Harris, Walz, Vance travel, Trump campaign rally interrupted | Wilnesh News

Former President Donald Trump said Thursday that he plans not to attend a presidential campaign rally before the Democratic National Convention, which ends on August 22.

Speaking at a wide-ranging news conference at his home in Palm Beach, Florida, Trump was asked why he was “not on the campaign trail this week.”

Trump responded: “Because I was way ahead because I got their convention through and I did a lot of campaigning.”

Reporters followed up later. “Are you going to pick up your tour?”

“Yes, after the convention,” Trump replied, again referring to the Democratic convention, which runs from August 19 to August 22.

The pace and plans of the Republican presidential candidate’s campaign this August are completely different from Trump’s schedule when he last ran for president in person in August 2016.

That month, Trump held 27 noisy campaign rallies Across 15 states. When stadiums aren’t packed, Trump seems to be living on his own plane, shuttling between swing states and fundraisers, doing interviews on the phone — all while running the family’s real estate business.

By comparison, Trump has held just one rally so far this month.

Meanwhile, Trump’s Democratic opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris, and Minnesota Governor Tim Walz and his Republican running mate, Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance, spent the week touring the president’s battleground states.

Harris and Walz spoke at rallies in Wisconsin and Michigan on Wednesday and Thursday after making their first appearance at a rally in Philadelphia on Tuesday night. The two will travel to Arizona and Nevada for events on Friday and Saturday. All five states are closely contested in the November elections.

For the past five days, Trump has been at his resort Mar-a-Lago, where he conducted phone interviews and podcastand held an hour-long press conference there on Thursday.

Trump’s public schedule also appeared to confirm his stated plans to reduce his rallies in the coming weeks. only Currently posted events The “events” page of the Trump campaign website shows that a rally in Montana on Friday will benefit Republican Senate candidate Tim Shea.

Shea hopes to replace incumbent Democratic Sen. Jon Tester in November, and Trump’s emergence comes May inspire Republicans In deep red state.

While in Montana, Trump will attend a campaign fundraiser. He will then stop in Aspen, Colorado, on Saturday for another fundraiser before returning to Florida.

CNBC reached out to the Trump campaign and confirmed that the Republican candidate does not plan to resume large in-person presidential campaign rallies until after the Democratic National Convention.

“President Trump has an extensive travel schedule, including rallies, information events and fundraisers next week. He has hosted more campaign events than Harris and Walz combined,” Trump spokesman Steven Steven Cheung told CNBC.

There are less than 13 weeks until Election Day, Polls show presidential race Statistically tied. That makes Trump’s decision not to push his campaign into a full-scale state blitz even more unusual. It also suggests Trump may be missing out on important opportunities to connect with the voters he needs to reach in order to best win in November.

Typically, the final three months of a presidential campaign are Sprint to the finish linestarting with the party’s nominating convention in mid-summer and ending on Tuesday in early November.

Trump’s successful bid for the White House in 2016 is a good example of how this sprint has traditionally been conducted, and how effective it can be.

Eight years ago this month, Trump held more than 20 rallies across a dozen different states.

Between August 9 and 13 alone, Trump inspired huge crowds at seven large campaign rallies: two in battleground states such as North Carolina, Florida and Pennsylvania; The rally was held in Connecticut, a Democratic stronghold.

Trump will continue Flip Florida and Pennsylvania Last November, Democrat Barack Obama won two states in 2012. ·Hillary Clinton won a landslide victory.

In 2020, due to the new crown epidemic, in-person campaign rallies of both parties were basically suspended.

So far this month, Trump has traveled to Atlanta rally August 3rd.

Trump has not attended back-to-back rallies like he did during his first campaign, but has recently participated in several media interviews.

He gave interviews to controversial influencers Ardin Ross Via a live broadcast on Monday, he appeared on the Fox News morning show “Fox & Friends” on Wednesday morning and said he would be interviewed by billionaire Tesla CEO Elon Musk next week.

Meanwhile, Trump’s running mate J.D. Vance has taken a more visible role in this month’s campaign and adopted a more traditional schedule.

En route to an event in Philadelphia on Tuesday, the Ohio senator defended Trump’s decision to abandon the August blitz, telling reporters that he and Trump were deploying a “divide and conquer” strategy.

“Of course, one of the things you have to do is get out and talk to people and talk to reporters,” Vance said. “Of course, the last thing you have to do is raise resources. I know the president is busy doing that. thing.”

“Obviously we do events together sometimes,” Vance said. “But I think we’re going to take advantage of the fact that we have two guys who can both go out and get the message across.”

Vance spoke in Michigan and Wisconsin on Wednesday in response to Harris and Walz halting their campaign plans this week. He also planned to hold two events in North Carolina on Thursday, but they were postponed due to tropical storms.

However, none of Vance’s campaign events this week were billed as rallies. Instead, the remarks were staged as “comments on the press,” with only a small group of staff, reporters and supporters in attendance.