Jeffrey Lord said he thinks the comment Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump made about Harrisburg is not only accurate, but it’s also timely.
Lord, a Trump surrogate and a midstate resident, said he believed that Trump was pointing out the obvious. An article published in 2015 that listed the most “ghetto” cities in Pennsylvania ranked Harrisburg as number 6, he said.
According to the article, the most ghetto places in Pennsylvania are:
- Chester
- Reading
- Shamokin
- York
- McKees Rocks
- Harrisburg
- McKeesport
- Philadelphia
- Lancaster
- Coastesville
The article defines “ghetto,” as such: “There are lots of people who throw the term ‘ghetto’ around. But where is the actual ghetto in Pennsylvania? How do you decide if a place is ghetto or not? You ask the internet. According to the Urban Dictionary, a ghetto is defined as: “urban; of or relating to (inner) city life” and “poor; of or relating to the poor life.” Using that criteria, it’s not hard to scrape the internet, run some scientific data on where ghettos might exist in a state, and then put out a list.”
“Arguably, Donald Trump was just pointing out the obvious that Harrisburg has its problems,” Lord said in a phone interview. He was using the RoadSnacks article as an example of where Harrisburg stands in appearance, as well as economically. “Donald Trump was talking about what he was seeing from the air.”
The street picture published in the article looks like this:
“It doesn’t look too good,” Lord said. “Of course, there are other sections of Harrisburg that look good. But, the city is dangerous and classified as a ghetto.”
Lord added that a recent Penn Live article said the city’s most recent homicide — the 9th of the year — was recorded. He said the language in the article implies a trend, which should be addressed, and that is what Trump did in his comment.
Trump’s speech:
“I just left Pennsylvania, I just left Ohio. I’m going to be very soon in Michigan. Upstate New York is a disaster. You look at these big, beautiful plants that are just rotting. They’re just rotting. I flew into Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, yesterday. And I looked down and I looked at … it looked like a war zone where you have these massive plants, and you could see 25 years ago vibrance, families being taken care of, work, education, health care, people working. It’s all in Mexico now. The businesses have moved to Mexico and other places. But between China, Mexico, others, they’ve taken our business. Vietnam – very big right now, really taking over. They’re doing a great job for them, not for us. Vietnam’s a hot one right now, take a look. But we’re not going to let that happen. We’re not going to let it happen. We’re going to be smart. When a company moves and wants to move, as an example, to Mexico, we’re going to wish them luck. But when they want to sell their product back into this country, we’re going to say sorry, but you have a 35 percent tax to pay to get your product back in, and when we do that, they’re not going to move. They’re not moving. They’re not going to move.”
