Trump eager to troll Biden outside his Scranton birthplace

The campaign said Trump's speech would cover “a half-century of Joe Biden failing America.” The event points to the importance of Pennsylvania as a battleground state — and to the urgency of the president's effort to close the gap in the polls. “Joe Biden is hiding and taking voters for granted but the Trump campaign won't make the same mistake,” said Trump campaign spokeswoman Samantha Zager.

On Joe Biden's big day, President Donald Trump is planning to show up in his rival's old backyard. Trump, in what can only be described as a piece of campaign trolling, on Thursday afternoon was staging an event just outside the former vice president's birthplace in Scranton, Pennsylvania, mere hours before Biden formally accepts the Democratic nomination for president.

The political tradition of a presidential candidate lying low during the other party's convention has eroded over the decades but — to the private delight of Trump's advisers — the president's trip looked to be a particularly in-your-face piece of counter-programming designed to rattle an opponent. The campaign said Trump's speech would cover “a half-century of Joe Biden failing America.” The event points to the importance of Pennsylvania as a battleground state — and to the urgency of the president's effort to close the gap in the polls.

“Joe Biden is hiding and taking voters for granted but the Trump campaign won't make the same mistake,” said Trump campaign spokeswoman Samantha Zager. “Biden's socialist agenda would kill jobs and hurt families in the Keystone State, which is exactly why he won't confront voters in his hometown.” Biden's speech will come hours later from his Delaware hometown and, as the culmination of the four-day convention, will surely dominate headlines and cable news chyrons. But Trump has offered a robust slate of competing activity, holding multiple in-person events this week meant to draw a contrast with the largely virtual campaign that Biden has conducted during the coronavirus pandemic. He visited two other battlegrounds — Wisconsin and Arizona — as well as Minnesota, one of the few blue states from 2016 that Trump's team feels like he may have a chance to flip this fall. But Trump's campaign has been warily watching his standing falter in the trio of Rust Belt states that carried him to the presidency in 2016.