Trump to hold ’24 rally in Green Bay
April 2 campaign event will be first in Wisconsin
MADISON — Republican former President Donald Trump will hold his first Wisconsin rally of the 2024 presidential race on April 2.
Trump will visit Green Bay on the day of the state’s presidential primary election, his campaign announced Tuesday. He is scheduled to speak at 5 p.m. at a Green Bay hotel.
The announcement follows a string of visits from Biden and his surrogates in recent weeks, including Vice President Kamala Harris, first lady Jill Biden and Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen. The Biden campaign officially launched canvassing efforts throughout the state earlier this month, following a visit to Milwaukee by the president.
In a statement following Biden’s most recent Wisconsin visit, Trump blasted the president for arguing to voters his policies would improve economics for Milwaukee families and said Biden was “touting his failed ‘Bidenomics’ policies” in the Badger State.
“After many visits to Wisconsin from President Biden, Vice President Harris, and Democratic leaders, Donald Trump finally decided to make time to visit our state in between his busy schedule of hiding out in his country club, calling for cuts to Social Security, and calling into white supremacist radio shows to spew antisemitism,” said Timothy White, a spokesman for Biden’s Wisconsin campaign, in a statement. “This November, Wisconsin will send him packing just like we did in 2020.”
Trump was last in Wisconsin in 2022, campaigning for construction mogul Tim Michels ahead of the Republican gubernatorial primary.
The former president hosted a rally in the Waukesha County fairgrounds to stump for Michels but also used the opportunity to continue to promote his false claims about his 2020 election loss in Wisconsin, pushing candidates to call for the abolition of the state elections commission over allegations of voter fraud that have not been proven in the years Trump has made them.
Biden defeated Trump in Wisconsin by about 20,000 votes in 2020 — a victory Trump sought to overturn and in part prompted an attack on Jan. 6, 2021, by his supporters on the U.S. Capitol.
In 2016, Trump defeated former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton by a similar margin, making him the first Republican since 1984 to carry Wisconsin. While Clinton never campaigned in Wisconsin during the general election, Trump made repeated visits to the state.
Though his mission at the Waukesha rally in 2022 was to promote Michels and criticize his GOP opponent, former Lt. Gov. Rebecca Kleefisch, Trump leveled his strongest condemnation at Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, who repeatedly refused the former president’s calls to overturn election results.
Despite their previous disputes and calling Trump’s nomination a “suicide mission” for Republicans, Vos — the state’s longest-serving Assembly speaker and the most effective Republican in the GOP-controlled state Legislature — recently endorsed the former president.
“It’s going to be, do you think the policies that Joe Biden has put in place over the course of the past four years are better for the country, or were times better under Donald Trump, when we actually had low inflation, low taxes, more control at the border?” Vos told reporters.
Wisconsin is one of just a handful of states that will decide the next presidential contest and as of now, Biden and Trump are each tied at 49% among registered voters in the battleground state where races are often decided on razorthin margins.
Just 2% of those surveyed in the most recent Marquette University Law School poll, released Feb. 7, said they haven’t decided whom to support in the November election.
The poll highlighted a potential enthusiasm gap in a Biden-Trump matchup.
Among voters who are “very enthusiastic” about the election, Trump led Biden by 19 points. But in all other categories, Biden led Trump by an average of 18 points.
Molly Beck of the Journal Sentinel contributed.