MOON TOWNSHIP, Pa. — President Trump on Saturday again called for enacting the death penalty for drug dealers during a rally meant to bolster a struggling GOP candidate for a U.S. House seat here.

During the campaign event in this conservative western Pennsylvania district, the president also veered off into a list of other topics, including North Korea, his distaste for the news media and his own election victory 16 months ago.

Trump said that allowing prosecutors to seek the death penalty for drug dealers — an idea he said he got from Chinese President Xi Jinping — is “a discussion we have to start thinking about. I don’t know if this country’s ready for it.”

“Do you think the drug dealers who kill thousands of people during their lifetime, do you think they care who’s on a blue-ribbon committee?” Trump asked. “The only way to solve the drug problem is through toughness. When you catch a drug dealer, you’ve got to put him away for a long time.”

It was not the first time Trump had suggested executing drug dealers. Earlier this month, he described it as a way to fight the opioid epidemic. And on Friday, The Washington Post reported that the Trump administration was considering policy changes to allow prosecutors to seek the death penalty.

Democrat Conor Lamb, right, talks with some of his campaign workers at a campaign office in Carnegie, Pa. (Keith Srakocic/AP)

But on Saturday his call for executing drug dealers got some of the most enthusiastic cheers of the night. As Trump spoke about policies on the issue in China and Singapore, dozens of people nodded their heads in agreement. “We love Trump,” one man yelled. A woman shouted: “Pass it!”

Trump was ostensibly here to inject some last-minute political capital behind Republican Rick Saccone, whose race against Democrat Conor Lamb could be a harbinger of the Republican Party’s fate in the midterms.

[The GOP’s messages don’t seem to be working in Pennsylvania. Is that a warning sign?]

But in classic Trump fashion, he quickly steered away from his main reason for being there. He touted his decision to meet with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and boasted that it was something his predecessors couldn’t do.

Trump also delivered a profane attack on the news media, calling NBC News anchor Chuck Todd a “sleeping son of a bitch” and deeming CNN “fake as hell,” as the enthusiastic crowd booed at the mention of journalists and chanted “CNN sucks!”

And he rattled off several falsehoods, such as a claim that 52 percent of women voted for him in his presidential win (it was 52 percent of white women, according to exit polling).

The rally at an airport hangar in the Pittsburgh suburbs took Trump back to familiar political terrain and a base that carried him to a surprise victory in 2016.

Trump talked up his decision this past week to impose tariffs on steel and aluminum imports — a move deeply opposed by congressional Republicans and the business wing of the GOP yet popular in this Pittsburgh suburb, the heart of steel country. Both candidates in the special election to fill the seat vacated by Tim Murphy (R) back the president’s decision on the import duties.

“A lot of steel mills are now opening up because of what I did,” the president told the crowd in this conservative district. “Steel is back, and aluminum is back.”

Trump also warned allies in the European Union to “get ready for tariffs” and threatened to impose taxes on German automakers Mercedes-Benz and BMW.

Despite his allegiance to Trump, Saccone has underwhelmed national Republicans in this heavily pro-Trump district, and public polling ahead of the Tuesday election has shown Saccone neck-and-neck with Lamb, a former federal prosecutor and Marine.

For more than an hour before the rally began, Saccone stood near the entrance with his wife, chatting with people as they arrived. A number of people walked past, not seeming to notice or recognize him. Rally signs for the candidate were sparse.

Trump himself rarely mentioned Saccone during the first portion of the rally, saying he believed the candidate was “handsome” and deriding the Democrat as “Lamb the sham.” But Trump also acknowledged that Saccone was in a “tough race” and urged his supporters to come out and vote.

“We need our congressman, Saccone. We have to have him,” Trump said. Referring to House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), the president added: “The only chance she’s got to become speaker is electing Democrats.”

He finally pulled Saccone to the stage near the end of his 75-minute rally, as the candidate exclaimed: “If President Trump’s in your corner, how can you lose?”

“Go out, vote for Rick. He’ll never, never disappoint you,” Trump said. “Vote with your heart, vote with your brains. This is an extraordinary man.”

At another point in the rally, Trump also urged a crackdown on sanctuary cities and vowed to toughen enforcement at U.S. borders and to root out MS-13 gang members.

