Trump rallies supporters in Johnstown, vows to secure border and boost manufacturing

Former President Trump returned to one of his Pennsylvania strongholds Friday, labeling his rivals with crude nicknames, relitigating grievances against the media and casting a sense of urgency of the presidential campaign.

Trump rallied Friday afternoon with thousands of supporters, who lined up hours early to watch him speak at 1st Summit Arena in Johnstown. He portrayed the presidential 2024 race as a do-or-die scenario, and said his opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris, would destroy Pennsylvania.

He called her “Comrade Harris” and labeled her a Marxist.

“She will destroy the great commonwealth of Pennsylvania. And we should win a blowout — we win this state, we win the whole thing,” Trump said. “If we don’t do it this time, we are never going to have another crack at it.”

Trump took the stage at 4:45 p.m. to a standing ovation in an arena packed with over 6,000 supporters. Before his speech, the Trump campaign staff had to add more chairs to the arena floor to accommodate the surging crowd. The Secret Service initially closed the doors at 3:30 p.m., but reopened the doors as more seats were added to the rally floor.

Rep. John Joyce, R-Altoona, who represents Johnstown, spoke before Trump and told the crowd that Pennsylvania’s 13th Congressional District provided the most Republican votes of any district in Pennsylvania. The district covers Johnstown, other parts of Southwestern and South Central Pennsylvania.

The Johnstown area, about 70 miles east of Pittsburgh, is largely Trump country. Cambria County, home to Johnstown, went emphatically Republican in 2020, with Trump getting 68% of the vote compared with President Joe Biden’s 31%.

Taking on a slew of topics

Trump’s visit comes as polling shows a virtual dead heat with Harris among Pennsylvania voters.

Patriotism was on full display during the rally. “USA! USA! USA!” was chanted after nearly every speech, the loudest when Trump took the stage at 4:45 p.m.

Trump’s 90-minute speech meandered over several different topics, including “red meat” for his conservative base and an extended defense of his recent visit campaign event at Arlington National Cemetery, which has since come under fire. At one point, a rally attendee tried to climb onto the arena’s media riser before he was cuffed and escorted out of the arena.

The Associated Press reported that law enforcement officers used a Taser to subdue the man. Police handcuffed another man in the crowd and led him out of the arena, though it wasn’t clear if that was related to the Taser altercation.

Trump first focused on punishment when addressing the crowd. He advocated for establishing a one-year sentence for anyone who burns an American flag and a death sentence for any drug dealer.

“If you had the death penalty for drug dealers, you wouldn’t have any more drugs,” Trump said. “We are becoming a drug-infested nation.”

Trump then criticized President Joe Biden’s administration’s handling of the Afghanistan withdrawal in 2021, before defending his recent trip to Arlington National Cemetery with some of the victims’ families.

The victims, he said, invited him to Arlington National Cemetery, where his campaign got into an altercation with cemetery staffers during a wreath-laying ceremony this week.

Cemetery officials said they warned the Trump campaign not to take photographs at the cemetery. Trump said he wasn’t doing it for publicity.

Trump said he spent hours with the families during his trip.

“The whole thing was beautiful,” he said, adding he heard later in the day that he was accused of using the graves for public relations purposes.

That narrative, Trump claimed, was propagated by the White House, and he pinned the service members’ deaths on Biden.

“The incompetence killed their children,” he said.

Attacking opponents

Only about 40 minutes into his speech did Trump return focus to his rivals. He called Harris a lightweight and said she wasn’t fit to be president. He also called Harris’ running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, “Tampon Tim,” a reference to a Minnesota law passed by Walz that made menstrual products free in school bathrooms.

Trump also hit Harris over her stance on fracking. He said he has always been supportive of the natural gas industry and that Pennsylvanians should not trust Harris’ changing stance. In 2019, Harris said she backed a ban on fracking. But this year, Harris said she supports the practice and has noted that the domestic natural gas production hit record levels in 2022 and 2023.

