St. Cloud, Minnesota (Associated Press) Donald Trump Although Minnesota leans heavily to Democrats, the former president believes he has a chance of winning the state this year.
Trump is scheduled to hold a rally in St. Cloud, Minnesota, on Saturday night, this time accompanied by his running mate. J.D. Vance And the expectation that Trump will face off against the vice president Kamala Harris Instead of the president in November Joe BidenHe is scheduled to speak at the Bitcoin Conference in Nashville, Tennessee earlier in the day.
Trump appeared as the head guest at a Republican fundraiser in St. Paul in May, boasting that he could win the state, making a clear appeal to the iron-mining region of northeastern Minnesota, where he hopes the blue-collar workers and union members who have long been solidly Democrats will turn to the Republicans.
It’s also a group of potential voters that Vance, an Ohio senator from a Midwestern Rust Belt city, is seen as especially easy for the Trump campaign to approach.
Appeal to Midwesterners and union members has also helped Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz get on the list of about a dozen Democrats being considered as Harris’ running mate.
Minnesota is a state where Trump fell short of Democrat Hillary Clinton by 1.5 percentage points in 2016. But four years later, Joe Biden extended the Democratic victory, beating Trump by more than 7 percentage points.
But the former Republican president has taken a bullish stance on the state.
In a memo sent to the Trump campaign and the Republican National Committee last month, Trump’s political manager, James Blair, called Minnesota a battleground state favorable to then-opponent Biden and said the campaign was hiring staff in the state and was in the process of opening eight offices in the state.
The campaign did not say Friday whether those eight offices were open.
Earlier this month, Republican congressional candidate Taylor Rahm dropped out of the primary and became a senior adviser to Trump’s campaign in the state.
“With the Biden/Harris presidency in disarray and the Democratic Party in disarray, President Trump is not only leading in all traditional battleground states, but also in long-time Democratic states like Minnesota, Virginia and New Jersey,” Caroline Leavitt, national spokeswoman for the Trump campaign, said in a statement.
Lexie Byler, Minnesota communications director for the Harris campaign, said Trump and Vance were “so far removed from the values of Minnesotans that we don’t believe a Republican candidate will win this year.”
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“Democrats are passionate and are taking nothing for granted. We have a strong, well-organized and coordinated campaign with thousands of volunteers ready to help elect Kamala Harris and keep fighting for us,” she said in a statement.
Trump’s St. Cloud performance will take place at the Herb Brooks National Hockey Center, a 5,159-seat hockey arena. Since surviving an assassination attempt at an outdoor rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, on July 13, Trump has only held events at indoor venues. However, in a post on social media networks on Saturday, Trump announced plans for an outdoor performance, saying, “The Secret Service has agreed to significantly increase their operations, and they are fully capable of doing so. No one will be allowed to prevent or disrupt free speech or assembly!!!”
Secret Service officials declined to say whether the agency had agreed to Trump’s expanded campaign presence or whether it had concerns about him potentially holding outdoor rallies again. “Ensuring the safety and security of our protectees is our number one priority,” Secret Service spokesman Anthony Guglielmi said in a statement Saturday. “To maintain the integrity of our operations, we cannot comment on the specifics of our safeguards or methods.”
Trump, who will deliver a keynote speech at the Bitcoin Conference, has never been a fan of cryptocurrency, writing on social media in 2019 that its “value is highly volatile and unfounded,” but has embraced digital currencies in recent years, including including a statement in the newly adopted Republican National Committee platform supporting the right to mine bitcoin, to store cryptocurrencies and digital assets, and to transact using them without government regulation.
In May, his campaign began accepting donations in cryptocurrency.
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Associated Press writer Ammar Madani in Washington contributed to this report.
