Three takeaways from former President Donald Trump’s Western Pennsylvania rally

Former President Donald Trump returned to Pennsylvania on Monday for the 12th time this year to hold a rally outside Pittsburgh, telling thousands of supporters that if he won back the White House, he would stop the flow of migrants into the country and would be a “protector” of women.

Trump’s return to what is once again shaping up to be the most important swing state comes as polls show him slightly trailing Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee, in the presidential race among Pennsylvania voters and with his disadvantage among female voters growing.

“If we win Pennsylvania, we win the whole thing,” the Republican nominee said at Indiana University of Pennsylvania’s Ed Fry Arena, which is about an hour east of Pittsburgh, repeating a comment he made in Wilkes-Barre last month. “It’s very simple.”

» READ MORE: Harris now has narrow lead over Trump in Pa.

In a 90-minute speech, Trump sought to win over female voters; repeated unsupported and debunked claims about migrants; and said Harris was a danger to American democracy, evoking Democrats’ attacks against him.

Earlier in the day, Trump made an appearance at the Protecting America Initiative, an anti-China group founded by a former Trump administration official, in Smithton, Pa., and toured Sprankle’s Neighborhood Market in Kittanning, Pa., where he highlighted the rise in grocery prices under President Joe Biden’s administration.

Ahead of Trump’s appearance, Harris campaign surrogates criticized Trump as being bad for Pennsylvania workers.

“Vice President Harris is committed to building an economy where working families don’t have to just get by, but we can get ahead,” Pennsylvania AFL-CIO president Angela Ferritto said.

Here are three takeaways from Trump’s rally in Indiana.

Trump, whose appointees to the U.S. Supreme Court helped overturn the Roe v. Wade decision that had established a constitutional right to abortion, attempted to shore up his weaknesses with female voters.

Under Biden, Trump said, women have been “much poorer,” “less healthy,” and more “depressed and unhappy” than during his presidency. In a hushed voice that stood in contrast to his usual bombast, Trump vowed to change all of that.

“You will be protected, and I will be your protector,” the Republican nominee said. “Women will be happy, healthy, confident, and free. You will no longer be thinking about abortion. It’s all they talk about — abortion — because we’ve done something that nobody else could have done it.”

Trump, evidently wary that his choice of words could be construed as sexist, added: “As president, I have to be your protector. I hope you don’t make too much of it. I hope the fake news won’t go, ‘Oh, he wants to be your protector.’”

Trump also said he supports in vitro fertilization, or IVF, separating himself from many antiabortion activists on the religious right who oppose the fertility treatment.

“We want you to have your beautiful, beautiful, perfect baby,” Trump said. “We want those babies, and we need them. And I will protect women at a level never seen before. They will finally be healthy, hopeful, safe, and secure. Their lives will be happy, beautiful, and great again, and it’s my honor to do so.”

Trump repeated disproven lies about Venezuelans taking over an apartment building in Aurora, Colo., a conservative media narrative that has been denied by local police.

“They’re taking over real estate,” Trump said. “They’re really like I was, but they take it over with guns. I took it over with a brain. But they’re in the thick of it, Aurora. And they have weapons that the military doesn’t even have. AK-47s. I learned about AK-47s three weeks ago. That’s not a nice — I’m getting very good at learning about weapons. I’m learning about guns.”

Trump’s AK-47 comment appeared to be a reference to the alleged recent assassination attempt on the former president by Ryan Wesley Routh, a North Carolina man who is not an immigrant.

Trump additionally said migrants were destroying Springfield, Ohio, but did not repeat the false narrative about Haitians eating pets that he raised at the Sept. 10 presidential debate in Philadelphia.

» READ MORE: Charleroi’s GOP state senator is defending Haitian immigrants in the town as Trump’s allies continue to circulate falsehoods

He also invoked Charleroi, Pa., stating incorrectly that the town’s population has grown 2,000% due to migrants. Republican U.S. Senate candidate Dave McCormick recently posted the same incorrect statistic on X.

Charleroi, a town of about 4,200, has added between 700 and 2,000 new immigrants in the last several years, according to PolitiFact. That’s less than a 50% increase. A 2,000% increase in the total population would result in the town growing to 88,000 people.

Trump showed a clip of Harris, the Democratic nominee, appearing on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon in which she endorsed the Green New Deal plan to combat climate change and vowed to ban fracking.

The clip was meant to drive home his message that Harris’ energy policy would be bad for Pennsylvania workers. But Trump first took a lengthy detour to share his thoughts on various TV hosts and programs.

He said the three major network late-night hosts — Fallon, Stephen Colbert, and Jimmy Kimmel — are “dying,” apparently referencing their ratings. Trump then related how he initially didn’t like Fox News’ late night personality, Greg Gutfeld, because the host had been critical of him in the past.

“When they don’t like me, I don’t like them, OK? Sounds childish,” he said. “That’s the way it is. Call it a personality defect.”

But he agreed to appear on Gutfeld’s show anyway, and now Gutfeld’s ratings are much better, Trump said.

He then praised numerous Fox news and opinion hosts before complaining that the network sometimes airs “bad commercials,” apparently referencing ads attacking Trump, following his appearances. He also said he didn’t like when Fox featured panels that included people who disagreed with the MAGA platform.

“Fox should put just the good people on, the people that want to make America great again,” he said. “They shouldn’t allow bad commercials.”

Staff writer Fallon Roth contributed to this article.