Donald Trump touched down in Pennsylvania for a Friday night rally where the GOP nominee stuck largely to script, hoping to motivate his base in the key swing state.
{mosads}Instead of taking his show to the Philadelphia suburbs, home to the many swing voters campaigns usually covet, Trump traveled to a packed rally in Hershey, which is nestled in a conservative pocket of the state about an hour west of Philly.
While the Hershey area and nearby capital of Harrisburg lean blue, it’s just a stone’s throw from many of the reddest areas in the state that are considered Trump territory.
Trump kicked off his rally with the usual celebration of the crowd size, chiding Hillary Clinton as her campaign simultaneously hosted a concert with music superstars Jay Z and Beyoncé.
“We set a new record for this building,” he said. “And by the way, I didn’t have to bring J. Lo [Jennifer Lopez] or Jay Z, the only way she gets anybody. I’m here all by myself.”
His speech came almost exactly four nights before the polls will close on Election Day and largely echoed that of his stump speeches over the past few days. He has recently tried to hem closely to script in order to limit the missteps that have threatened to derail his campaign.
He hammered Clinton for the swirling rumors surrounding the FBI’s investigation into her email, blasted her foreign policy and hemmed to his border-patrol hard line that’s become the centerpiece of his campaign.
“They are killing innocent Americans, threatening schools, and totally destroying communities,” Trump said of those in America illegally. “Thousands of Americans would be alive today if not for the open border policies of Obama and Clinton.”
Despite railing recently on the Democratic enclaves of Philadelphia, casting doubts on the integrity of the vote in the city, Trump predicted he could do well there.
“I really believe I’m going to do well in Philadelphia because I went to school there,” he said there, a reference to his time at the University of Pennsylvania.
“Don’t disappoint me, Philadelphia.”
He leaned heavily on his populist themes during his rally, declaring an end to the “theft of American prosperity.”
“If a company wants to fire their workers, leave Pennsylvania, move to another country like Mexico, which is taking so many of our companies, and then ship their products back into our United States, where we will soon have a strong and very powerful border, we will make them pay a 35 percent tariff,” he added, a line that defines his protectionist trade agenda.
He took some swings at Clinton, accusing her of pretending to study for the earlier presidential debates when she actually just needed rest.
“That was just an excuse for her to rest and go to sleep, believe me,” he said of her debate prep.
Pennsylvania is a crucial state for Trump’s path to the White House — a victory in the state would likely come largely on the backs of the industrial vote there that would not only deliver him a much-needed 20 electoral votes, but would also be a harbinger of good fortune in the similarly composed swing state of Ohio.
Despite a new Republican-leaning poll showing the two tied in Pennsylvania on Friday, Clinton has led every major poll in the state since July, according to an aggregation by RealClearPolitics, and holds a 3 point lead.
Joining Trump at the rally were two of his first congressional supporters, Reps. Lou Barletta and Tom Marino. Republican National Committee chairman Reince Priebus also spoke to warm up the crowd, as he has been doing at recent Trump rallies.
And in a rare appearance, campaign manager Kellyanne Conway, a longtime Philadelphia Eagles supporter from her days in New Jersey, spoke too.
She tried to calm down the at-times raucous crowd, specifically when they started to chant “CNN sucks” while she spoke.
“No, no, no, behave,” she said. “Nice, nice.”
The rally also took a personal turn when Trump invited the parents of Reilly Rone, a 19-year-old Trump supporter who died over the summer, onto the stage.
Rone died in a motorcycle accident and according to his parents, has Trump’s name on his tombstone because of his enthusiasm for the real-estate magnate turned Republican nominee.
“Vote for Mr. Trump in my son’s honor,” Barbara Zawistowski Rone told the crowd after she described how Trump had called her after receiving a letter about her son’s support.
Trump hugged and kissed Rone’s parents as they left the stage, before dedicating the evening rally to his late fan.