(Fox News) Former President Trump claimed that “few communities have suffered more under the Biden regime than Philadelphia,” while speaking to supporters at Temple University on Saturday evening in the key battleground state of Pennsylvania.
“Under crooked Joe, the city of brotherly love is being ravaged by bloodshed and crime,” Trump said while discussing recent shootings and crime statistics.
He added: “Under the Trump administration, we’re going to bring law and order and safety back to our streets. We are going to bring success back to our schools. We’re going to bring prosperity back to our forgotten communities. And we are going to liberate our once great cities and make Philadelphia better and more beautiful than ever before.”
Trump told the packed crowd inside the Liacouras Center’s 10,000-seat auditorium, “With your vote, Joe Biden’s wave of bedlam and death and terror will begin to recede the moment I take the oath of office.”
Trump spoke to a packed crowd at Philadelphia’s Temple University on Saturday evening. (Anna Moneymaker/Jim Watson/Getty Images)
He also discussed illegal immigration and noted that some family members of Rachel Morin, a mother of five who was allegedly murdered last year on a Maryland hiking trail by Victor Martinez Hernandez — a migrant in the country illegally — were in the rally audience.
“She wanted to stay in good shape and she ended up getting killed,” Trump said, adding that he had just spoken to Morin’s mother.
“And a lot of Rachel’s family is here. I have to say that they’re incredible people,” he said, adding that “they’ve gone through hell.”
Trump also said he was “deeply honored” to be joined at the rally by eight family members of service members killed in Biden’s “catastrophic withdrawal from Afghanistan.”
He said to the families, “They’re all looking down right now and they’re proud of you, the parents and sisters and brothers. There are a lot of them here.”
Pennsylvania Senate candidate David McCormick also came up on stage during the rally, two months after Trump endorsed him.
Trump supporters cheering as he speaks in Philadelphia on Saturday. (Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)
“We have a man who’s a warrior, a great military person, an incredible guy, and we have to elect him as the U.S. senator from your state,” Trump said of McCormick.
McCormick told the crowd, “as a father of six daughters, it breaks my heart to hear about these young, young women that are raped and murdered by illegal migrants. Rachel’s story is a heartbreaking thing. As a native son of Pennsylvania, it breaks my heart that 60% of Pennsylvanians are living paycheck to paycheck.”
He added, “We need a new president in the White House that’s going to get our country back on track.”
Trump’s Philadelphia rally came just days ahead of his first debate with President Bidennext Thursday, and after rallies in other deeply Democratic areas like the Bronx, the Jersey Shore and Detroit.
Winning the swing state in November is key for both Trump and Biden. Trump won the state narrowly in 2016, but Biden edged him out in 2020.