“We have to build a wall,” Trump said. “For people, for gangs, for drugs. The drugs have never been a problem like we have right now.”

He recalled his testy telephone conversation last month with Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto, which ended in an impasse over Trump’s promised border wall and an agreement to scrap Peña Nieto’s planned trip to Washington.

Trump said Peña Nieto asked him on the call to affirm Mexico’s position that it would not pay for the wall.

“He said, ‘Is it a dealbreaker?’ ” Trump recalled. “I said, ‘Bye, bye. We’re not making a deal.’ ”

Midway through the rally, Trump hinted that he may not run for reelection, yet he rolled out a new campaign slogan (“Keep America Great!”) and took repeated swings at potential 2020 Democratic challengers, including Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) — again pulling out his “Pocahontas” taunt. He also went after Rep. Maxine Waters, calling the California Democrat — who has called for Trump’s impeachment — a “low-IQ individual.”

And he couldn’t resist recounting his stunning electoral victory 16 months ago: “They said he cannot win, he cannot get — remember? — to 270. And we didn’t! We got to 306.”

The rally in Moon Township had originally been scheduled for mid-February but was postponed after the deadly school shooting in Parkland, Fla. The campaign statement announcing the new date did not mention Saccone; rather, it said Trump would come to Moon Township to tout the GOP’s new tax law. 

This was Trump’s first campaign rally in more than three months, breaking his pattern of gathering with his strongest supporters as often as twice in a month. His last two rallies were aimed at helping Republican candidates in the U.S. Senate race in Alabama, although the president did not make those men the centerpiece of his comments. 

On Sept. 22, Trump held a rally in Huntsville, Ala., to encourage his supporters to vote in the GOP primary for Luther Strange, who had been appointed to fill the Senate seat vacated by Attorney General Jeff Sessions (R). While on stage, Trump acknowledged he “might have made a mistake” in endorsing Strange, who went on to lose the primary to Roy Moore, whom many of the president’s supporters had endorsed. 

Trump then backed Moore, continuing to support the former Alabama Supreme Court judge even as he was accused of sexual misconduct involving teenage girls when he was in his 30s. 

On Dec. 8, the president held a campaign rally in Pensacola, Fla. — not far from the Alabama state line. Although those close to Trump had said the president would not mention Moore during the event, Trump did just that, telling his supporters: “So get out and vote for Roy Moore. Do it. Do it. Do it.” 

Moore’s Democratic opponent, Doug Jones, went on to win the race, becoming the first Alabama Democrat elected to the U.S. Senate in more than two decades.

Since those two rallies late last year, Trump has not held any official campaign rallies, although he did name his new campaign manager last month, Brad Parscale. But that doesn’t mean the president has refrained from giving addresses that sound a lot like his signature campaign speeches. 

Last month, Trump showed up at the Conservative Political Action Conference and gave an unscripted 75-minute address in which he attacked Democrats, mocked Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), encouraged campaign-style chants about locking up his political opponent and recited the lyrics of a song about a tenderhearted woman who cares for an ailing snake, a parable that he frequently uses to paint undocumented immigrants as violent criminals.

philip.rucker@washpost.com

“YOU and every other law-abiding gun owner is being blamed for an atrocious act of premeditated murder,” Marion Hammer, an NRA and Unified Sportsmen of Florida lobbyist, wrote in an alert Tuesday. “Neither the 3-day waiting period on all rifles and shotguns, raising the age from 18 to 21 to buy any firearm, or the bump stock ban will have any effect on crime. Despite that fact, Senate leaders rammed through gun control as part of the bill.”

WASHINGTON — Over the past six weeks, the Trump administration’s roster of Korean experts, already depleted, grew even thinner. The White House mysteriously dropped its choice for ambassador to Seoul. The State Department’s top North Korea specialist resigned. And the senior Asia director at the National Security Council was out the past two weeks on paternity leave.

But when a high-level South Korean delegation arrived at the White House on Thursday afternoon for two days of meetings over the North Korea threat, one person swooped in to fill the vacuum: President Trump.

In a stunning turn of events, Trump personally intervened into a security briefing intended for his top deputies, inviting the South Korean officials into the Oval Office where he agreed on the spot to a historic but exceedingly risky summit with North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un. He then orchestrated a dramatic public announcement on the driveway outside the West Wing broadcast live on cable networks.

