The Harris presidential campaign highlighted Trump’s comments on social media. Other Trump critics, including the Lincoln Project, noted the parallels between what Trump was suggesting and The Purge, a horror movie series in which a new political party allows all crime for a 12-hour period every year.

“He’s just describing the premise of The Purge,” the Lincoln Project, an anti-Trump GOP group, said on X.

Trump has long portrayed America’s cities as gripped by rampant crime, though violent crime has been down across the country. Annual data released last week by the FBI showed that violent crime decreased 3% from 2022 to 2023, with murder and nonnegligent homicide down 11.6%. Trump has in turn questioned the validity of the data.

In the presidential race, Trump and Harris have competed over who is the best candidate for law and order. Trump has campaigned on endorsements from police unions, such as the Fraternal Order of Police, while Harris has leaned into her background as a prosecutor and emphasised the raft of legal problems Trump faces as he seeks a return to the White House.

Trump was convicted earlier this year of 34 felony counts of falsifying business records in New York. He is scheduled to be sentenced after the election.

A recent Washington Post poll of the state where Trump was speaking Sunday – Pennsylvania – found that voters there favoured Trump over Harris on “crime and safety” by a margin of 50% to 43%. The two candidates were otherwise neck-and-neck among likely voters in the state, according to the poll, which was conducted from September 12 to 16.

Harris is airing a direct-to-camera TV ad in Pennsylvania and other battleground states in which she denounces “negative ads against me” and promotes her law enforcement background.

“Here’s the truth: My life’s work has been fighting on behalf of others,” Harris says in the commercial. “It’s why I became a prosecutor, district attorney and attorney general.”