(Headline USA) President Donald Trump is hopping from one must-win stop on the electoral map to the next in the lead-up to a final presidential debate.
Democrat Joe Biden has taken the opposite approach, staying off the road and holing up for debate prep in advance of Thursday’s faceoff in Nashville, Tennessee — an abnormal campaign strategy. Trump stopped in Pennsylvania on Tuesday and was bound for North Carolina on Wednesday as he delivers what his campaign sees as his closing message.
“This is an election between a Trump super recovery and a Biden depression,” the president said in Erie, Pennsylvania. “You will have a depression the likes of which you have never seen.” He added: “If you want depression, doom and despair, vote for Sleepy Joe. And boredom.”
Before leaving the White House for Pennsylvania on Tuesday, Trump taped part of an interview with CBS’ “60 Minutes” that apparently ended acrimoniously. On Twitter, the president declared his interview with Lesley Stahl to be “FAKE and BIASED,” and he threatened to release a White House edit of it before its Sunday airtime.
Trump’s trip to Pennsylvania on Tuesday was one of what is expected to be several visits to the state in the next two weeks.
“If we win Pennsylvania, we win the whole thing,” Trump said in Erie.
Erie County, which includes the aging industrial city in the state’s northwest corner, went for President Barack Obama by 5 percentage points in 2012 but broke for Trump by 2 in 2016. That swing, fueled by Trump’s success with white, working-class voters, was replicated in small cities and towns and rural areas and helped him overcome Hillary Clinton’s victories in the state’s big cities.
Trump, who spoke for less than an hour, showed the crowd a montage of various Biden and Kamala Harris comments (starting at about 6:30 on video above) in which they pledged to end fracking. The issue is critical in a state that is the second leading producer of natural gas in the country.
Biden, who taped his own interview with “60 Minutes” on Monday at a theater near his home, had no public events Tuesday or Wednesday and wasn’t scheduled to travel — except to the debate — on Thursday.
Adapted from reporting by Associated Press.
