With both major party national nominating conventions now in the books, the 2024 edition of the race for the White House enters the final sprint, and former President Donald Trump is picking up the pace.
Last week, as the Democrats held their convention in Chicago, Trump stopped in five of the seven crucial battleground states that will likely determine whether he or Vice President Kamala Harris wins the presidential election.
“We’re more than happy to go out and give specific messages to specific communities, which is what Donald Trump did last week, culminating with the big rally in Arizona. We’ll do the same thing this week,” Trump campaign senior adviser Corey Lewandowski told Fox News.
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Republican presidential nominee former President Donald Trump speaks at a campaign event at ll Toro E La Capra on Friday, Aug. 23, 2024, in Las Vegas. (AP Photo/Julia Nikhinson)
Trump on Monday afternoon will be in Detroit to address the National Guard Association of the United States’ 146th General Conference & Exhibition.
Later in the week, he returns to Michigan, as well as Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, to hold campaign events. Trump’s running mate – Sen. JD Vance of Ohio – stumps in Michigan on Tuesday.
The three states make up what is known as the Democrats’ blue wall, which the party reliably won in presidential elections for a quarter-century before Trump narrowly carried all three states in 2016 en route to winning the White House.
However, four years later, in 2020, President Biden won back all three by razor-thin margins to defeat Trump and claim the presidency.
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Harris has been riding a wave of energy and enthusiasm – both in polling and in fundraising – since replacing Biden at the top of the Democrats’ 2024 ticket five weeks ago.
The Harris campaign announced on Sunday that they have hauled in over $540 million in fundraising since the vice president replaced Biden at the top of the Democrats’ 2024 ticket.
They highlighted that $82 million of that haul came in during last week’s convention “thanks to a surge of grassroots donations,” and that the hour after Harris’ Thursday night nomination acceptance speech was the best hour of fundraising since she became a presidential candidate.
Democratic presidential nominee Vice President Kamala Harris appears on stage during the Democratic National Convention on Aug. 22, 2024 in Chicago. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin, File)
Trump’s political team expects that momentum to continue – for now – in the wake of last week’s Democratic national nominating convention.
“Post-DNC we will likely see another small (albeit temporary) bounce for Harris in the public polls. Post-Convention bounces are a phenomenon that happens after most party conventions,” Trump campaign pollsters Tony Fabrizio and Travis Tunis wrote late last week in a strategy memo.
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Besides the increased campaign stops, Trump is getting ready to sit down for more media interviews, and after a long absence, is regularly posting on X.
Additionally, while he will still hold large rallies – as he did in Arizona – campaign officials tell Fox News to expect Trump to take part in more smaller events and meet-and-greets that focus on the economy and the border – two top issues where they believe Harris is vulnerable.
Trump, Vance, their campaign and allied Republicans, also continue to blast Harris for a lack of news conferences or any major interview since taking over for Biden as the Democrats’ standard-bearer.
“She can’t answer questions,” Trump charged on Monday as he took questions from reporters during a stop in northern Virginia.” Why doesn’t she do something like I’m doing right now?”
And he claimed that the vice president “can’t talk. We can’t have another dummy as a president.”
Firing back, the Harris campaign charged that the GOP ticket is “ducking and dodging questions.”
“Trump Is Stumped and Vance Dances: GOP Ticket Dodges and Lies Through Every Question from Reporters,” read the title of an email Monday from the Harris campaign to reporters.
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The Trump campaign is also planning to use Democrat turned independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as a top Trump surrogate.
Independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr., left, shakes hands with Republican presidential nominee former President Donald Trump at a campaign rally on Friday, Aug. 23, 2024, in Glendale, Arizona.
Kennedy, the longtime environmental activist and high-profile vaccine skeptic who is the scion of the nation’s most storied political dynasty, on Friday suspended his campaign, endorsed Trump, and later teamed up with the former president at the rally in Arizona.
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“Bobby’s going to be on the campaign trail,” Lewandowski said Sunday in an interview on “Fox and Friends.” “He’s now going to have the opportunity to be on the road telling the American people exactly what he’s witnessed first hand, what he’s seen first hand.”
Lewandowski predicted that “now that he’s [Kennedy] with the Trump campaign, that’s going to be a special opportunity for more people to come join us in our path to victory.”
However, Trump will not have the campaign trail to himself this week.
Harris and her running mate – Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz – kick off a bus tour in battleground Georgia on Wednesday, with the vice president holding a rally in Savannah on Thursday evening.
