Pennsylvania Ping!
Please ping me with articles of interest.
FReepmail me to be added to the list.
Posted on 06/13/2022 1:48:06 PM PDT by lightman
Pennsylvania state Sen. Doug Mastriano, who was nominated by voters in May as the Republican nominee for governor, doesn’t give the media much credit for accuracy.
“They, and their boosters on the left, are the ones who want to tell us what to think,” Mastriano told The Epoch Times in a candid interview. “They’re the ones who told us that the [Black Lives Matter] protests were mostly peaceful as city blocks were burning and dozens of people were being killed. But then they’ll flip it on us on Jan. 6 and try to say how outrageous that was—which it was–but it’s all perspective.”
Mastriano, who is endorsed by former President Donald Trump, was invited to speak in Washington on Jan. 6, 2021, and says it was his constitutional right to be there. Like many in attendance, he has been questioned about that day, and the congressional Jan. 6 committee has shown interest in him.
“I have nothing to hide. I was there to peacefully protest and left when it was clear things weren’t going as they should have,” Mastriano said. “I provided documents to the committee per their request.”
Democrats don’t have anything to run on, he says, so they want to talk about Jan. 6, “the so-called insurrection,” he said. “This is a distraction. They don’t want to talk about the cities and towns that have been burned to the ground by Democrat rioters. They don’t want to talk about all the businesses that have been destroyed over the last several years. They don’t want to talk about the laws they refused to enforce or the crimes they refused to prosecute, or the skyrocketing crime in Philadelphia.”
Mastriano is cooperating with the Jan. 6 committee, but believes Americans understand it is politically motivated.
“Instead of dealing with real issues, Democrats want to demonize people they disagree with politically. They’re not going to shut me up. This is nothing but a McCarthy-like intimidation tactic to shut up and cancel their political opposition.”
While many state politicians garner little national media attention, Mastriano has been called a right-wing extremist and worse in pieces from the likes of the New York Times, the Washington Post, CNN, and Politico.
“The irony is, I’ve been vetted by the U.S. government in eight or nine background investigations for my top-secret clearance in the Army,” Mastriano said. “The fact is, if there was an extreme bone in my body, left or right, I would never be entrusted with some of the most sensitive and damaging secrets our nation has, with my top-secret special Compartmented Information Access that I had for 30 years.”
Mastriano is a combat veteran, commissioned in the Army in 1986. He served on the Iron Curtain. While serving along the East German and Czechoslovakian borders, he witnessed the end of the Cold War and later deployed to Iraq for Operation Desert Storm. He served in Washington D.C., the 3rd Infantry Division, and U.S. Army Europe. After 9/11, Mastriano was the lead planner for the operation to invade Iraq via Turkey. He served four years with NATO and deployed three times to Afghanistan. He was the director of NATO’s Joint Intelligence Center in Afghanistan, leading 80 people from 18 nations.
He completed his career as a professor at the U.S. Army War College and retired as an Army Colonel. He views his 2019 entrance into politics as a continuation of service to the country.
“Personally, I had nothing to gain from it,” Mastriano said. “I’m doing this because I’ve seen mismanagement by failed power. Our freedoms are under assault.”
His military intelligence training taught him to assess new information by reviewing the quality of the source.
“As these people in far-left media outlets attack me, I just ask myself, ‘consider the source.’ It’s sad that so many of these once very reliable and profound media outlets in America have become nothing more than mouthpieces for the Democrat Party—cheerleaders for the left. So, what they say doesn’t have a lot of credence with me. I really don’t care what they say because they’ve become so irrelevant as far as how normal Americans like me think. There’s nothing extreme about me. I believe in freedom for all men.”
He says radical elements in the media are the actual extremists.
“They are backing a party that thinks it’s scientific, and OK, to put a biological male into female sports. This is the same cabal that, for two years, lectured us to follow the science on COVID. But they can’t follow the science when it comes to gender.” On the Issues
The University of Pennsylvania swim team met controversy this year when it allowed transgender swimmer Lia Thomas to swim on the girls’ team.