The news shocked Washington, Seoul and everywhere in between. But inside the White House, the president – whose exchange of taunts and threats with Kim had set northeast Asia on edge over a potential military confrontation for months – was said to be reveling in his big reveal, which overshadowed the growing scandal surrounding his alleged affair with a pornographic film star and concerns with tariffs he announced earlier in the day.

“The president is the ultimate negotiator and dealmaker when it comes to any type of conversation,” says his press secretary. Bloomberg/Andrew Harrer

AN ENORMOUS GAMBLE

Trump’s personal involvement in the White House’s deliberations over the world’s most serious and vexing security situation has now placed a president who considers himself a master dealmaker into the most fraught faceoff of his 71 years. A breakthrough that would reduce Pyongyang’s nuclear threat would be a legacy-defining achievement. A stalemate that gives Kim a photo op for nothing in return could fracture U.S. alliances and be seen as a devastating embarrassment.

But what the whirlwind evening at the White House also illustrated was that in his unorthodox presidency, which centers so singularly on his force of personality, Trump has little worry about a dearth of qualified staff because he considers himself to be his own diplomat, negotiator and strategist.

“The president is the ultimate negotiator and dealmaker when it comes to any type of conversation,” White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said. “And we feel very confident in where we are.”

The question is, where exactly is the Trump White House – and how did it get there?

The answer wasn’t clear Friday as Trump aides struggled to explain whether concrete steps from Pyongyang toward denuclearization were a precondition ahead of the summit, what the agenda of the talks will encompass and how a president known to disdain dense briefing books intends to prepare for an adversary that U.S. intelligence officials don’t know much about.

In fact, it was not the details of the planning process but rather Trump’s impulsive, improvisational style that was the biggest selling point as top aides fanned out to explain why the president had taken this enormous gamble. Asked why the administration did not engage in lower-level talks with the North to build out preconditions and an agenda for a leaders-level summit, one senior aide offered that Trump “was elected in part because he is willing to take approaches very, very different from past approaches and past presidents.”

Across Washington, foreign policy experts tried to make sense of the news, with many betting that the talks would not happen after the Trump team heard negative feedback from Tokyo, conservatives in Seoul opposed to President Moon Jae-in’s liberal government and some in Congress who fear the move is too rash.

JAPANESE BLINDSIDED

The Japanese, who have been wary of offering Kim a propaganda platform, were blindsided by the news. Diplomats at the Japanese embassy in Washington, gathered for a goodbye party for Ambassador Kenichiro Sasae on Thursday evening, scrambled to react when the news broke.

Trump hastily called Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and invited him to visit the White House in April to confer before the summit with Kim, which officials said would be held in May.

“Nobody thinks the North Koreans are serious in Japan,” said Michael Green, the NSC’s Asia director under President George W. Bush, who is meeting with officials in Tokyo this week. “Given how he blindsided the entire national security team … I would bet this does not happen.”

The South Koreans, who have fretted over Trump’s saber-rattling over the past several months, landed at Dulles International Airport midmorning Thursday. Perhaps battling jet lag after the 13-hour flight, they arrived at the White House in early afternoon for what they thought was the warmup act: a meeting with Trump’s top aides, including Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, Deputy Secretary of State John Sullivan and Director of National Intelligence Daniel Coats.

‘AN ART OF A TEASER’

Led by South Korea’s national security adviser, Chung Eui-yong, the delegation’s aim was to debrief Trump’s team on the four-hour meeting Chung held with Kim in Pyongyang shortly after the Olympics, which had provided the two Koreas a chance to reopen a long-dormant diplomatic dialogue.

But what was supposed to be an hourlong briefing took an unexpected turn when Trump himself intervened midway through. The Koreans had been scheduled to see Trump on Friday, but the president had gotten wind of the meeting and told aides he wanted to get involved immediately.

In the Oval Office, Chung explained to Trump that he had brought with him a personal invitation from Kim for a meeting – a stunning offer given Kim has not met with any foreign heads of state since assuming control of the North after his father’s death in 2011.

