Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump and his running mate, JD Vance, rallied supporters on Saturday in a state that has not backed a Republican candidate for the White House since 1972.
The rally in St Cloud, Minnesota, was designed as a sign of the campaign’s bullishness about its prospects across the Midwest, particularly when President Joe Biden was showing signs of weakness ahead of his decision to exit the campaign.
Mr Trump, who won Michigan and Wisconsin in 2016 only to lose them four years later, has increasingly focused on Minnesota as a state where he would like to put Democrats on defence.
The rally is a gamble, potentially forcing the likely Democratic nominee, Vice President Kamala Harris, and Democrats to devote resources in a state they would likely otherwise ignore.
But it could also be risky for Mr Trump to spend time in places that might prove to be a reach with Ms Harris leading the ticket when he could otherwise focus on maintaining his support in more traditional battlegrounds.
Mr Trump spoke for more than an hour and a half to cheering crowds holding signs supporting police and calling for the deportation of migrants in the country illegally. He continued a pattern of escalating attacks against Ms Harris on immigration and crime.
He called her a “crazy liberal” and accused her of wanting to “defund the police”, while he said, by contrast, he wants to “overfund the police”.
“She has no clue; she’s evil,” Mr Trump said, suggesting Ms Harris had failed at her tasks related to the border as vice president.
“Kamala Harris’ deadly destruction of America’s borders is completely and totally disqualifying for her to be president.”
Mr Trump called out Ms Harris for a 2020 post she made after the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis at the hands of police.
The post encouraged people to help protesters by donating to the Minnesota Freedom Fund, which had been working on reforming the bail system and posted criminal bail for people as part of a campaign to address inequities in the system.
Though Ms Harris did not contribute to the fund herself, her tweet was among celebrities and high-profile people who helped donations flow into the cash-strapped non-profit, helping it quickly raise 34 million dollars.
In the immediate aftermath of the protests and unrest, the group actually spent little bailing out protesters.
Ammar Moussa, a spokesperson for the Harris campaign, called Mr Trump’s attack line “a desperate lie from a desperate campaign” that cannot change the fact that its candidate has been convicted of multiple felonies.
Mr Trump also knocked the vice president as an “absolute radical” on abortion, seemingly sensing an opening to attack her on the issue after she has become the Biden administration’s most vocal proponent of abortion rights.
He wrongly suggested Ms Harris wants abortion “right up until birth and after birth”. Infanticide is criminalised in every state, and no state has passed a law that allows killing a baby after birth.
Yet the former president also recycled much of his past material targeting Mr Biden, showing how his campaign has sought to keep the incumbent president’s pitfalls fresh in voters’ minds even after Mr Biden has ended his candidacy and endorsed Ms Harris.
Mr Trump’s remarks followed a spirited speech from Mr Vance, in which he leaned heavily into issues that animate the Republican base, particularly security at the US-Mexico border and crime.
He also took a broadside against the news media, arguing that journalists were comparing the first black woman and person of South Asian descent to lead a major party ticket to Martin Luther King Jr.
In May, Mr Trump headlined a Republican fundraiser in St Paul, where he boasted he could win the state and made explicit appeals to the iron-mining range in northeast Minnesota, where he hopes a heavy population of blue-collar and union workers will shift to Republicans after years of being solidly Democratic.
Appealing to that population has also helped Minnesota Governor Tim Walz land on the list of about a dozen Democrats potentially being vetted to be Ms Harris’ running mate.
Mr Walz posted on X, formerly known as Twitter, poking fun at Mr Trump’s visit to his state.
“Donald Trump is coming back to the State of Hockey tomorrow for the hat trick,” Mr Walz wrote. “He lost Minnesota in ’16, ’20, and he’ll lose it again in ’24.”
Saturday’s rally occurred at the Herb Brooks National Hockey Centre, a 5,159-seat hockey arena.
Donald Trump is coming back to the State of Hockey tomorrow for the hat trick. He lost Minnesota in ‘16, ‘20, and he’ll lose it again in ‘24. https://t.co/0QAcscrbyB
— Tim Walz (@Tim_Walz) July 27, 2024
After surviving the July 13 assassination attempt on him at an outdoor rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, Mr Trump has only had events at indoor venues.
But in a post on his social media network, he said he would schedule outdoor stops, claiming the Secret Service had agreed to “substantially step up” its operations.
Secret Service officials would not say whether the agency had agreed to expand operations at Mr Trump’s campaign events or had any concerns about him potentially resuming outdoor gatherings.
“Ensuring the safety and security of our protectees is our highest priority,” Secret Service spokesman Anthony Guglielmi said in a statement.
“In the interest of maintaining operational integrity, we are not able to comment on specifics of our protective means or methods.”
Earlier on Saturday, Mr Trump spoke at a bitcoin conference in Nashville, Tennessee, laying out a plan to embrace cryptocurrency if elected and promising to make the US the “crypto capital of the planet” and a “bitcoin superpower”.
Mr Trump has not always supported cryptocurrency but recently changed his attitude toward digital tokens.
Also on Saturday, Ms Harris ramped up her campaign for president with her first fundraiser since becoming the Democrats’ likely White House nominee.
The event in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, was expected to raise more than 1.4 million dollars, her campaign announced, from an audience of hundreds at the Colonial Theatre.
