Donald Trump held a rally in Erie, Pennsylvania, at the Bayfront Convention Center on Sunday. It was his second consecutive appearance in a crucial battleground state this weekend, following Saturday’s speech in Prairie du Chien, Wisconsin, where he called Democratic presidential nominee and Vice President Kamala Harris “mentally disabled” while delivering an anti-migrant speech.
This time around, Trump continued to make the border and migrants the bogeymen, adding that their presence in this country requires appointed officials who give police the right to be “really violent” versus “the liberal left” who “want to destroy our country.” He has also claimed crime has been up in cities across the United States, which is not the case, per a report from the Council on Criminal Justice.
“See, we have to let the police do their job, and if they have to be extraordinarily rough. And you know, the funny thing with all of that stuff, look at the department store, same thing … You see these guys walking out with air conditioners, with refrigerators on their back, the craziest thing, and the police aren’t allowed to do their job,” Trump said. “They’re told, if you do anything, you’re going to lose your pension — you’re going to lose your family, your house, your car. The police want to do it. The border patrol wants to do it … They’re not allowed to do it because the liberal left won’t let him do it. The liberal left wants to destroy them, and they want to destroy our country.”
Trump then fantasized about giving police one “really violent day” to crack down on crime.
“Now, if you had one really violent day,” Trump said. “Like a guy like Mike Kelly, put him in charge,” he continued, gesturing to Pennsylvania Republican Rep. Mike Kelly. “Congressman Kelly, put him in charge for one day. Mike, he’s a great Congressman. Would you say, Mike, that if you were in charge, you would say, ‘Oh, please don’t touch them. Don’t touch them. Let them rob your store’?” Trump said. “’Let all these stores go out of business, right?’ They don’t pay rent that the city doesn’t. The whole — it’s a chain of events. It’s so bad. One rough hour, and I mean real rough, and the word will get out and it will end immediately. End immediately.”
On Tuesday, Oct. 1 Trump returns to the battleground state of Wisconsin, where he will speak at two different events in Waunakee and Milwaukee.