Free Republic

PITTSBURGH — In his first official event as a 2020 presidential candidate, Joe Biden skipped past the primary on Monday and went right to the general election. From the atmospherics of his first campaign rally to the substance of his speech, the former vice president delivered a carefully calibrated message: While his rivals are chasing the Democratic nomination, Biden plans to pursue a mission focused on Donald Trump. “If I’m going to be able to beat Donald Trump in 2020, it’s going to happen here,” Biden told a packed crowd at the Teamsters Local 249 banquet hall. Biden offered an...

Senior Trump 2020 advisers are headed to Harrisburg on Wednesday to meet with Pennsylvania GOP officials amid mounting concerns about the president’s prospects in the critical battleground state. Trump's campaign is moving to shore up the state after 2018 midterm elections that saw Republicans get blown out in races up and down the ballot. Compounding the situation is a state party organization riven by turmoil and infighting. The private meeting, confirmed by a half-dozen party officials, underscores the high stakes for the president in the state. Trump won Pennsylvania by less than 1 percentage point in 2016, and reelection aides...

President Donald Trump’s re-election campaign is preparing an early focus on Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin, states that were instrumental to his improbable 2016 victory but where his support has softened, two campaign advisers said. The decision to accelerate campaign organising and eventually get the Republican president to make trips to the three states is a recognition that Trump’s path to re-election in 2020 will need to repeat some of the successes he had in 2016. Advisers also see a need to bolster Trump’s support in Florida, a battleground state he considers his second home but where opinion polls show him...

Bill and Hillary Clinton are going on tour. The Clintons announced on Monday that they would headline a series of live events together -- billed "An Evening with The Clintons" -- across the country in the final weeks of 2018 and into 2019. The tour will provide the Democratic stalwarts with a notable platform weeks after the consequential 2018 midterm elections and deep into 2019, when a number of Democrats will be jockeying for positions in the fight to be the party's standard bearer against President Donald Trump in 2020. The events, which are being produced by tour promoter Live...

Lynette Villano’s grandson doesn’t speak to her because of it, but she’s still one of the president’s most die-hard supporters. Are there enough Lynettes for Trump to win in 2020? The day after the 2016 election, Lynette Villano, a 72-year-old widow and clerk for the Wyoming Valley Sanitary Authority in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, sent her grandson Connor Mulvey a text message: “I guess you can probably figure out that I’m very happy today,” Lynnette began. “Donald Trump is to your generation what Ronald Reagan was to ours. I am so fortunate to have been part of both. … He defied conventional...

A Pennsylvania county has become the example of how Trump took the nation by storm with a conservative rhetoric that reached the forgotten corners of America in the 2016 cycle. Ben Bradlee Jr., a former Boston Globe reporter who led the Pulitzer-Prize winning team featured in the movie "Spotlight," sat down with ABC’s Political Director Rick Klein this week for the Powerhouse Politics Podcast to discuss his book, “The Forgotten: How the People of One Pennsylvania Country Elected Donald Trump and Changed America.” His book takes a deep dive, through the lives of 12 characters, into how Luzerne County became...

Friday on MSNBC’s “Andrea Mitchell Reports,” former Republican National Committee chair Michael Steele likened President Donald Trump’s rally last night in Wilkes-Barre, PA to a “circus” that is causing “swing voters” to move away from Republicans. Steele said, “Pennsylvania is a bellwether for a number of important races coming up this fall and the fact that the president is so narrowly playing to a base, that he feels good in that setting, he’s having fun, he’s riffing and cussing and doing all this and those folks are loving it. To Charlie’s point, the rest of the country, the independent voters,...

WILKES-BARRE — Police took a 73-year-old Wilkes-Barre woman into custody during a protest against President Donald Trump outside Mohegan Sun Arena on Thursday. Andrea Glod was the only one among several hundred protestors who refused police commands to move off Highland Park Boulevard by the Interstate 81 exit ramp, minutes before Trump’s motorcade arrived. The roadway was blockaded and guarded by dozens of police officers, including state troopers on horseback, as most of the crowd moved the protest onto the side of the road. Glod stood her ground. “It started with a young state trooper who said, ‘You have to...

In yet another turbulent week for the White House, the president twice took comfort in his safest of safe spaces: the Trump rally. On Tuesday in Tampa, Fla., and Thursday in Wilkes-Barre, Pa., Trump basked in the applause, the encouraging chants of “CNN Sucks!,” and the sight of ubiquitous red hats and no longer cryptic “Q” signs and t-shirts that dotted his crowds. The ostensible reason for the rallies was to campaign for two Republican candidates Trump hopes will save him the humiliation of heavy GOP losses in the forthcoming midterm elections. In Florida, the president threw his support behind...

A sneak peek at the Times’s news analysis from Nov. 4, 2020. Nov. 4, 2020 In the end, a bitterly fought election came down to the old political aphorism, popularized during Bill Clinton’s successful 1992 run against George H.W. Bush: “It’s the economy, stupid.” This time, however, it was the Republican incumbent, not his Democratic challenger, who benefited from that truism. Donald J. Trump has been decisively re-elected as president of the United States, winning every state he carried in 2016 and adding Nevada, even as he once again failed, albeit narrowly, to gain a majority of the popular vote....