Chung later told associates that he believed the South Koreans had a strong hand to play with Trump. The North Korean leader had agreed that joint U.S.-South Korean military exercises, which had been delayed during the Olympics, could resume. And Kim pledged that the North would not take provocative actions, including missile tests, ahead of the summit.

The risks of such a meeting, however, were well known on the U.S. side: The North has violated past agreements to freeze its nuclear program in exchange for sanctions relief and no sitting American president has met with a North Korea leader over fears of being set up for failure.

Earlier this week, Vice President Mike Pence, who was supposed to meet with North Korean officials during the Olympics to deliver a hard-line warning, vowed that the administration’s “posture toward the regime will not change until we see concrete steps toward denuclearization.” On Thursday, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, traveling in Africa, told reporters the administration was “a long ways from negotiations.”

In the Oval Office, some of Trump’s aides raised concerns, according to a person familiar with the discussion. But Trump, seated in an armchair next to Chung, with their aides arrayed on couches, dismissed their fears and “made the decision” on the spot.

Korea experts were dumbstruck by Trump’s impulsiveness.

“He’s much more of a TV personality than business person,” said Christopher Hill, who led the U.S. delegation in the Six-Party talks with the North during the Bush era that produced a weapons freeze that Pyongyang later violated. “This is not the art of a deal here – it’s the an art of a teaser.”

SHOW TIME IN WHITE HOUSE DRIVEWAY

The South Koreans, stunned they had gotten done in 45 minutes what they thought might take weeks, prepared to depart. But a White House aide asked them to stay because Trump, always aware of the production value of such a moment, had an additional request: Would they help draft a statement and read it to the press outside the West Wing?

Over nearly two hours, the two teams collaborated on a brief statement. Meantime, Trump popped his head into the White House briefing room – where he has never made remarks since taking office – and told reporters that the Koreans would be making a “major announcement” at 7 p.m.

A large group of reporters, which had spent most of the day focused on Trump’s morning announcement of new tariffs on steel and aluminum, assembled on the West Wing driveway at the “sticks”– journalist lingo for the bank of television microphones set up in case of impromptu press statements from White House visitors.

Shortly after the hour, with cable networks talking live to reporters in the driveway, a Marine guard opened the doors of the West Wing and Chung emerged, flanked by Suh Hoon, South Korea’s intelligence chief, and Cho Yoon-je, the South Korea ambassador to Washington. It was dark out and the camera lights cast a harsh light onto the officials.

Chung delivered the news in a 245-word statement. He took no questions.

The cable stations turned quickly to their analytical panels. Diplomats lit up international phone lines. And White House aides praised the president for his artful turn from bellicosity to diplomacy.

“That’s a decision the president took himself,” Tillerson said Friday. “This is something that he’s had on his mind for quite some time, so it was not a surprise in any way.”

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Washington (CNN)There is pervasive anxiety inside the walls of the White House over the fallout around allegations leveled against President Donald Trump by porn actress Stormy Daniels, multiple sources tell CNN, with some officials worried that the salacious accusations and tangled legal fight could dwarf past controversies.

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“President and Mrs. Obama have always believed in the power of storytelling to inspire,” Eric Schultz, a senior adviser to the former president, said Thursday. “Throughout their lives, they have lifted up stories of people whose efforts to make a difference are quietly changing the world for the better. As they consider their future personal plans, they continue to explore new ways to help others tell and share their stories.”

In one possible show idea, Mr. Obama could moderate conversations on topics that dominated his presidency — health care, voting rights, immigration, foreign policy, climate change — and that have continued to divide a polarized American electorate during President Trump’s time in office.

Another program could feature Mrs. Obama on topics, like nutrition, that she championed in the White House. The former president and first lady could also lend their brand — and their endorsement — to documentaries or fictional programming on Netflix that align with their beliefs and values.

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It is unclear how much money the Obamas will be paid, given their lack of experience in the media business. Netflix recently signed a five-year, $300 million deal to lure Ryan Murphy away from 21st Century Fox, but Mr. Murphy is among the television industry’s most sought-after producers

The deal is evidence that Mr. Obama, who left the White House when he was just 55 years old, intends to remain engaged in the nation’s civic business, even as he has studiously avoided direct clashes with Mr. Trump about his concerted efforts to roll back Mr. Obama’s legacy. It is also a clear indication that the former president remains interested in the intersection of politics, technology and media.

