Forgotten rust belt town embraces Donald Trump – despite his broken promises
They were queuing at dawn for a rally that wouldn’t start for hours. Such is the draw of Donald Trump in places like this.
I’m back in Johnstown, Pennsylvania, a town I’ve been to a few times over the past eight years.
I was first here in 2016, on the night when Donald Trump dramatically defeated Hillary Clinton – the election which propelled him to the White House. I returned four years later when Trump lost to Joe Biden.
This is a rust belt town which feels now to be rusting away.
Pic: AP
It’s one of those neglected places in America, a town bypassed by highways and forgotten by people who live a better life somewhere else.
The thriving steel industry on which Johnstown was built is long gone. The vast metal plant which once dominated the town centre now employs just a fraction of the workers. Young people who see opportunity elsewhere leave as soon as they can.
Main Street is now a collection of vape shops, fast food franchises, the odd shop and boarded up businesses. One independent restaurant which had just opened on my last visit is still open, but it’s empty.
This part of Pennsylvania is Trump country. And today, there is a buzz in the air because their man is passing through.
Pic: AP
With 10 weeks to go until the most pivotal of elections, Donald Trump and his opponent, Kamala Harris, are criss-crossing the country, shuttling between the few swing states where the future of this country will be decided.
In Pennsylvania and just a few other states, the margins are so tight, it could swing either way.
And so, just as he did in 2016 and 2020, Donald Trump came to Johnstown to tell the people here, again, that he will make their lives better.
Donald Trump takes the stage. Pic: AP
“We’re going to win back the White House.” he told the cheering crowd in a packed arena.
“We’re going to make this country greater than it’s ever been… We’re going to bring in tremendous numbers of factories.
“Together, we will deliver low taxes, low regulations, low energy costs, low interest rates, low inflation, so that everyone can afford groceries, a car and a home.”
He hit every button and here, among the faithful who attend these rallies, they believe his pledges.
But here’s the thing. Despite his promises, he never got the factories outside this arena re-opened when he was last president.
Donald Trump gestures after speaking at his rally in Johnstown. Pic: AP
A combination of factors is fuelling Trump’s enduring appeal.
Part of it is explained by deep-set conservative Christian values which Trumpian Republicanism has latched on to so well – the yearning for ‘the good old days’.
Part of it is the soaring inflation over the past few years – the sharp post-pandemic increase in global commodity prices, compounded by Ukraine war-related supply chain and energy delivery disruption. Here, Joe Biden foots the blame. He’s been the president. No debate.
But it’s also viscerally clear that part of America feels marginalised and ignored as ‘progressive’ liberals progress with policies and lifestyles that people in places like Johnstown feel are not aligned with them or helping them.
Put simply, the lives of the people in this arena felt better back under the first Trump term, despite the unfulfilled promises, because they have felt even worse through the past four years under Joe Biden.
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‘She didn’t look like a leader to me’
Donald Trump, the salesman, has harnessed this anger with pitch-perfect rhetoric. He hears their disillusionment and he compounds it as he projects forward.
“Comrade Kamala launched a radical left war on Pennsylvania energy that will destroy the economy of your state,” he told them in a speech peppered with baseless assertions.
“Can you believe that Kamala Harris wants to outlaw your car and truck and force you to buy electric vehicles, whether you like them or not, whether you can afford it or not? When we win, on day one, I will tell Pennsylvania to drill, baby, drill.”
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His speech darted from topic to topic to cheers and pantomime boos.
“She does not care if your family is struggling and she did absolutely nothing to fix it. She’s the vice president, but she just does not care.
“She does not care about women’s rights because she supported destroying women’s sports and athletic scholarships. She wants men to play in women’s sports.”
He repeated “Comrade Kamala” over and over. Not only does she represent continuity from Biden, but she is, he said, a radical-left communist.
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Harris outlines her ‘day one’ priorities
Few watch the cable TV networks in places like this, such is the level of distrust in the mainstream media, but had they watched Harris’s first interview, with CNN on Thursday, they’d have heard her rebuking that caricature with language that sounded more centrist than socialist.
It involved U-turns, yes – like on fracking, a big industry in Philadelphia, which she once said she wanted to ban.
But on the broad political spectrum that reflects America, she fell more towards the moderate middle ground than many of Mr Trump’s own policies.
Take immigration. Kamala Harris pledged to sign into law the tough bipartisan border security deal which Mr Trump torpedoed a few months ago.
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His allies in Congress blocked the bill despite it being precisely what he wanted to fix the chaotic southern border. Why did he have it blocked? Because he knew its success would help the Democrats.
Beyond immigration, it was the livelihoods of everyday Americans which Kamala Harris chose to focus on in the CNN interview, not progressive base motivators like reproductive rights or gun control.
The problem is that even if the crowd in this rally were watching the Harris interview; even if they did hear her words, which were still undeniably light on policy detail, they don’t believe her.
“The people of Pennsylvania are smart…” Mr Trump said. “They are not going to fall for it. She will destroy. If you don’t have fracking, you don’t have a commonwealth.”
The crowd roared.
Both sides in this starkly divided country have been led to a place where they have no trust in the other. There are two siloed worlds here and it’s increasingly embittered, resentful and aggrieved.
US
Donald Trump says Vladimir Putin wants to meet – and that he and Barack Obama ‘probably’ like each other
Donald Trump says a meeting is being set up between himself and Vladimir Putin – and that he and Barack Obama “probably” like each other.
