President Trump was in Moon Township, PA, on Saturday night, stumping for GOP candidate Rick Saccone. Saccone is running in a special election for Pennsylvania’s 18th Congressional district, seeking to replace Republican Tim Murphy, who resigned after a sex scandal. Trump attacked Saccone’s opponent, Democrat Conor Lamb, in typical name-calling style, calling him “Lamb the Sham.”
But then the President went into, well, full-bore Trump mode.
For starters, he used the speech to reveal his 2020 slogan. It’s “Keep America Great,” or #KAG, which, of course, is the perfect follow-up to “Make America Great Again.”
.@POTUS: "Our new slogan…is going to be 'Keep America Great! But we can only do that if we elect people who are going to back our agenda and fight for our values." pic.twitter.com/NCngCBGXdb
— Fox News (@FoxNews) March 11, 2018
Wait, wasn’t the President supposed to be pumping up votes for Saccone? Oh, never mind, he was on a roll. After all, as he said to the ardent crowd, “You would be so bored if I acted Presidential.”
Then he proceeded to “act Presidential” — in a mocking way, of course. And the crowd loved it, with one guy yelling, “You’re one of us!”
Naturally, it wouldn’t be a Trump rally — er, Saccone rally — if he didn’t rip into his biggest nemesis: the media. Moreover, he took special aim at CNN’s Chuck Todd, calling him a “sleeping son of a bitch.”
“You ever see the story? Where it’s 1999. I’m on ‘Meet the Press,’ a show now headed by sleepy eyes Chuck Todd. He’s a sleeping son of a bitch, I’ll tell you.”
But Trump has no worries about poisoning the media well, because he plans to beat them at their own game by delivering rally speeches online, thus bypassing them. In fact, Trump’s campaign committee ran a beta of the Saccone event, which was available on social media as well as the RNC and campaign websites.
As Brad Parscale, Trump’s 2020 campaign manager said:
“This evening Americans were able to experience a Trump rally without the filter of the mainstream media thanks to our MAGA Direct beta live stream we delivered to our social media channels and websites for the first time.”
The President continued his hour-long speech by touting his tax reform and tariff plans. He talked about his upcoming meeting with Kim Jong-Un. Furthermore, he even touched upon his desire to execute convicted drug dealers, à la the Singapore approach.
Well, that’s all fine and good for the President to set a groundwork for his 2020 re-election. But what about poor Rick Saccone?
After all, it looks like a tough haul for Saccone, since Lamb has narrowed the race in polling, and Saccone’s fundraising has been weak. Furthermore, Lamb insists that he’s not in Democrat Nancy Pelosi’s camp, either. “I’ve already said on the front page of the newspaper that I don’t support Nancy Pelosi,” Lamb says in one ad.
So will President Trump help Rick Saccone make it first across the finish line in Pennsylvania’s 18th District? The goal, I suppose, is to boost Republican turnout for Saccone. And maybe, in his own iconoclastic way, President Trump can use that new 2020 slogan as coattails for Saccone on which he can ride to victory. How? Because people remember a catchy phrase, not campaign rhetoric. And President Trump is a master of promotion. I wouldn’t be surprised if his presence in Pennsylvania and that new “Keep America Great” slogan is just the shot that Rick Saccone needs.
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