WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance both hit the campaign trail on Thursday, but headed to heavily Republican areas to shore up lagging enthusiasm in their party ahead of next month’s midterm elections.
Trump’s traveled to Texas and Oklahoma and kicked off what the president said will be a 32-day campaign blitz leading up to Nov. 3.
“I think we’re going to win. Every place I’ve gone, we win,” Trump said during a speech at a truck facility in Denton, northwest of Dallas. He said some have suggested his “heart isn’t in it. My heart is in it,” and if not, he’d promised he’d be “home right now.”
“My heart is in it like never before,” Trump said of the run-up to the midterms.
Later, during a rally in Durant, Oklahoma, the president acknowledged, “We are worried about Michigan, we are worried about Texas. We are worried about a few states” before adding, “It’s all about 35 different contests.”
Vance, meanwhile, stumped in Florida, putting the Republican Party’s highest-ranking officials in areas where GOP candidates once expected to have glide paths to victory but are now facing tougher races.
The vice president tried to cast the GOP as representing common sense in the face of a Democratic push to the left.
“I have the easiest job in the world,” the vice president said in Lakeland, Florida. “I get to talk about how crazy the Democrats are.”
Trump and Vance could have their work cut out for them, though.
A new poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research finds that only 17% of U.S. adults approve of Trump’s handling of the cost of living. Just 26% approve of his handling of the economy overall, marking a new low.
Republicans have expressed growing pessimism about their chances in the election, which will determine control of Congress, as the president has repeatedly dismissed concerns about high costs and gas prices as his unpopular war in Iran drags on.
According to Trump, his party has merely done a poor job of public relations in promoting his administration’s accomplishments.
“Maybe we’re doing a bad job selling it,” Trump said in Texas.
Still, the president spent far more time scoffing at his predecessor, President Joe Biden, reliving his 2024 presidential campaign and defending the war in Iran than he did talking about how he’ll help lower the cost of living.
Trump scoffed at questions about affordability, insisting that they’d been caused by Biden, who left office more than two years ago. He also insisted that prices were actually on the decline.
“I think inflation is very real, but they’re the ones that caused the inflation,” he said. “I’m the one that’s bringing it down, and we have to be able to get that word out somehow because they’re using the word affordability.”
Democrats say Trump is desperate
The Democratic National Committee said Trump and Vance are “desperately trying to rally their base as the midterm elections approach and Republicans face defeat.”
“Donald Trump and JD Vance started a deadly and costly war with Iran that sent the economy spiraling and pushed prices even higher, and now — in the final stretch to the midterms — they’re desperately pleading with voters to ‘give (them) another chance,’” said DNC deputy communications director Kendall Witmer.
Trump toured the truck facility and chatted with workers in Texas, where Republicans are spending heavily to try to bolster state Attorney General Ken Paxton in a Senate race that could be closer than long expected. Paxton is facing Democratic state Rep. James Talarico,
Paxton attended the event and Trump joked that he “could be a pain in the ass sometimes” but also noted, “We need Ken so badly, and that’s why I’m here.”
Trump didn’t summon Paxton to the stage. He also shouted out, but didn’t invite to speak, an unlikely traveler accompanying him, former NBA star Dennis Rodman. Trump praised Rodman as his longtime friend and said Rodman had become close with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.
After his Texas speech, the White House announced that bad weather conditions were forcing Trump to motorcade from his event in Denton to a subsequent rally in Durant, Oklahoma — about 85 miles away.
The motorcade’s vehicles made the trip at breakneck speed, occasionally approaching 100 mph, and Trump posted during the ride that his limo, “The Beast,” was going “faster than it has ever gone before.”
Trump was in Oklahoma for Republican Mike Mazzei, running against Democratic state House Minority Leader Cyndi Munson for governor.
That event was held on the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma, making Trump one of the few U.S. presidents who have visited tribal nations while in office. Trump mentioned that the poverty rate among Native Americans had fallen during his presidency, as it declined for other segments of the population.
He also noted Democrats potentially controlling Congress after November, “If we don’t win, they’ll end up impeaching me.”
“I’ve become very good at beating them in impeachment,” Trump said.
Trump promises a travel blitz coming up
The president will be campaigning in more politically competitive areas in the weeks ahead as he embarks on his travel sprint. But Republican officials will not send him to places where they think his presence could drag down their candidates, according to a person familiar with the party’s strategy who was not authorized to speak publicly and spoke on the condition of anonymity.
Trump’s Oklahoma visit, and likewise one on Friday to Alabama, aimed at hitting two targets with one stop, the person said.
Republican officials have noted that even his Oklahoma stop brought Trump close to the Dallas-Fort Worth media market, meaning the president’s message reached Texas voters who could back Paxton.
His Friday stop in Mobile, Alabama, is aimed not only at boosting Sen. Tommy Tuberville as he runs for Alabama governor but also at shoring up support in Florida’s adjacent panhandle for Republican Rep. Byron Donalds.
Donalds is running for Florida governor against David Jolly, the Republican-turned-independent who is now running as a Democrat. Donalds’ campaign in heavily GOP Florida comes as Republicans there have faced some turbulence and voter concerns about affordability and artificial intelligence data centers have become central issues.
With Trump in Oklahoma and Texas, Vance’s central Florida stop on Thursday was for Donalds. That came a day after the vice president campaigned in Texas, rallying with Republican candidate Eric Flores, who is in a tight U.S. House race in south Texas.
Trump will also campaign on Saturday in Vandalia, Ohio, and on Monday in Grand Island, Nebraska.
Trump is expected to campaign for the GOP almost daily
In a meeting on Capitol Hill this week, White House chief of staff Susie Wiles described privately to GOP senators that Trump will have a near-daily sprint of campaigning ahead of the Nov. 3 midterms.
West Virginia Republican Sen. Shelley Moore Capito said that White House officials are “acknowledging the headwinds” but that “they have a strategy.”
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Associated Press reporters Jamie Stengle in Denton, Texas; Seung Min Kim in Washington; Jesse Bedayn in Austin, Texas, and Thomas Beaumont in Des Moines, Iowa, contributed to this report.
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