President hits road to counter Biden
WASHINGTON – As Joe Biden and the Democrats convene virtually this week, President Donald Trump plans to get in some words edgewise.
Trump will travel to four battleground states – Wisconsin, Minnesota, Arizona, and Pennsylvania – to offer his thoughts as Democratic delegates meet online to nominate Biden and running mate Kamala Harris.
The itinerary includes a stop near the city where Biden was born – Scranton, Pennsylvania – on Thursday, just hours before the former vice president is scheduled to deliver his nomination acceptance speech.
Trump “will deliver remarks on a half century of Joe Biden failing America,” the campaign said in announcing the stop at a building products business in Old Forge, Pa., less than 10 miles from Scranton.
Democrats said Trump won’t be able to explain away his poor management of a pandemic that has claimed more than 167,000 lives and plunged the country into a near-depression.
“His presidency stands for crisis, lies, and toxic attempts to drive Americans apart,” said Biden spokesman Andrew Bates.
Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Arizona all went for Trump in the 2016 election, helping give him a narrow Electoral College victory over Hillary
Clinton.
This year, various polls give Biden a lead in all three states.
The Republican counter-programming tour starts Monday in Minnesota, a state he narrowly lost to Clinton four years ago. The president’s campaign believe they can flip the state in their favor in the November election.
Trump plans to travel on three of the four days of this week’s Democratic convention, which will be based in Milwaukee but beamed to delegates and voters nationwide. The Democrats canceled plans for a full-blown convention because of the spread on COVID-19.
The president will speak to supporters at airports in Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Arizona. Officials said plans are still being worked out for Scranton, but added that Trump will speak well before Biden gives his acceptance speech to the Democrats.
The schedule so far:
Monday: Mankato, Minnesota, and Oshkosh, Wisconsin. Trump plans to speak about jobs and the economy at both stops, the schedule said; he is also expected to discuss the civil unrest in Minneapolis and other cities.
Tuesday: Yuma, Arizona, where immigration and border security will be major topics. The president has visited Arizona often to promote his plans for a wall along the Mexico border.
Thursday: The Scranton-Wilkes Barre area in Pennsylvania, where the president plans to discuss jobs and trade policy during a visit to Mariotti Building Products.
His remarks are scheduled to start at 3 p.m., EDT. That is six to seven hours before Biden makes his acceptance speech, an address in which the Democratic nominee is expected to counterattack Trump.
Bates, from the Biden campaign, said the “fly-in, fly-out airport sideshows might protect Trump from seeing the damage that he has done to communities throughout this country,” but “they will only underscore why we have to win this battle for the soul of our nation.”