Trump breezed through mentions of some of his campaign promises like ending taxes on tips, and his new proposal to fund in vitro fertilization treatments for all Americans.

In a statement through her campaign, Harris said that Trump should not be trusted on reproductive rights. She lamented his Friday decision to vote against Florida’s ballot measure to overturn the state’s current abortion ban.

“As a part of Donald Trump’s Project 2025 agenda, he and his allies would limit access to birth control, threaten access to fertility treatments and ban abortion nationwide, with or without Congress,” Harris said.

Trump has distanced himself from Project 2025, a plan written by a conservative think tank that lays out an agenda for a future Trump presidency, and said he has nothing to do with the project.

Despite it being Trump’s first campaign stop in Western Pennsylvania since he was shot at during an outdoor rally July 13 in Butler, the former president barely mentioned it. Trump has vowed to return to Butler for another rally, but details have not been released.

Security has since increased at Trump campaign events, and Trump spoke in front of a bulletproof glass barrier at his most recent outdoor rally in North Carolina.

There was no glass barrier at the indoor rally in Johnstown on Friday.

“Fight Fight Fight” — the words Trump shouted to the crowd in Butler after being grazed by a bullet in an assassination attempt — was repeated dozens of times by rally goers and speakers.

Not every aspect of the Johnstown rally was typical for a Trump campaign event.

Despite Trump’s mixed messages about mail-in voting, video boards in the arena encouraged people to vote by mail.

Many Republicans have been hesitant to vote by mail, with some conservatives believing it is less secure than voting in person and falsely claiming that it leads to massive voter fraud. In Pennsylvania, Democrats vote by mail at significantly larger rates than Republicans.

Trump has given mixed messages about mail-in voting. In January in Iowa, he advocated for eliminating mail-in voting and said it led to “crooked elections.” He has since softened that stance, and is now encouraging Republicans to vote by mail.

During his speech Thursday, Trump reversed course again, claiming he wanted to get rid of mail-in ballots.

At the Johnstown rally, the Trump campaign acknowledged the distrust many Republicans still hold toward mail-in voting. Video messages at the arena encouraged large voter turnout. Video boards displayed messages like “Swamp the Vote” and “Too Big to Rig.”

“We must swamp the radical Democrats with enough turnout,” Trump said in a video broadcasted to rally goers inside the arena. “If we swamp them, then they can’t rig the election.”

The crowd cheered throughout Trump’s long speech, waving flags and displaying banners.

Johnstown was Shawn Ashmore’s first Trump rally. He said he technically wasn’t supposed to attend, because of a recent ankle injury, but he powered through the pain to see Trump.

As a Trump supporter, he said he believes Trump did a “good job” in his previous term, and that the rally was amazing. He plans on voting for him in November and hopes Trump pulls through with a win.

“I’m a Republican fan, period — never voted Democrat,” Ashmore said.

Gregg Majercsik, 55, and wife Terri, 56, turned out for their first Trump rally Friday since it was close to their Johnstown home.

A Greensburg native, Gregg has a remote job working in finance for Penn State.

“I think he’s a businessman more than a politician, but I think he can run the government better than what’s going on right now,” Gregg said of Trump.

Gregg said his concern about border security is another reason why he supports Trump.

“I just don’t want to see those people come across taking jobs and health care and education,” he said of illegal immigrants. “It’s not fair to the rest of the people.”

Local Democrats disagreed.

Laura Burke, a Democratic commissioner from neighboring Blair County, said Trump failed to deliver on his promises to rebuild roads and bridges and invest in the community.

“Kamala Harris understands what families in Pennsylvania are dealing with because she’s lived it,” Burke said in a statement. “Unlike Trump and Vance who will raise our taxes by thousands, Vice President Harris and Governor Walz will cut taxes for the middle class and bring down the cost of living for our families.”