Donald Trump returned to western Pennsylvania on Saturday, where he held a rally at Arnold Palmer Regional Airport in Latrobe as the race heats up with 17 days until Election Day.
Trump last returned to the area for a rally in Butler earlier this month, the site where an assassination attempt was made on him in July (and earlier in the week, he held a disastrous town hall in Oaks, Pennsylvania where he stopped taking questions and played music instead).
Trump has a propensity to ramble during his rallies, and recently he's seemed to throw away any sense of decorum when delivering his speeches (in a recent appearance he called the Democratic presidential nominee and Vice President Kamala Harris “retarded”) and he's appeared nonsensical ( during a speech at Coachella last weekend, he meandered about solving California's water problem without providing a solution, and also threatened to withhold wildfire aid should he be elected he was also recently incoherent sounding answering a question about climate at a Univision town hall, instead; going on about his golf course).
But on Saturday, the guy who has jumped the shark many times previously, was pretty out there even for him, going well beyond his typical rants. Trump began his rally talking about the late golfer Arnold Palmer, for whom the airport where Trump appeared was named — that appeared to be the only coherent connection to his babbling on about Palmer for nearly 15 minutes. That was odd even for the golf-loving Trump, but then he shared a story about Palmer in the shower room.
“Arnold Palmer was all man, and I say that with all due respect to women, and I love women,” he said. “But this guy, this guy, this is a guy that was all man. This man was strong and tough. And I refuse to say it, but when he took showers with the other pros, they came out of there they said, Oh my God, that's unbelievable. I had to say it.” (Narrator: No, you didn't).
While wildly inappropriate, it does appear to fit Trump's modus operandi, if you consider his obsession with size (from exaggerating the crowds attending his rallies and his complaining the bigger attendance at Harris' rallies, to his hands/penis size).
He also referred to Palmer as “a friend,” which Palmer's daughter Peg appeared to dispute in 2018. While she said they had dealings and that her dad appreciated Trump's support of the game, “my dad saw a different side of him,” she told Sporting News.
“My dad didn't like people who act like they're better than other people,” Peg told the outlet in 2018. “He didn't like it when people were nasty and rude. He didn't like it when someone was disrespectful to someone else. My dad had no patience for people who demean other people in public. He had no patience for people who are dishonest and cheat. My dad was disciplined. He wanted to be a good role model. He was appalled by Trump's lack of civility and what he began to see as Trump's lack of character.”
Moving on from endowments to him addressing his competitor, who is well-endowed financially in comparison to Trump's campaign (having raised $1 billion in the less than three months she's been a candidate, more than Trump has finagled in a year of campaigning), Trump hit another low when referring to her on Saturday. While he has been plenty derogatory to Harris since she entered the candidacy, having called her “retarded” and also “mentally disabled” during recent speeches, this time he resorted to just dropping the s-bomb.
“So you have to tell Kamala Harris that you've had enough, that you just can't take it anymore,” he told attendees on Saturday while they cheered. “We can't stand you. You're a shit vice president. The worst. You're the worst vice president, Kamala. You're fired. Get the hell out of here.”
Trump and Harris continue to run neck and neck in Pennsylvania, with 538 Project and ABC News finding Harris and Trump each garnering 47.8 percent in their polling averages as of Saturday night.
Tomorrow, Oct. 20 Trump is set to host at the Lancaster, Pennsylvania town hall at the Lancaster Convention Center. Whether he resorts to a playlist like he did for his bizarre town hall that turned lamest dance party ever remains to be seen.