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Interpretive park ranger Caitlin Kostic speaks to then-Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump as she gives him a tour at Gettysburg National Military Park Saturday, Oct. 22, 2016, in Gettysburg, Pa.
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Trump teases a Gettysburg convention speech. Experts say it's an ethics breach.

AP

Trump teases a Gettysburg convention speech. Experts say it's an ethics breach.

Gov. Wolf: 'We hope and expect' the president will abide by pandemic restrictions

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump said Monday that his acceptance speech for the Republican presidential nomination will be held at either the White House or the Gettysburg battlefield, as he searches for a symbolic substitute for his virus-scuttled plans for an arena celebration.

The president’s initial hopes for the event to be a four-day infomercial for his re-election bid have been steadily constrained by the coronavirus pandemic, culminating in his decision last month to cancel nearly all of the in-person proceeding. In recent weeks, Trump and his aides have looked for alternatives that would allow him to recreate at least some of the pomp of the event.

“We have narrowed the Presidential Nomination Acceptance Speech, to be delivered on the final night of the Convention (Thursday), to two locations - The Great Battlefield of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, and the White House, Washington, D.C.,” Trump tweeted Monday.

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He added that a decision on the location of the Aug. 27 speech will be made soon. 

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Both sites are federal property, raising legal and ethical issues for their use in a political event. The president is not subject to the Hatch Act, a Depression-era law that prohibits federal employees from engaging in political activities while on the job. But everyone who works for him is.

By delivering a speech with the Gettysburg battlefield as a backdrop, experts said, Trump would also risk putting park rangers and other park employees at risk of a violation.

“Applicable law does provide a variety of technical exemptions, which a clever lawyer might stitch together to claim that this is permissible,” said Norman L. Eisen, who served as the chief ethics czar in the Obama White House. “But those loopholes do not contemplate an event of this highly partisan nature of this scope and scale, and the forced political labor of the hundreds, if not thousands, of federal personnel.”

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Eisen added: “The park rangers will appear as political window dressing at the event. No normal president of either party would even try it, and no normal White House or campaign lawyers would support it.”

Trump and his aides, however, have barely blinked at the possibility of Hatch Act violations — and some even refer to racking them up as a point of pride.

“Convention events will be planned and executed, at whatever venue, by the Trump campaign” and the Republican National Committee, said Judd Deere, a White House spokesman. “Any government employees who may participate will do so in compliance with the Hatch Act.”

Gov. Tom Wolf’s administration noted in a statement late Monday that the park is managed by the National Park Service but said all gatherings in Pennsylvania, including those held on federal land, “should abide by the Commonwealth’s (pandemic) restrictions, which have proven to mitigate COVID-19.”

It said limitations on large gatherings and requiring face masks in public places has allowed Pennsylvania to escape the severe COVID-19 resurgences happening in many states.

“We hope and expect that the President will abide by these commonsense restrictions that will protect the health and safety of the community around Gettysburg and throughout Pennsylvania,” the statement said.

Trump has previously turned to national parks and monuments to hold politically tinged events, including a July 4 event on the National Mall in 2019 and one at Mount Rushmore in South Dakota just last month. In May, he gave an interview to Fox News inside the Lincoln Memorial, a move that required special dispensation from his appointed secretary of the Interior, David Bernhardt.

Staging a convention speech at Gettysburg, though, would go a step further, and raise questions about politicizing the site of the deadliest battle of the Civil War.

Trump has spoken openly of his fondness for President Abraham Lincoln, whose short address dedicating the national cemetery for Union soldiers in 1863 crystallized the cause for which they died fighting. But Trump has repeatedly courted controversy in office in opposing efforts to remove displays of the Confederate battle flag and failing to resoundingly condemn white supremacists.

Trump gave an indoor campaign speech at Gettysburg in 2016.

Trump’s critics said using federal property as the backdrop for what will be one of the president’s peak political moments would amount to a more serious violation of the often hazy line between candidate and public servant.

Gettysburg and Pennsylvania are critical to Trump, who often compares himself to President Abraham Lincoln, and who knows the Keystone State is one of a handful expected to decide the election. Along with Gettysburg’s import as a famous Civil War site and namesake of one of the country’s most storied presidential addresses, the nearby region has one of the largest collections of Republican voters in Pennsylvania.

In the 2016 election, Trump racked up huge margins in nearby York and Lancaster counties, helping him win Pennsylvania by less than 1% of the total votes cast. That helped seal his national win.

Yet, Trump has drawn criticism for invoking the Civil War in other ways: defending the Confederate battle flag and statues of Confederate generals, which activists have decried as symbols of oppression and racism.

“Who’s gonna tell him his team lost at Gettysburg,” tweeted David Pepper, chairman of the Ohio Democratic Party.

“Instead of firing off tweets, Trump ought to deliver on a national testing strategy, abandon his reckless executive orders which would slash Social Security and cut weekly unemployment benefits for struggling workers, and stop blocking necessary funding for COVID-19 testing and contact tracing,” Pennsylvania Democratic Party executive director Jason Henry said in a statement. “Until he does that, Pennsylvania families won’t care about his political speeches.”

Public polls show Trump consistently trailing Biden in Pennsylvania, a state both parties have emphasized.

The Republican National Convention was initially slated for Charlotte, North Carolina, before Trump moved it to Jacksonville, Florida, in June, in hopes the Republican-led state would be more amenable to his aim of having thousands of mask-less supporters cheering his renomination. But as a wave of new coronavirus cases swept the Sun Belt, Trump was forced to cancel those proceedings last month.

Now almost the entirety of the convention will be conducted virtually, except for a formal renomination vote on Aug. 24 in Charlotte by just a few hundred delegates casting proxy votes for those unable to assemble in person.

Plans for the Democratic National Convention next week came into focus Monday, as three party officials with knowledge of the schedule said that Hillary Clinton would deliver a prime-time speech Wednesday.

Former Vice President Joe Biden has said he will not travel to Milwaukee, where the convention is nominally being held but has been scaled back to just a few hundred attendees. He will accept his party’s nomination from his home state, Delaware, on the convention’s final night Thursday, in a form and fashion yet to be announced.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts will join Clinton, the 2016 nominee, on the Wednesday program if she is not selected as Biden’s running mate, according to the officials. Former President Bill Clinton will speak as well, one of the officials said.

Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont and former Gov. John Kasich of Ohio, a Republican who is a harsh critic of Trump, will deliver addresses Monday night, the officials said.

Obama’s time slot has not yet been announced, but he may be included on a crammed Wednesday night program, or possibly introduce Biden on Thursday before the former vice president’s acceptance speech.

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, a rising star of the Democratic Party’s progressive wing, is also set to deliver a brief speech, according to three people with direct knowledge of the situation.

Jonathan Tamari of The Philadelphia Inquirer (TNS) contributed to this report.

First Published: August 11, 2020, 9:50 a.m.

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Interpretive park ranger Caitlin Kostic speaks to then-Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump as she gives him a tour at Gettysburg National Military Park Saturday, Oct. 22, 2016, in Gettysburg, Pa.  (AP)
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