Trump and Vance join forces to campaign in Minnesota, a state the GOP hasn’t carried in 52 years

The rally in St. Cloud, Minnesota, was meant to signal the campaign’s bullishness about the Midwest’s prospects, especially as President Joe Biden showed signs of flagging ahead of his decision to leave the campaign. Trump, who won Michigan and Wisconsin in 2016 only to lose them four years later, has increasingly targeted Minnesota as a state where he wants to put Democrats on the defensive.

The rally is something of a gamble, potentially forcing presumptive Democratic nominee Kamala Harris and Democrats to devote resources to a state they might otherwise ignore. But it could also be a risk for Trump if he spends time in places that could prove challenging with Harris as the front-runner, when he could otherwise focus on maintaining his support in more traditional battlegrounds.

Trump spoke for more than an hour and a half to cheering crowds holding signs supporting police and calling for the deportation of immigrants in the country illegally, continuing a pattern of escalating attacks on Harris over immigration and crime.

He called her a “crazy liberal” and accused her of wanting to “defund the police,” while saying he actually wants to “overfund the police.”

“She has no idea, she is evil,” Trump said, suggesting that Harris had failed in her duties regarding the border as vice president. “Kamala Harris’ lethal destruction of America’s borders is completely and totally disqualifying for her to be president.”

Trump lashed out at 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 worked to reform the bail system and posted criminal bail for people as part of a campaign to address inequities in the system.

While Harris herself did not contribute to the fund, her tweet was among a number of tweets from celebrities and prominent people that helped fuel donations to the cash-strapped nonprofit, helping it quickly raise $34 million. In the immediate aftermath of the protests and unrest, the group actually spent little on bailing out protesters.

Trump also criticized Harris as an “absolute radical” on abortion, seeming to sense an opening to attack her on the issue after she became the Biden administration’s most outspoken abortion rights advocate. He suggested that Harris wants abortions “up until birth and after birth.” Infanticide is a crime in every state, and no state has passed a law allowing the killing of a baby after birth.

Yet the former president also recycled much of his earlier material attacking Biden, showing how his campaign wanted to keep Biden’s pitfalls fresh in voters’ minds even after the president ended his candidacy and endorsed Harris.

Trump’s remarks followed a lively speech from Vance in which he leaned heavily on issues of concern to the GOP base, particularly security at the U.S.-Mexico border and crime. He also took a broadside against the news media, saying 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, Trump headlined a GOP fundraiser in St. Paul, where he boasted he could win the state and made a point of calling on the iron ore mine in northeastern Minnesota, where he hopes a large portion of the working-class and unionized population will switch to the Republicans after years of solid Democratic backgrounds.

By appealing to that demographic, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz has also landed on the list of about a dozen Democrats being screened for possible Harris’ running mate.

Walz posted a message on social media platform X on Friday mocking Trump’s visit to his state.

“Donald Trump is coming back to the State of Hockey tomorrow looking for a hat trick,” Walz wrote. “He lost Minnesota in ’16, ’20, and he’ll lose it again in ’24.”

Saturday’s rally took place at the Herb Brooks National Hockey Center, a 5,159-seat hockey arena. Since surviving a July 13 assassination attempt at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, Trump has held events only in indoor venues. But he said in a post on his social media network Saturday that he would be planning outdoor stops and that the “SECRET SERVICE HAS AGREED TO SIGNIFICANTLY INCREASE THEIR OPERATIONS.”

Secret Service officials declined to say whether the agency had agreed to expand activities at Trump’s campaign events or whether they were concerned that he might resume outdoor rallies. “Ensuring the safety and security of our protected individuals is our highest priority,” Secret Service spokesman Anthony Guglielmi said in a statement Saturday. “In the interest of maintaining operational integrity, we cannot comment on specifics about our protective equipment or methods.”

Earlier Saturday, Trump spoke at a bitcoin conference in Nashville, Tennessee, where he outlined a plan to embrace cryptocurrencies if elected, promising to make the U.S. the “crypto capital of the planet” and a “bitcoin superpower.”

Trump wasn’t always a proponent of cryptocurrencies, but in recent years he has changed his stance on digital tokens. In May, his campaign began accepting donations in cryptocurrencies.

On Saturday, Harris continued her presidential campaign with her first fundraiser since becoming the Democratic nominee for the White House.

Saturday’s event in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, was expected to raise more than $1.4 million, her campaign announced, from a crowd of hundreds at the Colonial Theatre. That would be $1 million more than the original goal set for the event before Biden withdrew from the race.