Republican US president-elect Mr Trump spoke to reporters at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida on Thursday, saying Russian president Mr Putin “wants to meet, and we are setting it up”.
“He has said that even publicly and we have to get that war over with. That’s a bloody mess,” Mr Trump said.
Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said on Friday there was a “mutual desire” to set up a meeting – but added no details had been confirmed yet and that there may be progress once Mr Trump is inaugurated on 20 January.
“Moscow has repeatedly declared its openness to contacts with international leaders, including the US president, including Donald Trump,” Mr Peskov added.
“What is required is a mutual desire and political will to conduct dialogue and resolve existing problems through dialogue. We see that Mr Trump also declares his readiness to resolve problems through dialogue. We welcome this. There are still no specifics, we proceed from the mutual readiness for the meeting.”
Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin in July 2017. Pic: AP
Trump on Obama: ‘We just got along’
Mr Trump also made some lighter remarks regarding a viral exchange between himself and former Democrat President Barack Obama at Jimmy Carter’s funeral on Thursday.
The pair sat together for the late president’s service in Washington DC on Thursday, and could be seen speaking for several minutes as the remaining mourners filed in before it began.
Mr Obama was seen nodding as his successor spoke before breaking into a grin.
Asked about the exchange, Mr Trump said: “I didn’t realise how friendly it looked.
“I said, ‘boy, they look like two people that like each other’. And we probably do.
“We have a little different philosophies, right? But we probably do. I don’t know. We just got along. But I got along with just about everybody.”
The amicable exchange comes after years of criticising each other in the public eye; it was Mr Trump who spread the so-called “birther” conspiracy theory about Mr Obama in 2011, falsely asserting that he was not born in the United States.
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Insults continued for years, with Mr Obama famously dedicating much of his final White House Correspondents’ Dinner speech in 2016 to jokes at his political rival’s expense.
Mr Trump has repeatedly attacked the Obamas, saying the former president was “ineffective” and “terrible” and calling former first lady Michelle Obama “nasty” as recently as October last year.
On Kamala Harris’s campaign trail last year, Mr Obama said Mr Trump was a “78-year-old billionaire who has not stopped whining about his problems since he rode down his golden escalator nine years ago”, while the former first lady said that “the consequences of him ever being president again are brutally serious.”
“He was asleep in his bed, where he still is right now, as I wait on the coroner.”
The haunting words of Kimiko Nickerson stopped us in our tracks.
Her father Rodney, 82, was sure the fire wouldn’t reach his home in Altadena. He was wrong.
The inferno cut through this quiet suburb north of Los Angeles at an alarming rate, its path unpredictable.
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She said: “He just didn’t want to evacuate. He’s been living here since 1968, and he’s been in Altadena my whole life.
“Like all of us on this block, in four blocks, he didn’t think it was going to be this devastating.
“It jumped whole streets, and it hit this community, but it didn’t touch the mountainside at all.”
They’re still trying to process the apocalyptic scenes here and grieving for those who did not get out.
Kimiko said: “I have no words to explain my feelings at this point in time.
“I’m just silent and numb and just mentally trying to go through the process.”
Rodney Nickerson decided not to leave his Altadena home.
Pic: Kimiko Nickerson
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It would be impossible to exaggerate the scale of the destruction, cars burnt to a cinder, palm trees still alight, powerlines strewn across roads.
So many people have lost the roof over their head but there’s one thing Kimiko says she’ll never lose – her memories.
“Every laugh, every joke he told.
“He was a smart man. He read the LA Times from cover to cover and walked around the Rose Bowl every day.
“He was healthy, he was ambitious… but he went to sleep and died in his bed back there.”
The US Supreme Court has rejected a last-ditch attempt by Donald Trump to delay sentencing in the Stormy Daniels hush money case.
The president-elect was convicted on 34 counts last May in New York of falsifying business records relating to payments made to Ms Daniels before the 2016 presidential election.
Prosecutors claimed he had paid her $130,000 (£105,300) in hush money to not reveal details of what Ms Daniels said was a sexual relationship in 2006.
Mr Trump has denied any liaison with Ms Daniels or any wrongdoing.
By a majority, the Supreme Court found his sentencing would not be an insurmountable burden during the presidential transition since the presiding judge, Juan M Merchan, has indicated he will not give Mr Trump jail time, fines or probation.
Mr Trump’s attorneys argued that evidence used in the Manhattan trial violated last summer’s Supreme Court ruling giving Mr Trump broad immunity from prosecution over acts he took as president.
At the least, they said, the sentencing should be delayed while their appeals play out to avoid distracting Mr Trump during the presidential transition.
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Stormy Daniels. Pic: AP
Mr Trump’s attorneys went to the justices after New York courts refused to postpone sentencing.
Judges in New York found that the convictions related to personal matters rather than Mr Trump’s official acts as president.
Mr Trump’s attorneys called the case politically motivated, and they said sentencing him now would be a “grave injustice” that threatens to disrupt the presidential transition as the Republican prepares to return to the White House.
Mr Trump has said he will appeal again: “I respect the court’s opinion – I think it was actually a very good opinion for us because you saw what they said, but they invited the appeal and the appeal is on the bigger issue. So, we’ll see how it works out,” he said at a dinner with Republican governors at his private club in Florida.
Because the New York case was a state, rather than federal crime, Mr Trump will not be able to pardon himself when he takes office on 20 January.
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