On tour through Pennsylvania, Trump hits all the right places and messages | News, sports, jobs

Jennifer Krantz was in the checkout line at the Sprankle’s store in this Armstrong County town with her three children, Brayden, Eddie and Frederick, along with her husband, Bryant, when former President Donald Trump handed the clerk a $100 bill. dollars.

“Here it’s going to go down a little bit,” Trump told the employee, to everyone’s astonishment.

“(Krantz’s bill) is going to go down $100,” Trump said.

“Thank you very much,” Krantz said, a little dazed by the help. Afterwards, he said that his cousin owns the store and that he only hoped to do two things that day: buy food and check out Trump.

Krantz told me as Trump left the store that having three active, growing children means buying a lot of groceries, “and that has put a huge strain on our budget. “It has been very difficult.”

The visit to Kittanning was the second of three stops the former president made during his visit to western Pennsylvania last week. He traveled more than 100 miles through Allegheny, Armstrong, Indiana and Westmoreland counties.

Along its path, winding mostly along back roads, the Trump motorcade was greeted by thousands of people gathering in front of their small towns, suburban bedroom enclaves, or standing in front of their farms with their tractors or cows, waving terrible, makeshift towels. Trump. official Trump-Vance signs or flags. And even along the jersey barriers of stopped traffic on the Pennsylvania Turnpike, people stood on top of their cars or in front of them to wave.

The former president began the morning in the small town of Smithton, on a farm surrounded by corn fields and rolling hills, for a policy roundtable in a barn with local farmers.

Trump listened intently as third-, fourth- and fifth-generation farmers shared stories of how they struggle to maintain their calling to provide the country with a food supply.

They also told him that many of them maintain family farms because of royalties from natural gas extracted from their lands and their concerns about the Biden-Harris administration’s moratorium on the export of that liquefied natural gas. They told the former president in no uncertain terms about the devastating impact it could have on his livelihood.

From there, Trump went to Sprankle’s, two large counties away, and then to the campus of Indiana University in Pennsylvania. It was there, before the rally, that I interviewed him, discussing whether he had changed his position on Nippon Steel’s attempt to buy US Steel, the long-term impact of nearly four years of an open border, the natural gas industry, his to undecided voters who think his behavior is going too far and why he wants to return to this position.

The proposed sale of US Steel, a once-strong company that has been part of the fabric of western Pennsylvania for more than 100 years, to the Japanese-owned company has been a hot political topic for months in the state. All presidential candidates have opposed the sale, as has the United Steelworkers. However, many locals believe that if some type of sale does not come to fruition, the remaining US Steel facilities would be vacant.

Trump said that despite all of Nippon’s sweeping promises, he is still adamant about not allowing a foreign company to own an American one, particularly one that could have a hand in future military contracts.

“US Steel was the largest corporation in the world 70 years ago; it was the biggest and the best in the entire world,” Trump said, adding that “we have to get that greatness back,” but under American ownership.

“We can’t have foreign companies own our steel companies and be able to shut them down if there’s a war in Asia,” he explained of a military conflict scenario in which a foreign-owned U.S. steel company could be shut down.

“We would need that steel for our military tanks, our ships and everything else,” Trump said. “We cannot allow foreign companies to buy steel companies. We have China that wants to buy a couple of steel companies. I say, ‘You can’t do that.’ “You just can’t do that.”

Consistent with his worldview, in 2018, Trump, as president, blocked transactions involving Chinese companies ByteDance and Singapore’s Broadcom to acquire American chipmaker Qualcomm.

“Foreign countries, who knows what will happen with their relationship with those countries, cannot be allowed to buy our steel plants,” he said. “If there is a war, we have to make tanks for our army, we have to make our ships, we have to make everything. And can you imagine if we had to send shipments of steel abroad? So we can’t do it.”

Trump added that “if union members are not for it, that says something.

“Tell the steelworkers I’m for them,” he said.

Regarding the discussion he had with farmers earlier that day about the moratorium the Biden-Harris administration has imposed on liquefied natural gas exports, he said that if Vice President Kamala Harris can’t stand up and say she opposes what is doing her administration, so she is still essentially anti-fracking.

“She will end fracking,” Trump said. “We have to be able to export. Look, our greatest asset in economic and financial terms is, I call it liquid gold, what we have under our feet. We have more than Saudi Arabia. We have more than Russia. “We have more than anyone.”

Trump said that during his administration the country was energy independent and that “we were soon going to be energy dominant. We have to be able to sell to everyone and we have a lot. Think about it. We have more than Saudi Arabia, by far. And that doesn’t even include (the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge), which Biden closed in his first week.”

Regarding the influx of illegal immigrants who have crossed the border, Trump is encouraged by the impact it has had on the country, not only because of the expansion of fentanyl trafficking that accompanies it, but also because of how it has affected what has called our greatest treasure: the lives of innocent people.

Under the Biden-Harris administration, during which Harris was charged with addressing the “root causes” of illegal border crossings, those crossings soared to record levels with an average of 2 million per year between 2021 and 2023. Not only did they land in border cities, but landed in every state, often overwhelming resources in New York and Denver, but also landing here in western Pennsylvania.

That massive agreement has had negative consequences. Over the weekend in Dormont, Pennsylvania, a suburb of Pittsburgh, Christian Sluka was killed in a hit-and-run crash involving a car that local police said was driven by an allegedly undocumented worker named Saúl Rivera-Ramírez. .

According to the criminal complaint, Rivera-Ramirez abandoned the car after the accident and walked from the scene with his wife and two children.

Trump said that mass crossings and the long-term effects of illegal immigration are devastating and that these types of tragic consequences occur in thousands across the country.

“Our country is being destroyed,” he said. “It’s the worst. I think it’s the worst. And even our law enforcement has a hard time.”

Trump said his message to voters who are undecided about him and those who often love his policies but not his behavior is that he gets it, but someone outside the mold of traditional politicians has to make those policies happen. enact

“You need strong people to run your government,” he said, pointing to the low number of illegal immigrants who crossed the border when he was president, the low inflation rates and the strong economy. “You need someone to make America great again.”

“You need someone who is capable of doing the job. I do the work and I did it,” he said of his innovative methods.

Despite a failed assassination attempt that grazed his ear in Butler, Pennsylvania, another foiled by a Secret Service agent in Florida before shots were fired and countless lawsuits against him, Trump smiled widely as he explained why he wants apply again.

“I want us to make America great again,” he said. “We did it once, we’re going to do it again. Let’s do it. And it’s more important than anything that happens to me. It is more important than all things together. I truly believe that we are going to make this country a better place than ever. We have a real opportunity to do it.”

Salena Zito is a reporter and columnist for the Washington Examiner.