President Donald Trump is returning to the battleground state of Pennsylvania on Thursday to deliver a campaign speech to attack Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden near the place Biden grew up and on the same day Biden is to accept the nomination.
Trump will speak at a building products company in Old Forge, a former coal mining town a few miles away from the home where Biden grew up in Scranton before he moved to Delaware.
Trump along with Vice President Mike Pence is on a campaign swing through battleground states this week, ahead of the Nov. 3 election, as Trump's campaign surrogates and cabinet members flock to Pennsylvania. Meanwhile, Trump and Biden campaign ads are flooding Pennsylvania's airwaves.
Trump is returning to northeastern Pennsylvania, where he did unexpectedly well in 2016, winning Luzerne County and nearly winning in Lackawanna County, both of which have a solid registration advantage for Democrats.
But they bear the hallmarks of Trump country: they are whiter, with lower median incomes and lower rates of college-degree attainment, than the rest of Pennsylvania.
Meanwhile, Pennsylvania’s Democratic Party is under pressure to show it can make the state blue again after Trump won the state by about 44,000 votes in 2016. Biden's boosters in Pennsylvania also see him as well-suited to attract conservative Democrats who drifted to Trump in 2016.