Biden makes third trip to Pennsylvania this year with MLK holiday event

President Joe Biden traveled to Philadelphia on Martin Luther King Jr. Day to volunteer at a local food bank, marking his third visit to the swing state of Pennsylvania this year alone.

On Friday, the president visited a number of small businesses alongside Gov. Josh Shapiro (D-PA) and Sen. Bob Casey (D-PA), and on Jan. 6, Biden held his first reelection event of the year, a lengthy speech near Valley Forge focusing on the threat to democracy he says former President Donald Trump poses.

Following those trips, Biden, sporting a blue zip-up sweater and baseball cap, spent Monday packing apples and other produce at Philabundance, the same food bank where he and first lady Jill Biden have volunteered for the past two consecutive MLK holidays.

Unlike past visits to Philabundance, Biden did not speak to the media on Monday, though he did take questions from reporters traveling with him to Allentown on Friday.

He further marked the holiday with a Monday statement commemorating King on X, the social media site formerly known as Twitter.

“When people think about Dr. King, they think of his ministry and the movement, or most about the epic struggle for civil rights and voting rights,” he wrote. “On this day of remembrance, we recognize that his mission was even deeper. It was moral. We must commit ourselves to his path.”

Besides his home state of Delaware, the president has spent more time in Pennsylvania than any other state since entering the White House, with Monday’s visit representing his 34th trip to the Keystone State since 2021.

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Trump won Pennsylvania, typically a Democratic stronghold, in the 2016 election, but Biden flipped the state blue again in 2020.

The president appears to be marginally expanding on his performance there and currently leads the likely Republican presidential nominee in Pennsylvania by 2 points, 47% to 45%, according to the latest poll from Quinnipiac University.

Haisten Willis contributed to this report.