On June 7, 2022, the “Fairness in Women’s Sports Act,” co-sponsored by Mastriano, passed in the Pennsylvania Senate. It says school athletic teams designated for women should not be open to the male sex. It defines sex as the biological distinction between male and female, based on reproductive biology and genetic makeup. Next, the measure must be approved by the House, although Democrat Gov. Tom Wolf has promised to kill it with a veto.
Mastriano has been a visible proponent of election integrity since November 2020 when he hosted a Senate Majority Policy Committee hearing in Gettysburg. The hearing featured former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani and was televised nationally. Hours of testimony regarding the 2020 election were presented.
Mastriano continued to investigate the election until Republican leadership in the state Senate removed him from the task without explanation.
“I’m a state senator, and I represent a quarter-million people, and when things happen in elections and my constituents cry out to me with concerns, I take it seriously,” Mastriano said. “In 2020, there were thousands of reports from across the state to me personally. I exercised my constitutional power to hold a hearing to investigate these allegations. I wrongly believed that some of the media would actually break from the Democrat’s talking points and actually see if these allegations are so. But instead of investigating these allegations from people from across the state, all they did is use Democrat talking points to belittle and attack.”
As he travels the state, Mastriano still meets people who have questions, and he says it’s not just Republicans.
“It’s not just conspiracy. It’s a fact. People have had some outrageous or questionable things happen to them. That’s 2020, 2021. And even in this recent primary [in] 2022, they believe their voting rights have been infringed upon. We need to get that solved.”
Mastriano proposes clearing the voter rolls and having every voter re-register.
“The goal is to start fresh. This is not going to be popular on the left or right, because it’s going to be inconvenient. Everyone that wants to vote is going to have to go back to re-register. I think that’s the best way to start restoring confidence in voting in our state.”
Mastriano is pro-life but says his views on abortion are irrelevant because there’s not a lot a governor can do without working with the legislative body.
If Roe v.. Wade is struck down and the power to regulate abortion is fully returned to the state, Mastriano would support some of the legislation currently proposed in Pennsylvania, including the Down Syndrome Protection Act which passed in the general assembly before, but was vetoed by Wolf. The bill prevents abortion strictly based on a baby being diagnosed with Down syndrome.
He would also sign a heartbeat bill now in the assembly, preventing abortion if a heartbeat can be heard.
When it comes to firearms, Mastriano says the right for law-abiding citizens to obtain and own them shall not be “infringed,” according to the Second Amendment, and additionally, shall not be “questioned,” according to the Pennsylvania Constitution.
“I have a real problem with the left exploiting tragedy for their own political reasons, morally and ethically, before people are even laid to rest. The left instantly is out there screaming and hollering for some kind of political change in gun laws—political, not legal—before there’s an investigation, before we know what gun laws are violated, before we even know if additional gun laws could have prevented the attack.”
In Pennsylvania, adult victims of childhood sexual assault are now being used in television commercials for Attorney General Josh Shapiro, the Democrat nominee for governor who faces Mastriano in the general election. Shapiro led a grand jury investigation of decades-long abuse and coverups in the Catholic church. The victims tell their stories of abuse in the advertisement, and thank Shapiro for the investigation.
“He did his report on the Catholic Church, and then nothing happened,” Mastriano said. “In the Wolf administration, of which Josh Shapiro is part of, they failed the very same victims they said they care about by not constitutionally advertising the amendment that had passed through the general assembly. It’s nothing but more talk and rhetoric and no action by the Democrat administration. They want to exploit tragedy. They want to take advantage of people suffering here, and they don’t do anything about it.”
The Epoch Times reached out to Shapiro for comment.
The 2021 amendment would have allowed a 2-year window in the statute of limitations for victims to seek damages in previously barred claims. But Kathy Boockvar, then-secretary of state, failed to properly advertise the amendment to appear on the ballot, and it could not go forward. It caused Boockvar, who managed the 2020 election in Pennsylvania, to step down.
If elected, Mastriano says he will roll back energy regulations and stimulate Pennsylvania’s natural gas and coal industry.
“These failed policies of the Biden administration are killing people, and now people have to decide between cooling their house this summer, or food, or putting gas in their cars and trucks, or buying medicine,” Mastriano said. “We should be enjoying some of the best, cheapest energy in the nation.”
Pennsylvania Ping!
Please ping me with articles of interest.
FReepmail me to be added to the list.
