Shortly before that, the Independent went to a Pennsylvania Democratic Party office opening in Scranton — conveniently located on Biden Street, given the president’s Scranton roots — with Attorney General Josh Shapiro, the Democratic nominee for governor. Pennsylvania is, of course, one of the biggest battlegrounds. Mr. Trump filed more than 40 lawsuits in Pennsylvania during the 2020 election to challenge the results, which Mr. Shapiro successfully fought back, making him a big target during the rally. One of Trump’s biggest supporters in the Pennsylvania Republican Party, state senator Doug Mastriano – who paid for buses to come to Washington on January 6 – is running against Mr Shapiro. Here are five takeaways from The Independent’s 4-hour trip to northeastern Pennsylvania (steaks and Italian food not included):
Trump uses Mar-a-Lago as a political rally.
Predictably, the Mar-a-Lago raid did nothing to dampen the ex-president’s surprise. If anything, he delivered one of his most combative speeches I’ve heard in a long time. “This flagrant abuse of the law will cause a reaction that no one has ever seen before,” he told the crowd. Much of the crowd gave some of the loudest applause when he spoke about the research at Mar-a-Lago. By the way, Mr. Trump also brought his lawyer Christina Bobb to the gathering, showing that he clearly sees this as an elaborate multi-player show as if it were still an episode of The Apprentice and she is the main character. The fact that he brought Bob to his rally also shows that he probably approves of the way he was acquitted on TV, despite the fact that he was the subject of much ridicule.
Trump lets his hatred of Fetterman fly, but that doesn’t help Dr. Oz.
One of the more revealing points of the rally came when Trump said that Lt. Gov. John Fetterman, the Democratic candidate for the open Pennsylvania Senate seat, was wearing “dirty, dirty, dirty sneakers and he can dress like a teenager who rises in the basement of his parents. ” He then went a step further, saying that Mr. Fetterman “supports taxpayer-funded drugs and the complete decriminalization of illegal drugs, including heroin, cocaine, crystal meth, and the highly lethal fentanyl, and by the way, he takes them himself.” Just as Trump despises Shapiro for beating him in court, Fetterman has a way of getting in the former president’s goat since he often pushed back against Mr. Trump’s claims of voter fraud in 2020. That served as a template for the Democrat’s relentless attack on Dr. Oz on social media because he hails from neighboring New Jersey. But it did not help his preferred Senate candidate, doctor and TV host Mehmet Oz, whom Mr. Trump endorsed in the primary. Dr. Oz did not receive as much applause as the former president or even Mr. Mastriano during the rally, either during his solo speech or when he joined Trump. At one point during Mr. Trump’s speech, an attendee shouted “It’s RINO,” which Marlene Laska, who was in the audience wearing a Mastriano shirt, echoed when we spoke after the rally. “I don’t believe he’s going to do the right thing for America, America first,” he told me, despite saying he planned to vote for Dr. Oz. “I have to vote for him because, you know, we’ve got to get at least one RINO as opposed to Fetterman.”
Republicans want to hit back at Democrats on crime, and Democrats are hitting back in kind.
Mr. Trump’s uproar over Mr. Fetterman’s alleged drug use was part of his larger sob on crime. Mr Trump spoke of the need to “leave our police alone” – of course, saying this while criticizing the Justice Department. Mr. Trump also described a litany of crimes committed in the Philadelphia area that Val Biancaniello, a former Trump spokesman, said could be an organizational issue for Republicans. “So it’s something that’s on the minds of a lot of Pennsylvanians, especially those who live in Philadelphia and the surrounding areas,” he said. Similarly, Dr. Oz’s campaign blasted Mr. Fetterman for hiring Lee and Dennis Horton, who had been convicted of second-degree murder to work on his campaign. In 2020, the state’s parole board – headed by Mr Fetterman – recommended that their sentence be commuted given the fact that they probably did not know that a person they had arrested in 1993 was a murderer. Mr Fetterman’s campaign called it a “sad and desperate smear”. By the way, when I was traveling to Wilkes-Barre through Lehigh County by bus, I caught a sign of Biden blasting him on “Defund the Police,” despite the fact that Mr. Biden called for police funding. Similarly, at the Scranton event, Mr. Shapiro spoke about public safety, saying he planned to hire more than 2,000 police officers “so people can be safe and feel safe” when they see law enforcement, which was met with enthusiastic applause.
Dancing around Dobbs
The Dobbs v Jackson decision has proven incredibly unpopular with Republicans nationally, with Democrats overperforming in numerous special elections, most recently flipping Alaska’s only congressional seat last week for the first time in 49 years. Trump mentioned abortion. Sometimes, noting how he supported exemptions but blasted Democrats. While Mr Trump said he supported exemptions, he accused Mr Shapiro of pro-abortion a bill that would have allowed abortion “from the ninth month onwards”. “The states will make the decision by the way, the states will make the decision and in Pennsylvania, I have a feeling the decision will be an interesting decision, but it’s up to the states,” he said. But absent from Mr. Trump’s words was why abortion will now be left up to the states, the fact that Dobbs v. Jackson overturned the constitutional right to an abortion in Roe v Wade. This in turn was prompted by Mr Trump’s nomination of Supreme Court Justices Brett Kavanaugh, Amy Coney Barrett and Neil Gorsuch.
