Trump focuses attacks on Harris at St. Cloud rally as he looks to turn Minnesota red • Minnesota Reformer

ST. CLOUD — Former President Donald Trump had new material on Vice President Kamala Harris before thousands of cheering supporters in St. Cloud on Saturday night during his first rally with running mate J.D. Vance since Harris became the de facto Democratic presidential nominee.

Trump called Harris a “radical left-wing nutcase” who is more liberal than Bernie Sanders and supports defunding the police, taking away guns, admitting tens of millions of illegal immigrants and restricting red meat. He also said she’s not very smart.

Trump said he didn’t want to talk too much about President Joe Biden, but he couldn’t resist his usual attacks during his hour-and-a-half speech, describing Biden as corrupt, senile and bad at golf.

Trump also lashed out at his other favorite targets: “fake news,” radical Islamic terrorism and violent “illegal aliens,” whom he compared to Dr. Hannibal Lecter from the horror film “Silence of the Lambs.”

“I called him because we’re getting these types of people into our country. They’re closing their insane asylums all over the world. They’re sending the criminals into the United States,” Trump said.

Trump added a touch of optimism to his speech, promising an immediate turnaround for America once he’s back in the Oval Office: “Inflation will stop. The illegal aliens will be driven back. The cartels will retreat. Crime will drop. Energy prices will plummet. Incomes will rise. And a world in chaos will be quickly transformed into a planet of peace.”

Economists from various think tanks and Wall Street firms argue that Trump’s plan to halt immigration and raise tariffs on imported goods will increase inflation and lower inflation-adjusted incomes.

Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Analytics and economic adviser to the late Sen. John Mcain’s presidential campaign, told CBC MoneyWatch that consumers “are going to be furious a year from now” about inflation if Trump wins and implements his policies.

The line to see Trump at the Herb Brooks National Hockey Center snaked nearly a mile through a residential neighborhood, with people sitting in the 90-degree heat, sweating through T-shirts that read “I vote for the felon” and “Criminal tweets and cheap gas.”

While standing in line, Jake Wolf of St. Cloud said he believed Trump would get the country “under control” with border security and “get transgender shit out of kids’ schools.”

Darla Schmidt of Montevideo befriended fellow truck driver Brian Nelson of Pine City in line. Both said their biggest concerns are rising costs of living that are eating into their wages and believe Trump can rein in prices.

Asked about the prospect of higher rates pushing up prices, Schmidt said it’s like cleaning a house: “It gets dirty at first, but eventually it works its way through.”

Although about 8,000 fans entered the arena, more than 1,000 others were disappointed to be turned away and had to cheer in front of Trump’s image on a large screen in the arena parking lot.

Trump said they will win Minnesota easily as long as they don’t cheat.

Before the meeting, Democrats including Gov. Tim Walz and Sen. Amy Klobuchar held their own event to rally 300 volunteers at a St. Paul office for a Saturday door-to-door session.

“Three days ago, the nation discovered what we all already knew in Minnesota, (Trump and Vance) are just plain weird,” Gov. Tim Walz said at the rally.

Walz is suddenly getting a lot of attention as a possible running mate for Harris, in part because of his scathing attacks on the Trump-Vance ticket: “They’ll be lucky if they’re only down 10 points by the time we’re done with them.

Despite its light purple color, Minnesota has not turned red in a presidential election since Richard Nixon’s election in 1972.

Even as Trump tore down much of the Upper Midwest’s blue wall in 2016, Minnesota remained stubbornly Democratic. Hillary Clinton won the state, albeit by just 1.5 percentage points, a narrower margin than in any election since the state’s son, Walter Mondale, won his only victory in the state against Ronald Reagan in 1984.

Minnesota’s elusiveness has made the state a particularly precious prize for Trump, who spent millions there in 2020 even as he lost ground in the state, trailing Biden by 7 percentage points.

Trump vowed never to return to Minnesota if he lost the state in 2020. However, he returned in May of this year to speak at the Minnesota GOP’s annual Lincoln Reagan Dinner, where he repeated the blatant lie that he won the state in 2020.

Although Biden has struggled with declining approval ratings in recent years, he has maintained a 6 percentage point lead over Trump in Minnesota, according to a June KSTP/Survey USA poll.

Harris has further widened the Democrats’ margin since becoming their all-but-certain presidential nominee with a 10 percentage point lead over Trump — 50% to 40% — in a KSTP/Survey USA poll released Saturday.

Ruby-colored St. Cloud was friendly territory for Trump, who won 60% of the vote in Stearns County in 2020.

Vance took the stage first and delivered a roughly 20-minute speech that previewed Trump’s message on immigration at the southern border, Islamic extremism and support for police, despite the fact that his running mate is now a convicted felon and faces charges in three other cases.

Vance also renewed his attack on Harris for a tweet she sent four years ago in support of the Minnesota Freedom Fund, a nonprofit that pays bail for people facing criminal cases and immigration hearings. At the time, the organization paid bail for people arrested during the protests and riots following the police killing of George Floyd. The organization says Harris has had no involvement with the organization beyond that one tweet.

“When rioters and looters were burning American cities to the ground, including Minneapolis, Kamala Harris was raising money to get them out of jail. Let’s throw them in jail and deport them,” Vance said.

The organization has freed more than 2,500 people awaiting trial on bail since it was founded in 2016. They argue that people only retain their constitutional right to innocence until proven guilty if they have the money to bail themselves out. Some of the people the organization has bailed have committed serious crimes, including rape and murder.

But the Trump campaign also attacked the organization for posting bail to Jaleel Stallings, who was accused of attempted murder of police officers but was later acquitted of all charges by a jury. An officer involved in the incident pleaded guilty to assaulting Stallings and apologized to him.

Trump was joined on stage by Shannon Owen, whose husband Josh Own was killed in the line of duty as a Pope County sheriff’s deputy, and Paul Perez, chairman of the National Border Patrol Council.

The rally drew many East African immigrants, despite Trump’s anti-immigrant message, which included a pledge in his speech to reinstate a ban on entry to predominantly Muslim countries, including Somalia.

Osman Dagane, an Uber and Lyft driver from Minneapolis, said he arrived early Saturday morning to organize East African immigrants to support Trump. He dismissed Trump’s previous comments on immigration — including that the Somali migration to Minnesota was a “disaster.”

“Well, now he’s learning a lot,” Dagane said. “He didn’t know then, but now he knows a lot.”

Dagane left before Trump took the stage, as he was primarily interested in seeing Vance. Many people began to leave the arena thirty minutes after Trump’s speech, leaving only the most dedicated.