(Headline USA) As the presidential campaign enters a critical final 100 day stretch, Republican nominee Donald Trump and his running mate, JD Vance, rallied supporters on Saturday in a state that hasn’t backed a GOP candidate for the White House since 1972.
The rally in St. Cloud, Minnesota, is a sign of the campaign’s bullishness about its prospects across the Midwest.
Trump, who won Michigan and Wisconsin in 2016, has increasingly focused on Minnesota as a state where he’d like to put Democrats on defense.
This campaign focus comes after Minnesota Democrats tried to keep Trump off the official ballot in Minnesota. The attempt to keep President Trump out of the Minnesota election failed, per PBS.
The rally could force likely Democratic nominee, Kamala Harris, and Democrats to devote resources in a state they would likely otherwise ignore in the 2024 election.
Trump spoke for more than an hour and a half to cheering crowds holding signs supporting police and calling for the deportation of illegal immigrants.
He attacked Harris’s record 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.”
“Kamala Harris’ deadly destruction of America’s borders is completely and totally disqualifying for her to be president,” President Trump said.
Trump called out Harris for a 2020 post she made after the overdose death of George Floyd in Minneapolis. The post had encouraged people to help protesters by giving money to the Minnesota Freedom Fund.
Though Harris did not contribute to the fund herself, her tweet was among those from celebrities and high-profile people that helped donations flow into the cash-strapped nonprofit, helping it quickly raise $34 million. In the aftermath of the protests and unrest, the group actually spent little bailing out protesters.
Trump also attacked Harris’s record on abortion, calling her an “absolute radical.” This after she became the Biden administration’s most vocal proponent of infanticides.
Trump’s remarks followed a spirited speech from Vance, in which he focused on security at the border and crime.
In May, Trump headlined a GOP 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 continue the trend of working Americans supporting President Trump.
Trump’s appeal to that population has also helped Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz land on the list of about a dozen Democrats who are being vetted to potentially be Harris’ running mate.
Adapted from reporting by the Associated Press
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