Former President Donald Trump is coming to Westmoreland County for a rally, and he is reportedly adding a few new twists to his typical campaign schedule.
Trump is scheduled to speak at 6 p.m. Saturday at the Arnold Palmer Regional Airport in Unity Township.
Rallies at airport hangars have been a frequent occurrence for Trump throughout his political career. According to the Trump campaign, the Westmoreland County rally will feature Trump’s typical talking points about taming high inflation, curtailing illegal immigration and boosting domestic energy production.
But his trip to the Pittsburgh region over the weekend will also include a few surprises.
Here are five things to know about Trump’s visit.
McDonald’s visit
At Trump’s rally at Indiana University of Pennsylvania in September, the GOP presidential candidate hinted that maybe he would “work the French fry job for about a half an hour” at McDonald’s when questioning his rival Kamala Harris’ college job of working at the fast-food chain.
Trump will apparently fulfill that pledge and is expected to visit a McDonald’s somewhere in Pennsylvania on Sunday to “work the fry cooker,” according to a report from CNN.
Trump has claimed, without evidence, that Harris never worked at McDonald’s.
It’s not clear which McDonald’s Trump will visit.
Western Pennsylvania has a deep McDonald’s heritage. The Big Mac was invented by Jim Delligatti, who owned several franchise locations throughout the region. It was created in Delligatti’s restaurant in Ross and first put on the menu in Uniontown.
The McDonald’s on Route 30 in North Huntingdon is home to the Big Mac Museum.
Steelers game
Trump is expected to pop up at the Pittsburgh Steelers home game on Sunday Night Football.
Trump will attend the game against the New York Jets at Acrisure Stadium, a source told TribLive.
While president and during his current campaign, Trump attended several college football games, including a September visit to see Alabama vs. Georgia.
It’s unclear if Trump has attended an NFL game while in office or campaigning.
One of Trump’s biggest surrogates, billionaire Elon Musk, attended the Steelers-Cowboys game at Acrisure on Oct. 6.
Democratic Vice Presidential candidate Tim Walz rallied inside Acrisure Stadium on Tuesday with former Steelers safety Will Allen. Hall of Fame Steelers running back Jerome Bettis endorsed Harris earlier this year and campaigned with her and Walz in Beaver County.
Some trivia: The late Steelers owner Dan Rooney was appointed ambassador to Ireland by President Barack Obama; Jets owner Robert Wood Johnson was appointed ambassador to the United Kingdom by Trump.
Frequent flyer
Trump is somewhat of a regular at Arnold Palmer Regional Airport in Unity Township.
He last rallied there in November 2022, when campaigning for Republican candidates Doug Mastriano and Mehmet Oz, who ran losing campaigns for Pennsylvania governor and a Pennsylvania U.S. Senate seat, respectively.
Trump also rallied at the Latrobe-area airport in September 2020 in front of several thousand people.
Six times Trump
This weekend’s visit will be Trump’s sixth time in the Pittsburgh region since July.
The former president has visited six counties so far: Armstrong, Butler, Cambria, Indiana, Somerset, and Westmoreland.
Previous stops include a farm near Smithton, Sprankle’s grocery store in Kittanning, and two rallies in Butler County, including one on July 13 when a gunman opened fire, wounding Trump and two rallygoers and killing a spectator.
Trump, Harris, and their running mates have visited Pittsburgh a total of 16 times, which is more than any other region in the country.
False rumors
Westmoreland County Airport officials on Tuesday sought to dispel false rumors that thousands of illegal immigrants were being flown overnight into the site of Trump’s pending visit, Arnold Palmer Regional Airport.
“It’s not happening. We have over 100 cameras on this airport,” Gabe Monzo, Westmoreland County Airport Authority executive director, said during an authority board meeting Tuesday. “It’s not part of what we do. And just, please — I’m very serious — we’ve been getting legitimate calls from legitimate people that are getting these phone calls, and it’s not happening.”
The Trump campaign has focused its messaging on the dangers posed to the country by immigrants, saying that those who have entered the U.S. illegally are “poisoning the blood of our country.” He falsely claimed that Haitian immigrants were eating people’s pets in Springfield, Ohio.
Monzo said he doesn’t know the source of the immigrant airlift rumor but has been getting calls from people in the community inquiring about it, some of which are from police and people involved in politics.
“It’s really frustrating to even consider these issues,” he said. “These are just a nuisance.”