Former President Obama stumps for Harris, bashes Trump at Pitt
PITTSBURGH – In the first stop on a campaign blitz less than a month before Election Day, former President Barack Obama used a campaign stop at the University of Pittsburgh to excoriate his successor who is also the current Republican presidential candidate.
“I don’t understand why anybody would think Donald Trump would shake things up in a good way,” Obama said. “There’s no evidence that he thinks about anybody but himself.”
Obama’s stop at Pitt’s Fitzgerald Field House before an enthusiastic crowd of about 4,000 people was the first in a series of visits to swing states the former president will be making between now and Nov. 5 to boost the prospects of Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris in a contest that most prognosticators believe will be tight. Former President Bill Clinton is also set to visit swing states in the days ahead to stump for the Democratic ticket, according to several media reports, with a focus on mobilizing Democrats in rural areas.
Gov. Josh Shapiro, who was on Harris’ short list to be her running mate before she settled on Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, was one of Obama’s opening acts at the rally. Shapiro talked up his own achievements in the 21 months he has been governor and drew a roar from the crowd when he urged Trump to “stop s-t talking America.” The former president continued with that theme, arguing that Trump is self-obsessed, prone to whining and preoccupied with his own grievances.
Harris and Walz, Obama asserted, “won’t be focused on their problems, they’ll be focused on your problems.”
Obama also said Trump’s campaign speeches were comparable to the notoriously long-winded diatribes that Cuba’s Fidel Castro would deliver, and criticized Trump for selling such merchandise as sneakers and Bibles.
“He wants you to buy the Word of God – Donald Trump,” Obama said. “He’s got his name next to Matthew and Luke.”
And though Obama’s broadsides against Trump drew the strongest reaction from the crowd, the former president said Kamala Harris “is ready to do the job. She believes in the values that built this country.”
He continued, “Kamala Harris is more prepared for the job as anyone running for president has ever been.” Obama said Harris would work to cut taxes for the middle class, bring down health costs, and give tax credits to new parents.
Obama was introduced by U.S. Sen. Bob Casey, a Democrat who is in a competitive race to keep his seat against Republican businessman Dave McCormick. Obama praised Casey as a public servant who was humble and “rooted in his community.”
Pennsylvania is considered a must-win state for both Harris and her Republican opponent. In his two runs for the White House, in 2008 and 2012, Obama won Pennsylvania convincingly. However the winning margins were much smaller in the two presidential elections that followed: In 2016, Trump bested Hillary Clinton by a half-percent, and President Joe Biden won Pennsylvania in 2020 by a little more than 1%.
The rally at the Fitzgerald Field House was the second time Obama ventured to the Pitt campus in a presidential election year. In April 2008, in his first campaign for president, Obama made an appearance at Pitt’s Petersen Events Center. It was in the lead-up to the Pennsylvania primary, when Hillary Clinton and Obama were engaged in trench warfare for the Democratic nomination. Clinton won the primary, though Obama secured the nomination that summer.