Cupka’s Cafe owner Rich Cupka, along with Pennsylvania voters Noreen Johnson and Jahmiel Jackson, told “Fox & Friends First” about the political climate in the battleground state.
Pennsylvania is suffering from a “liberal myopia,” fueling an exodus from the Democratic Party as more voters flee to the GOP, one Pittsburgh business owner told Fox News on Wednesday.
“We’re suffering from a liberal myopia. They can’t see the crime. They can’t see the vacancies on the buildings. They can’t see the crumbling infrastructure. And downtown Pittsburgh, we have the largest homeless encampment in the tri-state area,” Rich Cupka, who owns Cupka’s Cafe in the Steel City, told “Fox & Friends First.”
He appeared alongside two other voters from the Keystone State, a hotly-contested battleground zone up for grabs between Trump and Harris, with polls indicating no clear winner. With just under four weeks until voters cast their ballots, its political attitudes on the ground are in focus.
The sentiment draws on a recent article from The Philadelphia Inquirer, finding that working-class voters in deep blue Philadelphia are making a pivot to the GOP. The article warned that Democrats losing ground in lower income areas could signal bad news for Vice President Harris next month.
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Pennsylvania also saw one of the most pivotal moments of the current election cycle, when shots rang out at former President Trump’s first Butler rally in July, marking the first of two attempts on his life.
Noreen Johnson, also a resident of the state, said those shots heard around the world had a lasting impact.
“They say there were 100,000 people there over the weekend,” she said, speaking of Trump’s recent return to the site. “That alone, I think, speaks volumes.”
“Butler’s attempted assassination, I think, really changed the landscape, not only in Pennsylvania, but across the nation,” she added.
“To see a former president be nearly killed by a hair. I think a lot of people – even people that don’t care for Donald Trump – that affected them and that may or may not have swayed their vote… We are where we are with our candidates. It is crunch time but, at the same time, people are hurting all over the country, and while Kamala is busy with her last-minute interviews and not answering questions and word salads, people are suffering, dying all over the country, and we have to make a change, and there’s only one change, and that is Donald Trump on November 5th.”
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Registered Democrat Jahmiel Jackson, a resident of Philadelphia, also joined the panel and was asked to weigh in on Harris’ recent media tour, during which she has spoken to personalities like Howard Stern, Stephen Colbert and the women of “The View.”
Jackson, echoing many others, voiced concern about her reluctance to answer tough questions.
“I think when we see her, what we’re really missing from her is a really hard interview where she’s being grilled, where she’s being fact-checked, and her feet are being held to the fire because Donald Trump has been doing this for eight years but, even when he’s been running now, it’s been two years. He hasn’t been scared of a single interview, so I think when we see her keep dodging on very important issues, then she doesn’t represent Philadelphia at all,” he said.
“For example, with the economy that’s looming over her, she keeps saying that, ‘We aren’t going back.’ That’s one of her main catchline phrases that so many young people see as well, but when I talk to many people in Philadelphia, when I’m doing street interviews, I’m talking to my friends and families and their friends, they’re always saying, well, we do want to go back to lower priced groceries, to a more stable world where there aren’t as many embassy evacuations or there aren’t as many foreign wars, a more stable country, for example, so a lot of us do want to go back to the 2019 amazing economy.”
