On a ticket still facing difficult polls but revived by his opposition’s struggles, Indiana Gov. Mike Pence denounced Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton — while urging Republicans to rally behind Republican Donald Trump.
“It’s time for us all to say with one voice to our fellow Republicans and conservatives, with one voice: It’s time to come home,” he told the crowd of over 800 people in a gym at Westmoreland County Community College in Youngwood this afternoon. “It’s time to come home and make Donald Trump the next president of the United States.”
Early on in the speech, Mr. Pence seized on last week’s news that the FBI was looking into emails on a laptop belonging to the estranged husband of Hillary Clinton aide Huma Abedin. And he used the occasion to revisit a litany of ethics complaints Republicans have lodged against Ms. Clinton and her husband, and what he called “pay to play politics.”
“We commend the FBI for reopening the case,” said Mr. Pence. “Because in America, no one is above the law.”
“If only for their decades of self dealing … and their outright corruption, we must decided here and now in this great state that Hillary Clinton will never be elected,” he argued a short time later. He cited contributions made to a family foundation by foreign sources, and aid groups that sought to work in places like Haiti.
Mr. Pence’s stump speech reprised much of the territory, and several of the jokes, that he delivered in Pittsburgh’s Strip District in August. He pledged, for example, that on the first day of a Trump administration, “the war on coal comes to an end” — a popular promise in Western Pennsylvania. And he reminded the audience that the next president would likely make Supreme Court appointments that could shape the court for a generation.
“If you cherish our constitution, if you cherish the second amendment, your right to keep and bear arms, if you cherish the sanctity of human life … you better think long and hard,” he said.
On foreign policy, “History teaches that weakness arouses evil, ” he said, revisiting a familiar argument, and he contended that when she served as Secretary of State, “The foreign policy that Hillary Clinton crafted for this administration has literally weakened this nation’s place in the world.”
Mr. Pence accused Ms. Clinton and President Barack Obama for failing to preserve what he characterized as a victory in Iraq.
“When I think of how Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama squandered what so many sacrificed to achieve for the people of Iraq and our own security, it grieves my heart,” he said. Democrats have noted that U.S. troops departed Iraq because the government would not agree to legal protections for troops that remained.