Trump moves to general election mode with Pennsylvania rally

Larry Mitko voted for Donald Trump in 2016. But the Republican from Beaver County in western Pennsylvania says he has no plans to back his party's nominee for Senate, Dr. Mehmet Oz, "no way, no how."

Mitko doesn't feel like he knows the celebrity heart surgeon, who only narrowly won his May primary with Trump's backing.

Instead, Mitko plans to vote for Oz's Democratic rival, Lt. Gov. John Fetterman, a name he's been familiar with since Fetterman's days as mayor of nearby Braddock.

"Dr. Oz hasn't showed me one thing to get me to vote for him," he said. "I won't vote for someone I don't know."

Mitko's thinking underscores the political challenges facing Trump and the rest of the Republican Party as the former president shifts to general election mode with a rally Saturday night in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, the first of the fall campaign.

While the rally was organized to bolster Oz and Doug Mastriano, the GOP's hard-line nominee for governor of Pennsylvania, it was Trump's first rally since the FBI's search of his Mar-a-Lago club, and Trump spent part of the evening railing against it.

He called it "one of the most shocking abuses of power by any administration in American history" and "a travesty of justice."

"They're trying to silence me and more importantly they're trying to silence you. But we will not be silenced, right?" Trump said.

Investigators recovered thousands of documents in the search, including more than 100 with classified and top secret markings.

Trump's endorsed picks won many Republican primaries this summer, but many of the candidates he backed were inexperienced and polarizing figures now struggling in their November races. That's putting Senate control, once assumed to be a lock...