Trump Erie rally draws 8,000 as signs of GOP unity emerge

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette (TNS)

ERIE, Pa.

Donald Trump made a pair of back-to-back campaign stops Friday in Pennsylvania, considered a critical state for the GOP presidential nominee’s hopes in November.

Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus introduced Trump at a rally here, the state’s fourth largest city, signaling some party unity after a tumultuous week for the campaign and calls from Republican legislators to cut off funding for him.

At least 8,000 people turned out at the Erie Convention Center as Trump revisited familiar themes and focused some of his remarks on job losses in Erie County, which has a strong union presence and has historically leaned Democratic. In November, GE Transportation laid off a third of its 4,500 Erie workers, some of whose jobs were relocated to a nonunion facility in Texas.

“You know why they’re cutting back? One reason: Because we don’t take care of our miners, and we’re not producing coal, and they don’t need to make those big, big beautiful – you could call them locomotives, I guess,” he said. “Whatever the hell they are, they’re big and they’re powerful, and they don’t need them like they used to, because we don’t make our government work for us.”

Scolding by name the heating and air-conditioning manufacturer, Carrier Corp., Trump criticized the practice of American companies opening facilities in other countries and suggested such moves wouldn’t have happened had he been named “Secretary of Keeping Business in the United States” five years ago.

“I like the sound of secretary of defense. I like the sound of secretary of the treasury. I like the sound of secretary of state. But I’ll tell you, would I be good at keeping jobs over here,” he said.

From Erie, Trump traveled to Altoona, where he toured a factory before a rally at the Blair County Convention Center.

Security tossed a handful of protestors out of the Erie arena, some holding signs reading “TAX FORMS,” hours after Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton released her 2015 tax return. The Pennsylvania Democratic Party and Pennsylvania Auditor General Eugene DePasquale separately on Friday called on her GOP counterpart to do the same, but Trump has so far refused.

, saying he’s under audit by the IRS.

“Trump continues to refuse to release his tax returns, upending decades of precedent and going back on his own commitment to do so. This is unprecedented for a major party candidate,” DePasquale said in a press release. “To me there is one question to ask: What is he hiding? There is only one reason he’s not releasing them: Whatever is in them is worse than the bad publicity that he’s getting for not releasing them.”

Also in Erie, Trump echoed his tweet from Friday morning saying he was being “sarcastic” this week when he called President Barack Obama the “founder” of the Islamic State. Moments later, he suggested there was some truth to the remark.

“Obviously I’m being sarcastic - but not that sarcastic to be honest with you,” he said.

Before the rally, Trump supporters waiting in line outside the arena far outnumbered those protesting the event. Among the latter group was 26-year-old Mary Gamble, who held a “Never Trump” sign with the candidate’s face, painted by her brother.

“This is my hometown, and I don’t feel comfortable having this kind of bigotry here,” she said.

J.R. Glover, one in a trio of 16-year-old boys from nearby Waterford, called Trump “awesome” and said he wanted to volunteer to build the border wall with Mexico that the candidate has proposed. His cousin, Clayton, said the group is passionate about politics, even two years shy of the voting age.

“It’s gonna be affecting us all soon,” he said.

Decked out in Trump attire, Tracy Fields, 40, of Warren, and her husband Jeff, 37, said they’re “disgusted” by Clinton and hope Trump wins Pennsylvania come November. Tracy Fields said she’d like to see the candidate redirect some of his focus toward discussing his policies.

“I think people need to hear some humbleness,” she added. But whatever frustrations she has, “it will not deter me.”

Polling shows the terrain in Pennsylvania has shifted under Trump’s feet since the Republican and Democratic conventions.

A Quinnipiac University poll released this week showed Clinton leading Trump by a 52-to-42 percent margin - a marked turnaround from a mid-July poll by Quinnipiac, which found Trump leading by 3 percentage points.

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Like other surveys, the Quinnipiac poll shows that voters view both candidates unfavorably, but Trump faces especially thorny challenges outside his base of non-college-educated white voters. He is lagging among nonwhite voters - who back Clinton by 10-to-1 margins - and with women, where Clinton enjoys a 59-to-36 percentage point advantage. She led among women by only 4 percentage points last month.

“Trump, who portrays himself as a job creator, is suddenly paddling upstream in a state that needs jobs,” said Tim Malloy, the Quinnipiac poll’s assistant director, in the survey release. “That has to be a red flag.”

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)2016 Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

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