The chickens have come home to roost for Donald Trump in Pennsylvania. After he stuck his nose in the state’s Republican primary process last May against the guidance of his most loyal advisers, many of his once-devoted followers say they are done with the former president.
Trump backed far-right nationalist Doug Mastriano for governor and celebrity heart surgeon Dr. Mehmet Oz for US Senate in this state over much more logical choices — in Oz’s case, businessman and politician David McCormick. And both lost to Democrats on Tuesday.
Their losses had a ripple effect down-ballot, costing the Republicans not just a US Senate seat they once held as well as the governor’s office, but also three seats in the House of Representatives that were up for grabs plus the majority in the statehouse.
Former Trump senior adviser David Urban — whose expertise in state politics was invaluable in his victory in the Keystone State six years ago — said everyone is telling him it is time for the former president to step aside.
“If you’re a Republican in Pennsylvania and you look at Donald Trump’s bigfooting of the people in Pennsylvania and the implosion of his candidates in Pennsylvania, you’re pretty upset,” said Urban, a Washington-based strategist who grew up in Beaver County, Pa.
Urban said his phone has been ringing all week with county chairs and committee people who tell him they’ve had it with Trump.
“They said, ‘Look, we’re done. We’re done with him. He cost us this election and we’re done.’”
He’s not the only one. All day Wednesday my phone lit up with calls and emails from voters who expressed the exact same frustration. One woman said she saw the writing on the wall last weekend when Trump decided to take a swipe at Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis — calling him “Ron DeSanctimonious” — while he campaigned for Oz and Mastriano in Pennsylvania.
And when Trump went on to tease that he was going to announce “something big” next week (presumably his run for president in 2024), she knew it would hurt Oz on Election Day.
“I had a pit-of-my-stomach moment as I watched the rally,” said the former Trump fan, who did not want to be named. “It is hard to quit Trump — I voted for him twice enthusiastically.” But “at this juncture, I think we have to move forward to a new generation of leaders.”
Hearing his bragging and big talk in the final days before the election, voters across the US feared certain Trump-backed candidates would be beholden to him or continue his rhetoric of election denial and either voted Democratic or left the top of the ticket blank despite their dislike of President Biden.
Another round of Trumpism was a bridge too far for them. They were exhausted.
JD Vance, who won a US Senate seat in Ohio, is the only high-profile Trump-backed candidate who prevailed Tuesday night. Meanwhile, Trump’s choice of candidates for Senate in Georgia, Arizona, and New Hampshire could cost the Republicans control of the upper chamber of Congress, which they were expected to clinch. Even his gubernatorial pick in Michigan, Tudor Dixon, lost to incumbent Democrat Gretchen Whitmer, who was unpopular for her lockdown policies during the pandemic, which was among the strictest in the US.
It all adds up to a disaster for Trump. A Pennsylvania father of two grown men of voting age told me all three of them are done with him after years of loyal support.
“Trump needs to disappear,” said the voter, who asked not to be named. “He got us Oz over McCormick in the primary who would have won by at least by five points. In fact, most of the failures in last night’s midterms tie back to Trump.”
The communications professional said he still liked Trump’s policies and has long managed to overlook his crassness. “Then he made the DeSantis comment and we are all done in our family with him. It is becoming very clear it’s about Trump first, not the conservative movement.”
David La Torre — a Pennsylvania-based Republican strategist — said Tuesday’s results were a reckoning. “The short-lived era of Trump is over. We’ve allowed this one individual, who only won our state by 40,000 votes in 2016, to dominate our politics, and it’s absolutely absurd,” he said.
Trump’s hint that he would announce a third run for president proves he didn’t understand that, while voters still liked him and loved his policies, they are looking toward the future rather than the past. This is especially true after a summer when the FBI raided Mar-a-Lago, Trump’s Florida home, in search of classified documents he allegedly took from the White House.
Conservative strategist Dave Myhal is the last person you’d expect to dump Trump. Born and raised in the Mahoning Valley of Ohio — the epicenter of the political earthquake that turned a former working-class Democratic stronghold Republican in 2016 — Myhal was once devoted to the ex-president.
Myhal said he’s donated more than $10,000 of his own money to Trump, voted for him twice, and worked to help him get elected in Ohio in 2016 and 2020.
