Donald Trump blasted his indictments, slammed President Biden and Ron DeSantis, and disparaged Philly at Erie rally

ERIE — With a familiar medley of insults, falsehoods, and digressions, former President Donald Trump on Saturday evening bashed the criminal indictments mounting against him, attacked President Joe Biden, and repeated his lies about election fraud at a rally in a bellwether region in northwest Pennsylvania.

In an unusually punctual appearance, Trump took the stage at 6 p.m in front of about 4,000 people at the Erie Insurance Arena to repeat some of his greatest hits from his signature rallies and add a few new ones. He promised to save the U.S. economy, purge the “deep state” from the federal government, and prevent World War III — “which is where we’re headed,” Trump said.

He also threw in a dig at Philadelphia, one of his favorite targets of abuse, by blaming Democrats for the city’s ongoing gun crisis.

“Has that city gone to hell or what?” he said. “Now it’s so dangerous you can’t walk outside to buy a loaf of bread. It’s horrible. It’s horrible what happened.”

In addition to Philadelphia, Trump disparaged Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, several other GOP presidential candidates, Fox News, the prosecutors investigating him, and more.

Trump’s rally comes two days after his lawyers met with the special counsel investigating his efforts to overturn the presidential election results and his role in the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riots — and after prosecutors announced new charges in the classified documents case accusing him of asking a staffer to delete camera footage to obstruct the investigation.

The Erie rally was the second time Trump has visited Pennsylvania in a month, after appearing at the controversial Moms for Liberty conference in Philadelphia on June 30.

A significant portion of Trump’s 100-minute speech was about Biden and his son Hunter, whose plea deal for tax and gun charges fell apart on Wednesday. He said the Bidens “make Hillary Clinton look like a beautiful angel.”

Trump promised to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate the “Biden crime family” if he’s elected, a line that received a standing ovation and the loudest applause of the night.

He also took time for a detailed digression on abortion, taking credit for the Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade, which was made possible due to appointments during his administration, while also offering a nuanced take on how Republicans should discuss the issue on the campaign trail.

Republicans’ disappointing results in the 2022 midterms were seen by many as a reaction to the court’s decision and the GOP’s hard-line stance against abortion rights. At Saturday’s rally, Trump seemed to be offering a playbook for other Republicans: Emphasize that it’s good for the issue to be decided at the state level, as it has been since the court’s decision, and support exceptions in cases involving rape, incest, and threats to the mother’s life.

Trump said the criminal indictments he faces are part of an effort to sabotage his third presidential campaign, in which he maintains a strong lead in national Republican primary polls.

“They impeach me, they indict me, they rig our elections,” Trump said. “And the Republicans just don’t fight the way — they’re good people, but they don’t fight the way they’re supposed to fight.”

Trump rattled off his support for conservative positions on a number of social issues, such as his support for the Second Amendment and prohibiting transgender girls from participating in women’s sports, and his opposition to vaccine mandates. Crowd members rose to their feet as he listed each one.

Ahead of Trump’s appearance, the chair of the Pennsylvania Democratic Party said Trump has failed working people in the state, while Biden has delivered.

“As Pennsylvania voters watch Trump double down on the same MAGA extremism tonight that failed our commonwealth, I am confident they will deliver him the same resounding rejection they did in 2020,” said Sen. Sharif Street (D., Philadelphia) who chairs the Pennsylvania Democrats.

Trump won Erie County in 2016 but lost it narrowly to Biden in 2020.

Erie sent the Trump campaign a bill for $5,200 Friday in advance of Saturday’s rally for expected overtime costs, according to the city’s spokesperson. The Trump campaign has yet to reimburse the city for $35,000 in overtime costs to the city for a 2018 visit to the arena.

“I think we have to try [to get reimbursed],” Erie Mayor Joseph Schember, a Democrat, said in a statement Monday. “We are going to see whether we can get some payment from them in advance this time. It’s important to do this because we’re talking about taxpayer money being used to help make the former president’s visit safer.”

Mandy Jurchenko, 46, who lives near Easton and attended Saturday’s rally, said the country needs to elect Trump again to avoid becoming a communist country.

“Everything was going well when we had him,” Jurchenko said, who works on a farm. “We need him back, bad.”

Ahead of Trump’s appearance, several of his surrogates noted the importance of mail voting in the next election. In 2020, Trump villainized mail voting in Pennsylvania and used it as a core part of his lies that the election was stolen from him.

“We’re going to beat them at their own game,” said Carla Sands, a former Republican U.S. Senate candidate and the U.S. ambassador to Denmark during Trump’s administration. She encouraged churches to register Republican voters as part of their strategy.

Trump campaign volunteers were also collecting voter registrations and mail ballot applications.

The Pennsylvania GOP has shifted to support mail ballots since the 2022 election, where Republicans underperformed and lost several key races.