Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump said on Saturday he believed Democrat Kamala Harris will be easier to beat than President Joe Biden even as some polls showed her edging ahead in the race for the Nov. 5 presidential election.

Trump, the former president, spoke at a rally in Wilkes-Barre in northeastern Pennsylvania, a state looming large in the campaign. Vice President Harris will conduct a bus tour of western Pennsylvania starting in Pittsburgh on Sunday, ahead of the kickoff of the Democratic National Convention on Monday in Chicago.

"I believe she will be easier to beat than him," said Trump, referring to her as "radical" and a "lunatic."

Trump has sought to portray Harris as far left on a number of policies. At the rally, he highlighted her previous call for a ban on fracking, an industry important to the state. Harris' campaign has recently indicated she would not support a ban.

He also continued to attack Harris on personal terms, even as some political analysts say such comments could hurt Trump with moderate voters.

"Have you heard her laugh? That is the laugh of a crazy person," Trump said, adding that he was displeased by the illustration of Harris on the cover of the latest issue of Time magazine. "I'm much better looking than her."

In a meandering speech, Trump repeated his false claim that he lost the 2020 election due to fraud, dismissed the threat of climate change and said his plan to impose across-the-board tariffs on foreign goods would not act as a tax on U.S. consumers, an assertion that most economists contest.

The Mohegan Sun Arena, where Trump appeared, has a capacity of roughly 8,000 and was nearly full when he started speaking. But the crowd began to thin after the one-hour mark. He spoke for more than 100 minutes in total.

Trump said Harris should have done more to tackle inflation and other issues since she and Biden took office. If reelected he said he would sign an executive order directing cabinet secretaries and agency heads to take action to lower prices.

"Another rally, same old show," Joseph Costello, a spokesperson for the Harris campaign, said in a statement responding to Trump's rally speech, which he described as filled with "lies, name-calling, and confused rants."

Pennsylvania was one of three Rust Belt states, along with Wisconsin and Michigan, that helped power Trump's upset victory in 2016. Biden, who grew up in Scranton, Pennsylvania, flipped the trio back to the Democrats in 2020.

With 19 electoral votes out of the 270 needed to secure the White House, compared with 15 in Michigan and 10 in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania may be the biggest prize in this year's election and potentially tip the balance for either candidate.

Harris' entry into the race after Biden ended his reelection bid last month has upended the contest, erasing the lead Trump built in the final weeks of Biden's campaign. Harris is leading Trump by more than two percentage points in Pennsylvania, according to the poll tracking website FiveThirtyEight.