National field director for Catholic Vote Tommy Valentine speaks out against Joe Biden’s record on abortion dueing a demonstration in Moosic prior to Biden’s participation in a CNN Town Hall there on Thursday. He’s joined by former state Attorney General and Lackawanna County District Attorney Ernie Preate on the left in the light blue shirt.
Patrick Kernan | Times Leader
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MOOSIC — While former Vice President Joe Biden was making an appearance in his former hometown Thursday night, you’d be forgiven for thinking it was President Donald Trump who was coming, based on the sea of MAGA hats lining Montage Mountain Road.
On the road leading to PNC Field, where the Democratic candidate for president was set to take part in a CNN-presented town hall discussion, hundreds of supporters of the president lined up to show that, as they said it, “Joe Biden doesn’t speak for Scranton,” especially according to numerous pro-life groups who came out against Biden.
“Joe Biden loves to get all sentimental about his childhood here in Scranton,” said Tommy Valentine, national field director for Catholic Vote. Valentine said he had spoken to a local family member earlier this year, asking if Biden still represented typical Scranton values. “He told me, ‘Heck no, that guy lost touch with Scranton a long time ago.’
“Scranton values life and Joe Biden used to be pro-life way-back-when … but he abandoned that decades ago,” Valentine went on, claiming that Biden supports “unlimited” abortions, adding that Biden’s pro-choice politics amount more to San Francisco values than Scranton ones.
Valentine was joined by former Pennsylvania Attorney General and Lackawanna County District Attorney Ernie Preate, who was there representing the Scranton chapter of Pennsylvanians for Human Life, who made his feelings about abortion clear.
“The fact of the matter is, this election is about one thing: it’s about abortion,” Preate said. “There is nothing more divisive in this country than abortion, and Joe Biden wants to have unlimited abortions paid for by Americans for everybody, at any time in pregnancy, and even after the baby comes out of the womb.”
Fact-checkers at NPR in a late-August article suggest this is simply untrue, saying that Biden has made no explicit comments about late-term abortions.
Other supporters of the president said that, to them, it appears as though Biden has turned his back on God.
“The Democratic party has walked away from God in this election,” said John Paul “Jack” Harris Jr., a civilian supporter of U.S. veterans who sells pro-veteran signs with money going toward the Wounded Warrior project. “They have virtually buried God.
“If Trump isn’t re-elected, the vision of the Founding Fathers dies on Nov. 3, 2020,” he went on. “Please, God, do not let that happen in my lifetime.”
Harris said that Trump is a pro-Constitution candidate, saying that Biden seeks to dismantle the Constitution, and that only an atheist could vote for Biden.
“You can’t believe in God and vote Democratic this election,” he said.
As Biden drove past on his way to the stadium, boos and chants of “four more years!” could be heard, with at least one woman yelling “eight more years!”
Trump would be constitutionally prohibited from serving a third term, despite his recent claims that he plans to negotiate one.
Reach Patrick Kernan at 570-991-6386 or on Twitter @PatKernan