Shylock Shapiro deliberately released his report on August 15, the Roman Catholic Holy Day of Obligation for the Assumption of Mary; celebrated by Orthodox Christians as the Feast of the Dormition.
A VERY low blow.
The evil left is trying to smear this good patriot, and, retired Colonel.
Because they know he is popular and they cannot win on their own, idiotic and destructive ideas.
Thanks for the article. Doug is one heck of a man. He needs to campaign his butt off and i know he will. Calling him an extremist is laughable
The RINOs hate him too. Jake the Snake Cormon shut down his election integrity investigation.
Democrats can only steal elections if RINO-controlled state legislatures turn a blind eye to the cheating. That's what happened in 2020.
RINOs would rather a Democrat win than to have 'their' party taken over by MAGA.
I can totally see Uniparty in PA preventing Mastriano from winning, especially since he is hell-bent on getting to the bottom of the 2020 Steal in his state.
Leading up to Pennsylvania’s primary I wasn’t reading too many positive articles about Mastriano and was completely unaware of his background.
Seems like a pretty solid guy. EXACTLY the kind of person the Establishment, at EVERY level, DOES NOT want.
Hope he wins and wins big.
Mastriano shouldn’t have voted for mail-in voting, but that’s in the past now. If the democrat wins, we’re screwed. The media will hold Jan. 6 against him.
Pretty successfully too. He's got his work cut out for him to overcome the picture of him that's already been painted.
Thank you for posting the entire article.
Yes he voted for mail-in ballots but if the RED tide keeps rolling the way it is and Pennsylvania Republicans flood the polling places with watchers and lawyers (the Youngkin Formula) there really isn’t much the rodents can do but lick their wounds and go home.
Mastriano will be a great governor.
Seems like a pretty solid guy. EXACTLY the kind of person the Establishment, at EVERY level, DOES NOT want.
Hope he wins and wins big.
Make no mistake, he's going to be fighting an uphill battle. Jake Corman, that damned snake of a person, sabotaged Mastriano in the senate and I'm sure there's been no big love in session with the establishment to rally behind Mastriano since his nomination. The PA GOP hated the tea party, hates Trump, and hates the fact that they have to pander to the rubes for votes every few years so much that they'd rather lose big elections than let populist candidates succeed.
I can't think of a statewide election winner aside from Trump who ran without the support of the state GOP and won. Scott Wagner was a similar type of anti-establishment candidate for governor running in a winnable race, and he lost because the state GOP sat on its hands and didn't help out. Lou Barletta's senate campaign was similarly winnable and again the state GOP didn't lift a finger for him (Barletta didn't really work all that hard to win the election either, but with the right resources supporting him he could have had a much better turnout).
The bad news is that Mastriano has a big public perception hole to dig himself out of. Shapiro and the rest of the dems landed some blows by linking Mastriano to right wing "conspiracy theories", accentuating his support of a heartbeat bill to reduce abortions, and exaggerating Mastriano's plan to have all voters reregister (which is a good concept, but near impossible practically.) The good news is that Mastriano is capable of getting out of that perception hole if he hustles and works hard to gain public support. He can speak for himself capably, he's able to talk knowledgably on a variety of topics without extensive prep, and he can attract an audience.
One would think, that at this point in history, where this country is hanging by a thread, where it would seem like if this election is lost, if the Republicans don’t regain control of Congress, the country is over
Stick a fork in it, it’s done.
While I’m not a Penn resident I understand your thoughts and agree with all of them. IMHO the state GOPs, even the county GOPs, are the root cause of much of the rot in our country. Georgia is just as bad, f not worse.
But for me, Mastriano shouldn’t need a nickel from the state GOP or any of its support. All every voter has to do is look at the gas pump, their grocery bill, their electric bill, their bills for when it’s starts to cool off. I can’t see how anyone would need more motivation than that to vote for Mastriano.
The state GOP there and in about 4 other states allowed to happen, what is happening in this country.
“ Everyone that wants to vote is going to have to go back to re-register.”
I love this new crop of Conservative Republicans with some cojones.
Say it again
This guy is pretty much my only reason to vote in November.
Quoth Barry Goldwater:
“Extremism in defense of liberty is no vice. Moderation in pursuit of justice is no virtue.”
Great article.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.