But after Tuesday, he is done and looking toward other rising stars of the Republican Party like Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina and Gov. Glenn Youngkin of Virginia.
“The era of Trump is over,” Myhal told me bluntly.
“It is time for Trump to retire. I see golf courses and a rocking chair in his future. We appreciate the time he fought in the war against the woke, but it will be finished by Ron DeSantis, Tim Scott, and Glenn Youngkin.”
Salena Zito is the author of “The Great Revolt: Inside the Populist Coalition Reshaping American Politics.”
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That’s right blame Trump today blame Biden tommorrow just don’t you dare blame the Jews who run the world fucking world American idiots.
Oh for Christs sake , this is all yet another manufactured takedown , the reason things didn’t go our way in PA is because they have a total lockdown , political machine there that can 100% control the outcomes . It doesnt matter who voted for whom , it matters who is counting and who they want . We have to deconstruct this “mo fo ” called our election process and bring it back to something simple and transparent . Trump may have stepped in it here and there( warp speed comes to mind ) but this is all choreographed BS and I cant believe BPer’s with their proclivity for hyper cynicism ( a strain of hyper cynicism actually well beyond what is productive in my personal opinion) can’t see thru it . Again , its all just a little too convenient ,easy , and timely if you ask me .
As an aside , and on a positive not , was going back thru BP articles on the website to see if a particular cynic / commentor had responded to my reply on his post and couldn’t help but notice what an absolute motherload , treasure trove of” based “( as in reality “based ” as stark as that actually is for anyone with the intestinal fortitude to be able to handle it in its unvarnished state ) articles there are here . Thank you BP!!!! I’ll take your content and leave many but not all of your posters of the hyper cynical flavor thank you very much . CS Lewis I beleive summed it up when he said ” you cannot go on seeing thru things , for if you see thru everything you will ultimately see NOTHING AT ALL” end loose quote . So there you have it , one gigantic thumbs up to the website and one big gigantiic middle finger to many of its frequenters . I’m sure I’ll encur much wrath for this but hey ” I gotta be me ” baby . Lol (-:
Yup, it was the BIG cheat. Just like 2020. Same states, same counties. They have full control. Where elections are reasonably fair, there was a red wave, see Iowa and Florida for two examples. Blaming anything other than our fraud fest election systems is contributing to the problem. There is no voting our way out of this… Chip
Yes indeed. Until the fraud and fraudsters have been addressed and removed voting is damn waste of time.
Giving what the voters what they want………….good and hard.
President Trump in 2020 would have won by a landslide had they not swapped and created over 30 million votes for Biden. How can we blame Trump for stolen elections in 2024 when nothing was done to remedy 2020? We should have hand counted paper ballots only with voter ID, had this been done we would be witnessing the extinction of the party of the KKK. And if far right means supporting the constitution as it was written and as was intended I will vote far right every time.
Right on Dave !!! “Something “is trying to distract away from the real target ( the fake , controlled elections ) , There are” Psychopoliticians “all thru the fabric of society, working , some wittingly and many unwittingly , for this Beast System, global communist, NWO , Great Reset endgame . In doctri Nation , or “The hypnotic States of America ” rip Roy Masters . Tucker did a thing on Kanye’s “trainer essentially being an overt” handler ” and when Kanye West went off the script of the prescribed narrative this guy went into defcon 5 , getting him to take a bunch of psycho active drugs and threatening to have him institutionalized if he didnt get back on the reservation and so on , this guy ( his handler ) his “trainer ” has many more celebrities as clients as well . Of course this particular guy is a case of an overt and witting psychopolitical operative but you get the idea . This all goes back to Bezmenenov / ideological subversion and the Soviet Manual On Psychopolitical Warfare . KGB , Kruschev ” we will destroy you from within !!!!!” Lol , lighten up Francis
Reality, for my money is stranger then fiction , fascinating and at the same time teriffying ( not really , I aint “screert”, we all gotta go down someday and if were lucky maybe we could go down swinging instead of whimpering ).Plus , IT IS WHAT IT IS , so that resenting it is like railing against reality . Interesting times fer sur and formerly from Big Sur , yours truly .
I’ve waited over two years for DJT to admit he made a mistake about the vaccines even when I think he pushed them for the same reason the democrats did. We need to look around for someone else.
