Trump counterprograms Biden with campaign stop in Minnesota
MINNEAPOLIS — Declaring it’s “crunch time” for the upcoming election, President Donald Trump zeroed in on Midwest battleground states on Monday with a tough, law and order message to counterprogram former Vice President Joe Biden’s show at the Democrats’ national convention.
In Mankato, Minnesota, Trump was expected to step up his rhetoric against Biden.
“This election is about the survival of our nation. Joe Biden is the puppet of left-wing extremists trying to erase our borders, eliminate our police, indoctrinate our children, vilify our heroes, and replace American freedom with left-wing fascism,” Trump said in remarks prepared for delivery. “But the proud people of Minnesota will not let this happen.”
“I’m here to help you. We will bring back law and order to your community. We will bring it back and we will bring it back immediately,” Trump told supporters as he arrived in Minneapolis, where George Floyd, a 46-year-old Black man, died in May in police custody.
Democrats want to elevate their “leftwing war on cops,’’ Trump asserted. “Their sympathies lie with lawbreakers and with criminals.” In recent weeks, Trump has repeatedly and falsely asserted that Biden supports defunding the police.
One idea to lead off his week of counterprogramming, however, was scrapped.
Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz said the White House had been interested in Trump visiting the makeshift memorial in Minneapolis on the site of Floyd’s fatal encounter with police on Memorial Day.
“I spent this weekend trying to tell the White House why it was a really bad idea to have President Trump go down and stand at the George Floyd memorial and use (it) as a backdrop for his campaign and ignite the pain and the anguish that we’re feeling in Minnesota,” the governor said Monday during a virtual breakfast for the state’s delegation to the Democratic National Convention.
On the tarmac in Minneapolis, Trump addressed about 150 supporters — half of them wearing masks — who chanted “Four More Years.” Trump told them that the Democrats will be taking away the constitutional amendment to bear arms.
Trump was visiting Minnesota and Wisconsin on Monday — the latter 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.
“We’re going to be working very hard,” Trump said before leaving the White House. “We have to. We’re getting down to final crunch. We want to be there.”
Marking his heaviest week of political travel since the coronavirus put a stop to his campaign schedule and imperiled his reelection chances, Trump was expected to sharply criticize Biden’s economic policies in the Upper Midwest battleground states.
On Tuesday, Trump will take on Biden over his immigration policies during a visit to Yuma, Arizona. He is also set to travel to Pennsylvania, the state of Biden’s birth, on Thursday, ahead of the Democrat’s acceptance speech.