Trump Endorsed Doug Mastriano
Last week, we noted that Pennsylvania Democrats are hoping that extremist psychopath Doug Mastriano wins the GOP gubernatorial primary in 3 days. In fact, the Democrat at the top of the ticket, gubernatorial candidate Josh Shapiro, has been subtly spending money to help Mastriano appeal to the MAGA-QAnon freak show, pointing out, for example that Mastriano's fanatic opposition to abortion has no exceptions-- not for rape, not for incest, not even for the life of the pregnant woman. That may make him sound unfit to normal people, but it makes him a hero in the MAGAverse (just under 20% of the Pennsylvania electorate, but a majority among Republican primary voters).
Mastriano forged a kind of primary ticket with the mentally deranged MAGA candidate for Senate, Kathy Barnette, a person so obsessed with her own bigotry and hatred and so extreme that even Trump warned Pennsylvania Republicans-- publicly-- that she couldn't win a general election and that they shouldn't vote for her. She responded by saying he doesn't own MAGA. But while Trump and Barnette feud, Trump just announced that he's supporting Mastriano for governor.
Mastriano is even crazier than Barnette... in fact much crazier. Covering Trump's endorsement this morning, Reid Epstein reported "Mastriano has long been an outspoken supporter of Trump. He used campaign money to organize buses to Washington on Jan. 6, 2021, and, last month, campaigned at an event that promoted the outlandish QAnon conspiracy theory. Pennsylvania Republicans not aligned with the Mastriano campaign have said he cannot win a general election against Josh Shapiro, the Pennsylvania attorney general who is the presumptive Democratic nominee for governor. Shapiro’s campaign recently began airing television advertisements that appeared intended to lift Mastriano’s standing among Republican primary voters."
The "mainstream" Republican in the gubernatorial race is supposedly Lou Barletta, Pennsylvania's most notorious xenophobe and once considered the state's furthest right member of Congress. Compared to Mastriano, though, Barletta could be called a RINO! "Barletta," wrote Epstein, "has sought to coalesce support from Republicans wary of nominating Mastriano. Two fellow candidates dropped out and endorsed Barletta, as have a few prominent former elected officials, including former Senator Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania." This morning Barletta boasted he looks forward to having Trump's endorsement on Wednesday morning. That's not going to happen. The latest Pennsylvania poll-- by GOP polling form Trafalgar and even before Trump's endorsement-- shows Mastriano leading Barletta by 10 points.
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