines calling Harris the first Indian-American senator, reinforcing that characterization even though the vice president has publicly boasted of her black and Indian heritage.
Trump added that Harris is controlled by the donors who placed her, but there is a primary process in which, according to him, she obtained “zero votes.” “She cannot buy me or control me like she does,” he indicated.
Kamala Harris will be voted on by party delegates chosen in the primary process starting August 1 and could be confirmed as the Democratic Party’s nominee to face Donald Trump before August 5.
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