(AFP) – White House hopeful Donald Trump vowed Wednesday during a pair of speeches in crucial battleground Pennsylvania to unleash American energy and “drill, baby, drill” as he misrepresented America’s blockbuster record on fossil fuel production.
And with less than four weeks before the election nail-biter concludes on November 5, Trump shut the door on the prospect of a second debate with his Democratic rival Kamala Harris, saying in a social media post that “there will be no rematch.” He made no mention of his decision at the two rallies, despite his now-familiar attacks against the US vice president as “grossly incompetent” and “ill-equipped” to do the job of commander-in-chief.
Wooing blue-collar voters in Scranton, the former coal mining hub where President Joe Biden grew up, the Republican ex-president assailed Harris on US drilling for oil and accused her of forcing the closure of dozens of power stations. “On day one I will tell Pennsylvania energy workers to frack, frack, frack, and drill, drill, drill, baby, drill,” Trump said.
Trump demonized migrants and flung baseless accusations of Democratic election fraud, as he pushed his range of grievances, misinformation and falsehoods, ranging from his criminal prosecutions and polling to border security and the hurricanes. But his focus was the economy — a top campaign issue — and he promised to slash household energy bills by 50 percent as he warned: “If Kamala is reelected, your costs will go up and your lights will go out.”
Trump’s pledge to boost fracking, a process to extract oil and natural gas from shale, is also a dig at Harris. She supported a ban on the practice, a major industry in western Pennsylvania, during her first run for president in 2019. And while she insists now she would not ban fracking, Trump has hammered her over the issue. If Harris is elected, “day one, there’s no fracking, and that’s the end of Pennsylvania,” he warned later at a speech in Reading, 60 miles (100 kilometers) northwest of Philadelphia.
Under Trump, the United States exported more crude oil and petroleum products than it imported, but was never close to genuine independence from foreign energy, with imports from Russia in particular spiking. The US has been smashing records for production of oil, natural gas and renewable power under Biden, according to data from the Energy Information Administration.
– Neck-and-neck –
Trump is polling neck-and-neck with Harris in the Keystone State, the once-thriving epicenter of the American industrial heartland, which is considered one of the biggest prizes in the Electoral College system that decides US elections. Although Biden’s family base is in Delaware, he grew up in Scranton and remains enormously popular in the county where it is located, which he won by nine points as he claimed the state in 2020.
Harris has maintained a nationwide polling lead of two to three points since mid-August and has been gaining on Trump on the economy, boosted by easing inflation and a robust jobs report last week. But polls in Pennsylvania and the other six swing states have been much closer. And new Gallup polling shows Trump outperforming Harris 54-45 percent on the economy as he touts proposals for a tariff-led manufacturing “renaissance.”
Pennsylvania is seen as a working-class bastion, and both candidates have visited regularly. The twice-impeached 78-year-old drilled into his xenophobic, anti-immigrant message Wednesday, saying undocumented migrants were “ruining your cities and towns.” Trump was last in Pennsylvania four days ago for a defiant return to the site of a July rally where he nearly died in an assassination attempt.
Harris was mostly off the trail Wednesday, monitoring the massive Hurricane Milton as it bore down on Florida. She urged residents to heed evacuation orders, then slammed Trump for his “unconscionable” misinformation about federal storm relief efforts. Harris heads to Pennsylvania next week, but ex-president Barack Obama arrives first for a rally Friday, adding his star power to her White House bid in its home stretch. Harris headed to Nevada for a Thursday campaign event in Las Vegas and hits battleground Arizona on Friday.
– Jim Watson, with Frankie Taggart in Washington
© 2024 AFP
