Donald Trump on Monday touted the populist movement he has built over the past 16 months at a rally in Scranton, Pa., predicting a “great victory” in the Keystone State as he delivered his closing argument on the final evening of the presidential race.
“This is considered the greatest movement,” Trump said. “Nobody’s ever seen anything like this.”
“It’s a movement of common sense,” he added. “It’s a movement of competence.”
The GOP nominee spent much of his Scranton campaign stop railing against Hillary Clinton’s “corruption,” the “rigged system” she embodies, and the “dishonest media” he accused of protecting her from scrutiny.
“Now it’s up to the American people to deliver justice at the ballot box tomorrow,” Trump said. “Pennsylvania, let’s swamp them. You’ve got to get out.”
“We’re going to have a great victory tomorrow,” he predicted. “They have no idea.”
Met with effusive cheers from the crowd at the Lackawana College Student Union, Trump noted: “This is not the sound of a second-place finisher.”
The Manhattan billionaire focused on the exodus of blue collar jobs that has hurt parts of Pennsylvania, blaming Clinton and her husband for pushing trade agreements that allowed American jobs to move overseas.
“To all the people of Pennsylvania, I say: We are going to put the miners and the factory workers and the steel workers back to work,” Trump said.
“You’re tired of a government that works only for Wall Street and special interests,” he said. “Hillary Clinton is the last stand for the Wall Street and special interest donors and the special interests themselves, and Hillary is the face of failure.”
“Look at what she’s done with emails, look at the mess,” he added.
Trump positioned his candidacy as the country’s last opportunity to rid Washington of the corruption so many of his supporters see in the government.
“You have one magnificent chance to beat this corrupt system,” Trump said. “It will never happen again.”
Clinton’s advantage in the presidential race has slipped over the past week thanks to the FBI’s decision to reopen its investigation into her private email use.
Even so, she maintains a lead over Trump both nationally and in key battleground states as voters prepare to head for the polls on Tuesday.
Trump slammed President Obama at his Pennsylvania rally Monday for dedicating so much time to the campaign trail on behalf of Clinton rather than working to secure more jobs or hunting down members of the Islamic State.
Clinton had two campaign events scheduled in the Keystone State on Monday: an afternoon speech in Pittsburgh and an evening rally in Philadelphia alongside Obama.
Democrats are counting on a victory in Pennsylvania to push Clinton over the necessary threshold of 270 electoral college votes. They also hope to flip the Senate seat held by Republican Sen. Pat Toomey.
But the battle for Pennsylvania’s 20 electoral votes has tightened considerably in the run-up to Election Day. While a string of polls gave her a double-digit advantage in late August, Clinton concluded the final day of campaigning with a narrow 1.9 point lead over Trump, according to the RealClearPolitics average of polls.
The race between Toomey and Democrat Katie McGinty has similarly tightened over the past several weeks, and McGinty will head into Election Day with a 2 point lead over Toomey.