A Democrat running for a US House seat in Pennsylvania offered praise for then-President-elect Donald Trump, called on Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel to resign and said progressives "are the least tolerant of anyone who disagrees with them" in a series of now-deleted tweets. Northampton County District Attorney John Morganelli is running to replace retiring Republican Rep. Charlie Dent in what is now Pennsylvania's 7th District. Morganelli, who is a centrist Democrat running in a crowded field of six primary candidates, is backed by United Together, a group with reported ties with the bipartisan organization No Labels, and longtime Clinton associate...

In the most astonishingly bone-headed move since nominating Mitt Romney for President, the GOP establishment spent major cash to help elect Democrat Conor Lamb in last night’s highly contested PA-18 special election. Yes, you read that right. Failed Vice Presidential Candidate Paul Ryan and his Congressional Leadership Fund pushed a Democrat to victory over a Republican with direct mail advertising touting support “for our Second Amendment Rights.” I’ll repeat that again. A so-called GOP PAC led by Paul Ryan spent thousands of dollars in a direct mail campaign to convince voters that Conor Lamb was a conservative who would protect...

Trump/Saccone "Massive" Political Rally tonight being held at Atlantic Aviation, FBO, Moon Township, PA (Pittsburgh) commencing at 7:00PM local time. Doors open at 4:00PM, local time. Rally will be fully covered On Fox News Channel at 8:00PM EST and by live stream, the Right Side Broadcasting Network (RSBN) commencing at 3:00PM, local time. Be there, or, tune in to FNC or RSBN to support both POTUS, Trump & Republican, Candidate, Rick Saccone!!! Go Trump, Go Saccone, Go MAGA!!!

After massive victories last evening by the entire Republican party in the great state of Texas, the GOP & POTUS, Trump will head out this coming Saturday evening to the 18th Congressional District seat in Western, Pennsylvania for a political rally being held for Rick Saccone, who is running for that seat. The rally will be held at Atlantic Aviation, Moon Township, PA (PIT Airport). Rally doors open at 4:00PM & rally commences at 7:PM. Two (2) tickets per request, available on the Trump for POTUS website. Folks make this Trump/Saccone political rally, the best ever..and then turnout and vote...

DANVILLE, Pa. — Hillary Clinton knows a thing or two about pain. Not just the soul-piercing kind that comes from losing to an opponent after describing yourself as the last thing standing between Americans and the apocalypse. The broken-foot kind. The former Democratic presidential candidate, U.S. senator and secretary of state walked gingerly across the stage at the “From Crisis to Cure” healthcare symposium at the Geisinger Medical Center campus on Thursday after having fractured her foot in October during her book tour in London. The overriding lesson she has learned from studying — and using — the world’s healthcare...

Duane Miller realized at the “very last minute” last November that he was going to vote for a candidate he didn’t much like, Donald Trump. He did not even really vote for Trump, to hear him describe it. Instead, he voted against Washington fecklessness and corruption, which he saw as embodied by Hillary Clinton, in his eyes the ultimate establishment candidate, who was doubtlessly going to win anyway, he thought. “I thought there was no way that Trump could beat Hillary, right up till the end,” said Miller. “Right up to the night before.” That was almost a year ago,...

TURKEYTOWN, Pa. — Just as you crest the hill along the Glades Pike highway heading east, a red-white-and-blue "Drain the Swamp" sign sits on the well-manicured lawn of a sprawling home in this western Pennsylvania town likely named for the abundance of the wild game that flourish in the region. A year ago, a Trump-Pence sign sat in just about the same place at the same house in the same lawn. A few miles down the road, a tri-colored sign in green, blue, and orange sits in front of a shuttered business bearing a simple message in three languages: "No...

Martin Guitar in Nazareth PA https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=TzD9APh4Amg Artisans working to ensure their craft, inlays etc., yet the sound of pure Martin is amazing! Please visit the tour and appreciate one of the true great American experiences!!!!!

A man described by neighbors as “quarrelsome” and who placed large anti-Trump signs in his yard is in police custody for the murder of his next-door neighbor – a GOP committeeman. Police in West Goshen Township, PA, charged Clayton Carter, 51, in the shooting death of his next-door neighbor, G. Brooks Jennings in the early morning hours on Tuesday, according to ABC Philadelphia. The conflict began on Monday evening when police officers responded to a dispute between Carter and Jennings that involved cursing and video recording in one of their backyards. Police de-escalated the conflict around 8 p.m. and left....

When given the choice between attending the White House Correspondents dinner — a swampy D.C. event brimming with uber-rich, out-of-touch media elites — or headlining a rally jam-packed with the kind of real working-class Americans who elected him to the White House, our new president chose the latter. President Trump’s bold decision proved once again that he’s not just a brilliant businessman — he also has excellent political instincts. Why should the president attend a high-profile media event aimed at giving gravitas and ratings to a hyper-partisan industry that has covered his campaign, transition and first 100 days with an...