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Trump hones law and order message in Pennsylvania

President Donald Trump speaks to supporters at a campaign rally at Arnold Palmer Regional Airport on Sept. 3, 2020, in Latrobe, Pennsylvania. (Jeff Swensen/Getty Images)

President Donald Trump is delivering remarks to a crowd in Latrobe, Pennsylvania.

Posted by WISH-TV on Thursday, September 3, 2020

LATROBE,
Pennsylvania (AP) — President Donald Trump on Thursday honed the “law
and order” message he intends to wield for the next two months against
his Democratic rival, Joe Biden, stepping up attacks that his campaign
believes are resonating with battleground state voters.

“Biden’s
plan is to appease the domestic terrorists and my plan is to arrest them
and prosecute them,” Trump declared at a rally in Pennsylvania — a
state that flipped in his favor in 2016, helping to pave his road to
victory.

The rally comes as Trump’s campaign is claiming new signs
of momentum, including in the longtime Democratic stronghold that Trump
won by less than 45,000 votes in 2016. After months of trepidation,
Trump campaign officials have been feeling encouraged in the last few
weeks as Trump has responded to mass demonstrations against racial
injustice by taking a hardline against protesters and painting Biden as
weak.

Trump was speaking in front of a crowd of hundreds packed
into an airport hangar, where people stood closely together and few were
seen wearing masks, despite the ongoing pandemic, which has now killed
more than 185,000 people and infected more that 6 million nationwide.

Pennsylvania
currently restricts indoor gatherings to 25 people and outdoor events
to 250 to prevent the spread of the coronavirus. But Trump has been
flouting both local restrictions and his own administration’s social
distancing guidelines as he insists on campaigning in front of large
crowds and tries to project the image that the virus is waning as he
pushes to reopen the economy.

Trump told the crowd that he is “all
for” wearing masks, and urged them to be careful during the upcoming
Labor Day weekend. White House and public health officials have been
eyeing the date warily, concerned that it could fuel another spike in
cases, like Memorial Day weekend.

“There’s a tendency of people to
be careless, somewhat, with regard to the public health measures that
we keep recommending over and over again,” Dr. Anthony Fauci told MSNBC
Wednesday, pleading for diligence in adhering to safety measures going
into the holiday. Fauci is the government’s top infectious disease
expert

At the same time, Trump, who has rarely worn a mask, mocked Biden for wearing one so often.

“Did you ever see a man who likes a mask as much as him?” he asked, proclaiming that “it gives him a feeling of security.”

“If I were a psychiatrist, right, you know I’d say, ‘This guy’s got some big issues.’ Hanging down. Hanging down,” he said.

The
rally came the same day that Biden paid a visit to Kenosha, Wisconsin,
amid turmoil following the police shooting of Jacob Blake, a Black man,
seven times. Trump mocked Biden for visiting two days after he had,
claiming: “There was nobody there. He was a little late. I was going to
say, ‘Hey listen, we ended that problem.’”

Trump’s campaign
believes its efforts to paint Biden as weak on crime will help Trump win
back suburban voters, and especially women, who supported him in 2016
but have since soured on him.

That includes in Pennsylvania, where
they argue the president is in a better position than he was in 2016,
citing Democrats’ shrinking voter registration advantage. This time,
they believe their get-out-the-vote operation will result in better
turnout among working-class rural voters, along with improved margins
among African Americans, Latinos and union supporters. At the rally,
Trump announced that he had received the endorsement of the Boilermakers
Local 154 in Pittsburgh.

To that end, Trump and his team have
been paying frequent visits to the state as they work to build
enthusiasm. On Tuesday, Vice President Mike Pence held a “Workers for
Trump” rally at a construction company less than 15 miles from Biden’s
hometown, Scranton.

“I know we’re not too far from our opponent’s boyhood home, but it’s Trump country now,” Pence told the crowd.

Trump
himself held a small rally last month outside Scranton just hours
before Biden accepted the Democratic presidential nomination. At the
event, Trump insisted Biden would be the state’s “worst nightmare” if
elected president. The former vice president often spotlights his early
years in the northeast Pennsylvania city as evidence of his middle-class
upbringing.

“Between the record enthusiasm for this President,
our unprecedented ground game, and trends in Republican voter
registrations, the Commonwealth, once again, is ready to deliver for
President Trump this November,” Nick Trainer, the Trump campaign’s
director of battleground strategies, said in a statement.

Biden’s
campaign remains equally confident about his prospects in the state.
They have put considerable emphasis on the Pittsburgh metro area, where
Democrats lost ground in 2016 but then watched Democratic congressional
candidate Conor Lamb pull an upset in a special election.

Still,
Biden’s path in Pennsylvania is seen as more complicated than winning
back Wisconsin and Michigan, the two other “blue wall” states Trump won
by less than 1 percentage point four years ago.

In Wisconsin and
Michigan, Trump benefited from then-rival Hillary Clinton’s poor
performance in the largest, heavily Democratic cities, Milwaukee and
Detroit. But Clinton did relatively well in Philadelphia and won more
votes that former President Barack Obama in the Philadelphia suburbs,
even in defeat. That could put even more pressure on Biden to try to
blunt Trump’s performance in Pennsylvania’s smaller cities and in rural
areas.

Latrobe, the site of Trump’s Thursday rally, is about an
hour outside Pittsburgh in Westmoreland County, which Trump won by large
margins four years ago.

While Democrats still hold a significant voter registration advantage in the state, the number of new Republican registrations has far outpaced the number of new Democrats registering this cycle. Many political observers believe the state, which has many white, older voters, could become even more favorable to Republicans despite having voted Democratic from 1992 until Trump’s win in 2016.

Miller reported from Washington. Associated Press writer Bill Barrow in Atlanta contributed to this report.