Several people familiar with the Netflix discussions said that executives from Apple and Amazon, which have their own streaming services, have also expressed interest in talking with Mr. Obama about content deals.

The former president has maintained a low profile since leaving office. He and his wife are each writing highly anticipated memoirs, for which they were reportedly paid more than $60 million. And Mr. Obama has been paid hundreds of thousands of dollars for speeches in the United States and around the world. The Obamas are rarely seen in public in Washington, where they still live.

Mr. Obama has long expressed concerns about how the flow of information — and misinformation — has the power to shape public opinion. In the last several months, Mr. Obama has discussed with technology executives and wealthy investors the threats to American democracy from the manipulation of news.

He has seethed privately and publicly, about what he says is the manipulation of news by conservative outlets and the fractured delivery of information in the internet age. In several recent public appearances during the last several months, the former president hinted at his frustration with the way conservative news outlets have shaped people’s perceptions about the divisive 2016 campaign and the issues he cares about.

“If you watch Fox News, you are living on a different planet than you are if you are listening to NPR,” Mr. Obama told David Letterman in an interview broadcast in January for the comedian’s first Netflix program. Last December, at a forum in New Delhi, Mr. Obama conceded that “If I watch Fox News, I wouldn’t vote for me. I would watch it and say, ‘Who is that guy?’”

Evidence began to emerge while Mr. Obama was president that Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and YouTube were being used to spread false information about candidates and issues. Social media’s impact on society became even clearer last month, when the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, indicted 13 Russians and three companies that had used social media companies to undermine democracy in the United States and push voters to reject Hillary Clinton.

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As the election came to a close, Mr. Obama told The New Yorker that the new media landscape had made it possible for large swaths of the country to ignore facts. “Everything is true and nothing is true,” he complained. He later personally scolded Facebook’s chief executive for saying it was “crazy” to think the social network influenced the election.

For Netflix, securing the Obama programming is a part of the company’s broader search for original content, as the streaming service competes for viewers with HBO, Apple, Amazon and the traditional broadcast networks. Netflix has said it could spend as much as $8 billion on content this year. It has been paying top dollar for original programs like its hit Stranger Things and the documentary Icarus, which won the Oscar this year for best documentary feature.

It would also be another coup for a company that began by distributing DVDs and is now doing deals with some of the most powerful names in entertainment.

Several of the technology and media worlds’ top executives have been close advisers and donors to Mr. Obama over the years, including John Doerr and Reid Hoffman, the Silicon Valley venture capitalists, and Jeffrey Katzenberg, the entertainment executive.

But Mr. Obama has particularly close ties to Ted Sarandos, Netflix’s chief content officer. Mr. Sarandos is married to Nicole A. Avant, an activist who served as Mr. Obama’s ambassador to the Bahamas. And Reed Hastings, the chief executive of Netflix, was close to Mr. Obama while he was president and an attendee at state dinners. A spokesman for Netflix declined to comment about any discussions with the former president and his wife.

Some of the biggest media companies on the internet, like BuzzFeed and Vice, have embraced politically-themed programming, even as they have recently seen their growth flatline with shifts in the digital advertising and distribution landscapes. Political news start-ups like the website Axios and the podcast “Pod Save America,” hosted by former Obama officials, have connected with audiences that are eager for scoops, analysis and opinion.

The deal between Netflix and Mr. Obama would be a modern media twist on an approach that former politicians have tried in the past.

Al Gore, the former vice president, created a new cable network after losing the presidency to George W. Bush in 2000. Mr. Gore and Joel Hyatt, a businessman and Democratic activist, purchased a small cable company in 2004, eventually renaming it Current TV and positioning it as an “independent voice” in the political debate.

The network expanded its presence on cable and satellite networks and changed formats several times during the next eight years, at one point providing a home for Keith Olbermann, an outspoken liberal and a former host at MSNBC. In 2013, Mr. Gore and Mr. Hyatt sold their company to the Al Jazeera Media Network, which shut down the Current TV channel.

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Mr. Obama’s approach is less of a direct challenge to the existing news establishment. But he is embracing the streaming services that have become a direct threat to the cable and network television infrastructure, especially among younger viewers.

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