Will Trump repeat lies about crime and voter fraud at a rally in North Philadelphia?

Before former President Donald Trump utters a single word at his US rally Liacouras Center on Saturday, it’s worth remembering that not everything he said in recent years in, around, or about Philadelphia was 100% true.

While it’s unclear whether his statements here are any more faulty than elsewhere, we’ve heard enough falsehoods and distortions to create the impression that Trump has a problem with us.

Perhaps that’s because in the 2020 election, President Joe Biden received 604,175 votes, or 81%, while Trump had about 18%, or 132,870 votes. And in North Philadelphia, where he will appear this weekend, Biden won a clear majority of the vote in those precincts, 79% to 95%.

Trump will have a difficult time letting go of these numbers, as evidenced by his oft-repeated lie that there was an election in Pennsylvania stolen.

Here are six notable lies from the former president about Philadelphia and Pennsylvania.

1. “Bad things are happening in Philadelphia.”

Even before the 2020 vote, Trump made nonsense statements about the Keystone State. During the October 2020 presidential debate with Biden, the then-president said this “Bad things are happening in Philadelphia.”

One interpretation is that Trump was expressing frustration with the Democratic majority Philadelphia has long been a problem for Republican candidates.

But in Thursday’s interview Matt Jordan, a disinformation expert at Pennsylvania State University he said the “bad things” quote “was a clear dog whistle about race in Philadelphia.”

“It’s not even a dog whistle,” Jordan continued. “Trump only addressed race” and how the city’s majority of people of color vote for Democrats.

2. “Joyful Warriors” at the Marriott Hotel

Trump was campaigning for the 2024 election when he attended the Moms for Liberty summit at the Philadelphia Marriott Downtown last June.

There, he misled again by praising the alleged hate group as “not a hate group at all”: “You are joyful warriors, you are fierce, fierce patriots. You pose no threat to America.”

The Southern Law Poverty Center differs. She calls Moms for Liberty “a far-right organization that is committed to student inclusion efforts and identifies as part of the modern parental rights movement.” The group opposes LGBTQ-inclusive and racist school curricula and advocates for book bans.”

3. Mitt Romney receives “almost zero votes” in Philadelphia.

As it happens, Trump rarely visited Philadelphia, except for scarce stops to sell sneakers, as he did in February.

But that doesn’t mean he shies away from using the City of Brotherly Love as a punching bag when it’s convenient.

During a 2020 rally in Allentown, he falsely portrayed that the 2012 presidential election between then-President Barack Obama and Republican challenger Mitt Romney was somehow rigged. Taking the opportunity to denigrate Philadelphia again, Trump suggested that something fishy was going on. CNN. That’s because, he said, Romney received “almost zero votes” in the city.

According to CNN, Romney actually won 96,476 votes, which is 14% of the total vote in Philadelphia.

4. Former Gov. Tom Wolf is ‘counting our ballots’

Later in the same speech, Trump incorrectly claimed that then-Gov. Tom Wolf counted absentee ballots himself in the 2020 presidential election in Pennsylvania. “This is the guy counting our votes?” – Trump asked. “It does not work. It does not work.”

Governors don’t count ballots; district elections officials do that.

Also during this rally, Trump repeated the misinformation that Philadelphia the judge ruled in the lawsuit that Trump’s people were not allowed to watch polls during the 2020 election. The judge said the Trump campaign does not give poll watchers the right to observe activities only at the city’s fresh satellite election offices, where votes are not counted.

5. Changing the name of Pennsylvania

In one of Trump’s weirder misstatements, the former president told the audience at the Pennsylvania Farm Show in Harrisburg in February: “We have to win in November or we won’t have Pennsylvania. They will change the name. They’re going to change the name of Pennsylvania.

Possible interpretations include the assumption that Trump somehow lumped William Penn in with historical figures who were “cancelled” because of their alleged misdeeds.

6. Abortion laws apply in Wildwood

Last month, closer to home, Trump told a Wildwood crowd, without evidence, that Democrats wanted to pass an abortion bill that would allow doctors to “execute” newborns.

And a photo circulated by Trump allies purporting to show the Wildwood rally was actually a photo of a Rod Stewart concert on a beach in Rio de Janeiro.

In anticipation of Saturday’s appearance in North Philadelphia, Jessica Myrick, a disinformation expert and professor of media studies at Penn State, said Trump would likely talk about “violent crime going up when in fact it’s going down.”

“He’ll probably talk about it.” [fictional movie character] Hannibal Lecterand also about sharks” that Trump is fascinated by, Myrick said, “And he will once again tell people how the Pennsylvania vote was rigged in the 2020 presidential election when it wasn’t.”

Myrick concluded: “Trump is very good at telling people the same things over and over, whether they are true or not.”