McConnell orchestrated the republicans snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. He and the GOP elites fought a very public battle throughout the general election for who ran the GOP. In the end, they got exactly what they wanted; safely stuck in the minority and very few new conservatives biting at their asses trying to do right by the voters. And, the NY Post does not speak for everyone.
Funny thing is, he told us it was going to happen. Said he thought the house would go red but that he did not have confidence in the senate… Chip
Sheer propaganda. PA is a failed state.
DJT track record for endorsements as of 11-11-22: “So far, Trump appears on track for a roughly 91.5% success rate with his general election picks, having eked out 227 victories and 21 losses with about 20 races outstanding. This is based on the Washington Examiner’s tally of 268 endorsements.”
His endorsement successes mean what to this society? He’s again endorsed Kevin for the Speakership. Pleeze bitch
Trump didn’t cost anybody anything. We, you and me, failed to deliver viable candidates. We failed to get the ballots needed for a win. We failed to stop voter fraud. We, each individual, failed. Trump tried. He worked with what he had. He picked candidates from where? The party roster. If the candidates were so good as to be able to win, then why didn’t they win the primary election? Was everyone hoodwinked by Trump? Or are people so easily manipulated by anyone who speaks louder than they do! Individuals, not organizations, failed to produce the best candidates. Failed to produce a lawful voting environment. Failed to stop the cheating and fraud.
And until each and every person admits to their part of the failure and then commits to do something about it, nothing will change. And now, it may be too late as the demoncrats have pulled off the third great voting hoax and no one has paid a price for doing it.
Charlie Brown is more viable than Fetterman. Come on man. The election “system” is fucking broke. That’s the elephant in the room. Better candidates and voting harder ain’t going to fix it… Chip
“Trump backed far-right nationalist Doug Mastriano for governor…”
Waste of bandwidth
Thank God De Santis has appeared to keep that moron Trump, at bay.
Don’t speak for me; he runs, he gets my vote!!!!
I lived in Pennsylvania for three years from 1970 – 1973 while serving in the US Armed Forces. I absolutely hated that state. The majority of people in your cities; Pittsburgh, Philadelphia and Harrisburg were hard left socialists and this was back in the 70’s so I’m pretty confident that PA has gone even farther to the left since then. For Fedderman to even be on the ticket is proof enough what kind of whack jobs controls and runs that state then for people to vote him in for US Senate is proof positive this country is finished. Socialism and liberalism is like a metastisized cancer, it grows, spreads and eventually kills its host. Arizona and Colorado use to be hardcore “Red” states but look where they’re at today.
This cancer is spreading everywhere. Pretty soon we will have to leave the country to get away from it. The leftists control the education system so there is a whole new crop of leftist voters they have trained to vote against their human rights. On top of that the flow of information from the media and big tech strangles the truth. It’s really sad. Leftist policies will lead to nothing but North Korea style fascism.
There’s no where left to go. Russia maybe. If I was younger I would consider it… Chip
Red state secession is the only way normal patriotic people can continue to live normally. Pick the state that holds your morals and values and live where you will be most happy. Blue states will be designated as socialist and clown world-ish, red states uphold law and order and the Constitution and will probably have a lot of religious people living in them. There will be a segregation, not based on race but rather on your ideological views. It is the only way.
PA is full of dim wit idiots who worship the hammer & sickle but won’t like it when they are forced to eat it… Trump is at fault, but remember, you can’t run America first conservatives in PA and win, hence Oz…. The writer of this article is a McConnell Sycophant….
It doesn’t matter who you run when (((they))) control the tabulation of the votes… Chip
The GOP losses in this election had nothing to do with Trump. Can you say ‘fraud.’ Yes it was fraud on a massive targeted scale. Our Republic is dead.
Our Republic is no more. I have no loyalty to the ‘woke’ Jacobins in Washington.
2nd pic, is that a call to prayer or “I’m the greatest”?
Last 18 months or so I’ve seen only two TrumpTard type caps locally. An older guy sported a “Texas Trump” cap, red of course, while entering Wal Mart’s , then actually maybe a MAGA red somewhere. Strange because this area was 83% tRump in 2016 and 2020 on official “election” results.