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MANKATO, Minnesota (AP) – Declaring it’s time for the next election, President Donald Trump focused on the battlefield states of the Midwest on Monday with a public order message to counter the spectacle of the former Vice President Joe Biden at the Democratic National Convention.
In Mankato, Minnesota, Trump stepped up his rhetoric against Biden, calling him a “puppet of left-wing extremists trying to erase our borders, eliminate our police, indoctrinate our children, slander our heroes, take away our energy ”. Speaking to a crowd of several hundred supporters outside an airplane hangar, Trump claimed that a Biden victory would “replace American freedom with leftist fascism.”
“Fascists. They are fascists, ”Trump continued, although fascism is a form of far-right nationalism. “Some of them, not all, but some of them. But they are getting closer and closer. We have to win this election. But the proud people of Minnesota will not let that happen. “
Trump also traveled to Wisconsin – the official host state of the all-virtual Democratic National Convention – on Monday to kick off a week of travel and political events aimed at mitigating the usual ‘bounce’ in polls a candidate gets during the week of his convention. The president follows public and private polls less than three months before election day.
Earlier today, Trump stopped in Minneapolis to host an event with owners of small businesses whose stores were damaged after violent protests over the murder of George Floyd in custody.
“I’m here to help you. We will bring law and order back to your community. We will bring it back and we will report it immediately,” Trump told his supporters on the airport tarmac. did not venture to the sites of the demonstrations or the Floyd memorial in the city.
Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, a Democrat, said the White House was interested in Trump’s visit to the Minneapolis makeshift memorial at 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 terrible idea for President Trump to go to the George Floyd Memorial and use it as the backdrop for his campaign and ignite the pain and the angst that we feel in Minnesota, ”the governor said Monday during a virtual breakfast for the state’s delegation to the DNC.
White House chief of staff Mark Meadows challenged Walz’s statement. “Gov. Walz never contacted me or the president or the campaign, so maybe he misspoke, ”Meadows told The Associated Press. “We communicated before, so he has our contact information.”
On the Minneapolis tarmac, Trump addressed about 150 supporters – half of whom wore masks – who chanted “Another four years!” Trump told them Democrats would withdraw the constitutional amendment to bear arms, although Biden said he would work to enact common sense gun reforms.
Trump also criticized Biden for his support for an expansion of refugee asylum admissions, including from what the president called “terrorism hot spots,” an apparent reference to the large Somali refugee community in the country. Minnesota.
“I’m going to be so politically correct,” Trump said, before taking credit for his travel ban to some Muslim-majority countries, saying, “We want people who love our country to come to our country. “
In Wisconsin, which Trump won by less than a percentage point in 2016, the president said he sees more “wit” now.
“See, it’s easier in a way. Now the virus has made it a little harder, maybe a lot harder, because all of a sudden something happened that no one ever thought about, ”Trump told Oshkosh during a another event in an airport hangar. “But we managed it.”
As Trump attacked Biden, his plans for his own convention next week began to materialize after the coronavirus scrapped in-person gatherings in Charlotte, North Carolina, and Jacksonville, Florida. Trump is set to accept the Republican nomination from the White House, with the Republican National Committee applying for a permit to launch fireworks from the National Mall to mark the occasion. A spokesperson said the request was on hold.
Marking his heaviest political travel week since the coronavirus halted his campaign platform and jeopardized his chances of re-election, Trump sharply criticized Biden’s economic policies in the battlefield states of the Upper Midwest.
Trump will take on Biden over his immigration policies on Tuesday during a visit to Yuma, Arizona. He is also set to travel to Pennsylvania, Biden’s birth state, on Thursday, ahead of the Democrat’s acceptance speech.
Trump’s aggressive push comes as his path to re-election has narrowed since the coronavirus hit, and he has been forced to play defense in the states that led to re-election four years ago. Minnesota, seen as a GOP pickup opportunity a year ago, now appears to be out of reach, Republicans say.
Wisconsin, a state that had voted for Democratic presidents for decades until Trump’s victory in 2016, has become one of the toughest battlegrounds of 2020. Vice President Mike Pence plans to visit the southern part of the state Wednesday. Trump’s campaign views the state’s older, whiter demographics as more favorable than Michigan’s, which Trump also won four years ago, but is increasingly seen as a likely pickup by Democrats.
Trump’s campaign seizes Biden’s decision – because of the coronavirus – not to travel to Milwaukee for the convention, accusing the Democrat of “effectively abandoning” Wisconsin. The GOP is sending surrogates to the state this week in a show of force, including Pence and Republican National Committee chair Ronna McDaniel.
Democrats are devoting resources to television commercials and on-the-ground organizing in the state. Biden and California Senator Kamala Harris, his new running mate, are set to deliver their convention addresses from Biden home state, Delaware, this week, easing the need for air travel.
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Associated Press editors Scott Bauer in Madison, Wisconsin, Steve Karnowski in Minneapolis, and Deb Riechmann, Darlene Superville, and Jill Colvin in Washington contributed to this report.
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