Trump takes law-and-order message to Minnesota, Wisconsin
MANKATO, Minn. — Declaring it’s “crunch time” for the upcoming election, President Donald Trump zeroed in on Midwest battleground states on Monday with a law-and-order message to counter former Vice President Joe Biden’s show at the Democratic National Convention.
In Mankato, Minnesota, Trump stepped up his rhetoric against Biden, calling him a “puppet of leftwing extremists trying to erase our borders, eliminate our police, indoctrinate our children, vilify our heroes, take away our energy.” Speaking to a crowd of several hundred supporters outside an aircraft hangar, Trump alleged that a Biden victory would “replace American freedom with left-wing fascism.”
“Fascists. They are fascists,” Trump continued. “Some of them, not all of them, but some of them. But they’re getting closer and closer. We have to win this election. But the proud people of Minnesota will not let this happen.”
Trump on Monday also visited
Wisconsin — the official host state of the entirely virtual Democratic National Convention — to launch a week of travel and political events aiming to blunt the customary polling “bounce” that a candidate gets during their convention week. The president trails in both public and private surveys less than three months before Election Day.
Earlier in the day, Trump stopped in Minneapolis. He did not venture to the scene of the George Floyd protests or the memorial to Floyd in the city.
Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, a Democrat, said the White House had been interested in Trump visiting the makeshift memorial.
“I spent this weekend trying to tell the White House why it was a really bad idea,” the governor said Monday during a virtual breakfast for the state’s delegation to the DNC.
White House chief of staff Mark Meadows disputed Walz’s statement. “Gov. Walz never reached out to me, nor the president, nor the campaign, so perhaps he misspoke,” Meadows said.