Donald Trump has urged Christian supporters to go to the polls for him one last time and courted Black voters in Philadelphia by promising to fix a city "ravaged by bloodshed" even as data shows a decline in violent crime.
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If elected in November, the Republican presidential candidate told a rally of several thousand at Philadelphia's Temple University, he would give police "immunity" to do their jobs and "surge" federal resources to cities battling violence.
Trump dismissed as "fake" FBI statistics that showed a continued drop in levels of violent crime and murder across the country in the first three months of 2024, and accused Democratic President Joe Biden of lying about the data.
"Under crooked Joe Biden the City of Brotherly Love is being ravaged by bloodshed and crime," Trump said in an arena in a historically Black neighbourhood, addressing an audience more diverse than a typical rally, but still largely white.
"Under the Trump administration we are going to bring law and order and safety back to our streets."
The promise to fight crime was part of a larger pitch to Black and Hispanic people, who make up more than half the city's population. The Trump campaign has been encouraged by some opinion polls showing he may be gaining ground with these voters this election cycle.
As he often does, Trump portrayed migrants in the US illegally as dangerous and burdensome. He claimed, without citing evidence, that they were taking jobs from Black and Hispanic workers.
"Joe Biden's open border has also been a disaster for our great African-American and Hispanic-American populations," Trump said.
Trump has little chance of winning Philadelphia, which Biden won easily in 2020. But he hopes to narrow the margin in the city and surrounding counties so critical to the tally in Pennsylvania, a battleground state that is hotly contested because it can swing either to Republicans or Democrats.
State lawmaker Malcolm Kenyatta, a Democrat, said Black voters remember Trump's history promoting the bigoted conspiracy theory that questioned whether Barack Obama, the first African American president, was born in the United States, and policies he pursued that hurt the Black working class.
"Donald Trump is in a Black place, but Donald Trump does not give a damn about Black people," Kenyatta said at a briefing at a Biden campaign office in Philadelphia before the rally.
Trump and Biden will face off in the first presidential debate in Atlanta on Thursday.
During a pre-rally stop in Philadelphia, Trump told supporters he knew whom he planned to choose as his running mate and that person was likely to be at the debate, a video posted to social media by a campaign spokesperson showed.
At an earlier event in Washington organised by the Faith and Freedom Coalition, a conservative Christian group, the former president urged churchgoers to go to the polls for him one last time in November.
"Christians go to church, but they don't vote that much. You know the power you have if you would vote," Trump said. "You gotta get out and vote. Just this time. In four years you don't have to vote, OK? In four years don't vote, I don't care."
Trump mentioned only briefly the politically sensitive issue of abortion, a topic of central importance to the group, reiterating his position that curbs on the procedure should be decided by voters on a state-by-state basis.
That stance contradicts the view of most conservative Christians, and Trump's reticence to push for or even discuss additional federal regulations speaks to how sensitive the issue has become for Republicans.
Trump has repeatedly said Republicans risk electoral defeat if they take too tough a line on abortion rights.
"We've gotten abortion out of the federal government and back to the states. The people will decide, and that's the way it should be," Trump said.
Australian Associated Press
