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Trump Looks to Make Inroads into Biden Country with Scranton Stop

Republican presidential nominee, former President Donald Trump, arrives for a rally at Dodge County Airport on October 06, 2024 in Juneau, Wisconsin. (Getty Images via AFP)
Republican presidential nominee, former President Donald Trump, arrives for a rally at Dodge County Airport on October 06, 2024 in Juneau, Wisconsin. (Getty Images via AFP)
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Trump Looks to Make Inroads into Biden Country with Scranton Stop

Republican presidential nominee, former President Donald Trump, arrives for a rally at Dodge County Airport on October 06, 2024 in Juneau, Wisconsin. (Getty Images via AFP)
Republican presidential nominee, former President Donald Trump, arrives for a rally at Dodge County Airport on October 06, 2024 in Juneau, Wisconsin. (Getty Images via AFP)

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump will stage a rally in President Joe Biden's hometown of Scranton, Pennsylvania, on Wednesday as he looks to win over the blue-collar voters who have traditionally been Biden loyalists in the critical state.

It will be Trump's second visit in just five days to Pennsylvania, as he holds rallies in regions heavily populated by the working-class, who are seen as a key voting bloc in the hard-fought race between Trump and his Democratic challenger Kamala Harris.

While Biden is mostly associated with Delaware as a former senator there, Scranton is a fabled part of his origin story. He was born in the industrial city and grew up in a modest home.

Biden won the Democratic stronghold of Lackawanna County, due in large part to Scranton, by nine points in 2020, outperforming Hillary Clinton in 2016, who won the county by under four points.

Trump is locked in a tight battle with Vice President Harris in Pennsylvania, a battleground state whose 19 electoral votes are likely to prove crucial to who wins the Nov. 5 election.

Both candidates are making a concerted effort to win the state. Trump drew a large crowd when he returned on Saturday to the Butler, Pennsylvania, site where he was grazed in the ear by an attempted assassin on July 13.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk, who was with Trump in Butler, plans more Pennsylvania campaigning for the former president, a source said, while Democratic former President Barack Obama is expected in the state on Thursday to give Harris a boost.

In addition to Trump's visit to Scranton, a second event in Reading, Pennsylvania, on Wednesday, will give him another opportunity to try to appeal to working-class voters. Some polls show he has been gaining ground with this bloc.

Trump has made the US economy a central theme of his campaign, promising tariffs on some imports to increase the production of goods in the United States and boost employment.

The most recent Reuters-Ipsos poll said respondents reported the economy as the top issue facing the country. It said some 44% said Trump had the better approach on addressing the "cost of living," compared to 38% who picked Harris.

Democrats have said Trump's attempt to preserve his 2017 slashing of the corporate tax rate shows the limits of his caring for blue-collar workers.

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Germans Mourn the 5 Killed and 200 Injured in the Apparent Attack on a Christmas Market

21 December 2024, Bremen: Mobile barriers secure the streetcar tracks at the Christmas market in Bremen, after the Magdeburg's Christmas market attack the day before. (dpa)
21 December 2024, Bremen: Mobile barriers secure the streetcar tracks at the Christmas market in Bremen, after the Magdeburg's Christmas market attack the day before. (dpa)
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Germans Mourn the 5 Killed and 200 Injured in the Apparent Attack on a Christmas Market

21 December 2024, Bremen: Mobile barriers secure the streetcar tracks at the Christmas market in Bremen, after the Magdeburg's Christmas market attack the day before. (dpa)
21 December 2024, Bremen: Mobile barriers secure the streetcar tracks at the Christmas market in Bremen, after the Magdeburg's Christmas market attack the day before. (dpa)

Germans on Saturday mourned the victims of an apparent attack in which authorities say a doctor drove into a busy outdoor Christmas market, killing five people, injuring 200 others and shaking the public’s sense of security at what would otherwise be a time of joy and wonder.

The alleged attack Friday evening in Magdeburg, about 130 kilometers (80 miles) west of Berlin, killed a 9-year-old and four adults and injured 41 people badly enough that authorities warned the death toll could rise.

Magdeburg marked the tragedy Saturday with the tolling church bells at 7:04 p.m., the exact time of the attack in the city of roughly 240,000 people.

The driver, a 50-year-old doctor who immigrated from Saudi Arabia in 2006, surrendered to police at the scene. He’s being investigated for five counts of suspected murder and 205 counts of suspected attempted murder, prosecutor Horst Walter Nopens said at a news conference.

Among other things, investigators are looking into whether the attack could have been motivated by the suspect’s dissatisfaction with the way Germany treats Saudi refugees, Nopens said.

“There is no more peaceful and cheerful place than a Christmas market,” Chancellor Olaf Scholz said. “What a terrible act it is to injure and kill so many people there with such brutality.”

Although Nopens mentioned the treatment of Saudi immigrants angle, authorities said Saturday that they still didn't know why the suspect drove his black BMW into the crowded market.

Police haven't publicly named the suspect, but several German news outlets identified him as Taleb A., withholding his last name in line with privacy laws, and reported that he was a specialist in psychiatry and psychotherapy.

Describing himself as a former Muslim, the suspect appears to have been an active user of the social media platform X, accusing German authorities of failing to do enough to combat what he referred to as the “Islamification of Europe.”

The violence shocked Germany and Magdeburg, which is the capital of the eastern state of Saxony-Anhalt, bringing its mayor to the verge of tears and marring the centuries-old German tradition of Christmas markets. It led several other communities to cancel their weekend Christmas markets as a precaution and out of solidarity with Magdeburg’s loss. Berlin kept its many markets open but increased its police presence at them.

Germany has suffered a string of extremist attacks in recent years, including a knife attack that killed three people and wounded eight at a festival in the western city of Solingen in August.

Friday’s attack came eight years after an extremist drove a truck into a crowded Christmas market in Berlin, killing 13 people and injuring many others. The attacker was killed days later in a shootout in Italy.

Chancellor Scholz and Interior Minister Nancy Faeser traveled to Magdeburg on Saturday, and a memorial service is to take place in the city cathedral in the evening. Faeser ordered flags lowered to half-staff at federal buildings across the country.

Verified bystander footage distributed by the German news agency dpa showed the suspect’s arrest at a tram stop in the middle of the road. A nearby police officer pointing a handgun at the man shouted at him as he lay prone, his head arched up slightly. Other officers swarmed around the suspect and took him into custody.

Thi Linh Chi Nguyen, a 34-year-old manicurist from Vietnam whose salon is in a mall across from the Christmas market, was on the phone during a break when she heard loud bangs that she thought were fireworks. She then saw a car drive through the market at high speed. People screamed and a child was thrown into the air by the car.

Shaking as she described what she had witnessed, she recalled seeing the car bursting out of the market and turning right onto Ernst-Reuter-Allee street and then coming to a standstill at the tram stop where the suspect was arrested.

The number of injured people was overwhelming.

“My husband and I helped them for two hours. He ran back home and grabbed as many blankets as he could find because they didn’t have enough to cover the injured people. And it was so cold,” she said.

The market itself was still cordoned off Saturday with red and white tape and police vans, as armed officers guarded at every entrance. Some thermal security blankets still lay on the street.