Picket lines and bashing Trump: Inside Larry Hogan’s tough campaign to convince both sides

Larry Hogan may have beaten just about everyone else to the picket lines this week. But that shouldn’t shock you.

With Election Day just a month down the road and all kinds of “October surprises” popping out of the woodwork, the former governor of Maryland is charting his own path through the race’s final days. Not that he has much of a choice.

The popular two-term governor was in downtown Washington on Wednesday to give an address on the wars in the Middle East and eastern Europe — a rare move for a Senate candidate and non-incumbent, but one that makes sense in a state which includes the suburbs of the nation’s capital.

It was as typical a speech as you’d expect from a #NeverTrump conservative — bullish on support for NATO and other allies overseas, including Israel; supportive of a pre-emptive strike against Iran (with caveats.) His condemnations of his opponent, Angela Alsobrooks, as well as President Joe Biden landed on the issue of demands for a ceasefire, which Hogan opposes, and the unfreezing of Iranian assets in the US financial system, a frequent gripe of all shades of Republicans on the Hill.

What it wasn’t: the kind of speech you’d expect to hear from a Republican in Donald Trump’s GOP. In the prepared remarks before his questions from members of JINSA, the fervently pro-Israel Jewish Institute for National Security of America, Hogan even bashed Trump by name.

“In the last debate, President Trump refused to answer whether he wanted Ukraine to win this war, and he has repeatedly threatened to abandon our NATO allies and our allies in Asia. This lack of moral clarity is dangerous and invites more aggression from our enemies,” Hogan said.

There was no mention of Kamala Harris at all.

“Ukraine must win this war