Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
Two presidential campaigns step out
Trump in Wisconsin touts ship contract; Biden talks health care in Pennsylvania
MADISON, Wis. — The last time President Donald Trump visited Wisconsin, he staged a raucous rally at an arena in downtown Milwaukee. When he returned to the battleground state Thursday, he was reminded how much has changed.
Trump’s event wasn’t open to the public but featured 500 to 600 people at the Fincantieri Marinette Marine shipyard who were required to wear masks. He was promoting a contract won by the shipyard — in conservative, rural Wisconsin far from Milwaukee — to build as many as 10 Navy frigates.
The company employs about 2,500 people now, and the deal could add 1,000 jobs. It’s the first new major shipbuilding program for the Navy in more than a decade.
Arriving in Wisconsin, Trump acknowledged the power of incumbency, tweet- ing, “Launching big new ship contract!” Video on Twitter showed protesters just outside the airport, chanting “Hands up, don’t shoot,” and “I can’t breathe.”
A day earlier, the governor activated the National Guard in the capital to protect state property from angry protests against racial injustice.
When Trump last campaigned in the state in January, the unemployment rate was 3.5%. Now, 12% of Wisconsin workers are jobless.
Trump’s standing in Wisconsin appears to be suffering from the extraordinary period of turmoil, and his visit was part of a concerted effort to shore up support in friendlier areas that can make or break his reelection chances.
Besides the visit to Marinette, he was to participate in a town hall to be broadcast by Fox News Channel from an airport in Green Bay. The trip came days after he dispatched Vice President Mike Pence to the conservative Milwaukee suburbs.
The two parts of Wisconsin targeted by Trump this week — suburban Milwaukee and the Green Bay media market in northeast Wisconsin — are areas where he needs to run up a big vote advantage in November. Some polls have suggested he has ground to make up in Wisconsin.
Trump’s appearance gave him a chance to score points with blue-collar workers who know the importance of the shipbuilder to the region’s economy, said John Nygren, a Republican member of the state Assembly.
“Granted, Trump is not traditional in a lot of ways, but it’s a great opportunity from a working-class standpoint to show Republicans can stand up for them,” Nygren said.
‘CONTROL’ THE VIRUS
Trump’s presumptive opponent, former Vice President Joe Biden said in a statement that Trump went to Marinette “to take credit for Obama-Biden administration-fueled successes in an attempt to paper over the fact that Wisconsin has been bleeding blue-collar manufacturing jobs over the past few weeks. Instead of offering real relief to working families, he’s trying to claim credit for progress in Marinette he did not build.”
Biden spent Thursday in Pennsylvania warning “there are no miracles coming” to help the nation beat back the still-deadly pandemic.
“Amazingly, he hasn’t grasped the most basic fact of this crisis: To fix the economy we have to get control over the virus,” the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee said of Trump while speaking at a community center in Lancaster. “He’s like a child who can’t believe this has happened to him. His whining and selfpity. This pandemic didn’t happen to him. It happened to all of us.”
Much of the nation remaining home for months has largely prevented the two presidential candidates from holding dueling appearances in pivotal battleground states. On Thursday, it gave them an opportunity to show off their contrasting styles on a virus outbreak that has killed more than 122,000 Americans. Biden has spent weeks arguing that the pandemic remains a clear and present danger that Trump is trying to wish away in a desire to speed an economic recovery. The president counters that the country doesn’t have to choose between its health and improving the economy.
“There are no miracles coming,” Biden said. “We’re going to have to step up as Americans, all of us, and do the simple things and the hard things to keep our families safe and reopen our economy and to eventually put this pandemic behind us — and without responsible leadership coming out of the White House.”
The former vice president spent much of Thursday defending the Obama administration’s signature health care law and decrying what he said was a White Houseled effort to dismantle it in a court challenge. It was part of a Democratic effort to refocus the election on health care, an issue that helped the party retake the House last cycle and one it hopes will resonate with even more voters during the pandemic.