McCloskeys draw large Trump crowd
Hundreds came to Town Hall Park in Lower Saucon Township on Thursday to see the St. Louis couple who attained instant celebrity after an armed confrontation with protesters outside their home. And some came to stand alongside them, bearing arms and backing calls for President Donald Trump’s reelection.
On June 28, Mark McCloskey, 63, held a semi-automatic rifle on his property and his wife, Patricia, 61, pointed a handgun at Black Lives Matter protesters who marched past an iron gate and onto their private street, heading toward the home of St. Louis Mayor Lyda Krewson. The scene shot across social media, making the McCloskeys both a cause celebre and a symbol of Second Amendment freedoms in conservative circles. Twomonths later, they addressed the Republican National Convention, saying they had a “God-given right” to defend themselves and their property.
On Thursday, a couple of hundred people awaited their arrival, the parking lot full halfhour before the rally was set to start at 6:30 p.m. Representatives from the Trump campaign and the Northampton County Republican Committee tried to keep a Morning Call reporter and photographer and other members of the media out, claiming the event in a public park was “closed to the press.” When reporters continued to cover the event more than 100 feet from a rented pavilion, some attendees accosted them, blocking cameras and shouting, “F—- the press!”
Recalling the night of the
protest in St. Louis, Mark McCloskey said the number marching through their neighborhood was greater than the number standing before him in Lower Saucon. In confronting the marchers, McCloskey said, “I had the nerve to say the most racist, white supremacist thing you could say today: ‘private property.’ ”
Saying he feared he and his wife might die, he made a decision: “By God, we were going to go down fighting.”
McCloskey said the public firestorm that followed made the couple afraid to leave their home. Then the White House reached out, McCloskey said, offering security.
The incident outside the McCloskeys’ house resulted in trespassing citations for nine protesters and a felony charge of unlawful use of a weapon for both Mark and Patricia McCloskey. McCloskey said the charge against his wife was especially drummedup. Hesaid the weapon she pointed was not a working gun and claimed someone in law enforcement tampered with it to make it appear to be.
McCloskey told the crowd that the upcoming election is the most important one of their lives.
“What you’re facing in this election is a choice between the rule of law or rule by the mob, whowon’t stop at anything, even
faking evidence to charge honest citizens who did nothing more than defend themselves,” he said.
“If you want any chance of preserving our freedoms, or preserving our civilization, preserving democracy, preserving the right to have private property and to defend it when you’re challenged, we have to reelect Donald Trump,” he said.
The McCloskeys. both lawyers, were originally supposed to speak Thursday at Palmer Township’s Fairview Park. But the township denied the event request because the rally was expected to draw more than 250 people, violating Gov. TomWolf’s cap on gatherings. On Monday,
Snover had predicted total attendance would be “nowhere near” the 250-person cap. Many of the people in attendance in Lower Saucon were not wearing masks.
Palmer’s decision, Northampton County Republican Committee Chairwoman Lee Snover said, is “proof positive that the suburbs are the next target of the cancel culture movement.”
Snover has argued that exposing suburbanites to stories such as the McCloskeys’ will galvanize them to vote against “the radical left” even if they are reluctant to vote for Trump.
“My message to the suburbs is that you stand for law and order, and [should] not allow our sacred
God-given rights to be trampled upon by mob rule. Vote for law and order whether by mail or at the polls,” she said.
Matthew Munsey, chairman of the Northampton County Democratic Committee, dismissed the rhetoric, pointing out that crime is low in Lower Saucon, Palmer and other Lehigh Valley suburbs. The GOP’s strategy, he said,“is ginning up false fear” as a way to divide communities.“Americans, in the Lehigh Valley and elsewhere, want leadership that unites us from all backgrounds andraces together in the common struggles we face, while Trump and his congressional apologists have sought to divide us at every opportunity, going back to Charlottesville three years ago,” he said in a prepared statement.
Trump’s win in Pennsylvania, including a strong performance in the Lehigh Valley, was crucial to his victory in 2016. He was the first Republican since 1988 to win the state’s 20 electoral votes. Northampton County was one of three counties statewide that flipped from favoring Democrat Barack Obama in 2012 to supporting Trump.
A Morning Call/Muhlenberg College poll in August showed Biden with a narrow lead over Trump in Pennsylvania, as did a Monmouth University poll released less than two weeks later. In a Marist College poll released last week, Trump trails Biden by 9 points statewide but leads him by 10 points in the northeast region, which includes the Lehigh Valley.