Trump returns to Minnesota with Midwestern Vance to try to turn Democratic state

ST. CLOUD, Minn. (AP) — Donald Trump is bringing his campaign back to Minnesota, a state that favors Democrats but that the former president believes could be within his grasp this year.

Trump will speak at a rally in St. Cloud, Minnesota, on Saturday night. This time, he will bring his running mate J.D. Vance. Trump is expected to run against Vice President Kamala Harris in November instead of President Joe Biden.

Earlier in the day, he spoke at a bitcoin conference in Nashville, Tennessee, where he outlined a plan to embrace cryptocurrency wholeheartedly if elected and pledged to turn the US into a “bitcoin superpower.”

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.

That’s also a group of potential voters that Trump’s campaign is trying to reach in particular with Vance, a senator from Ohio, as he himself comes from a city in the Rust Belt of the Midwest.

Saturday marked the second time Vance appeared with Trump at a campaign rally since joining the GOP earlier this month.

His remarks fired up the crowd before Trump was set to take the stage, and Vance leaned heavily into issues of concern to the GOP base, particularly U.S.-Mexico border security 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.

Attracting Midwesterners and union members is something that has also helped Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz land on the list of about a dozen Democrats being screened for possible Harris’ running mate.

Minnesota is a state where Trump fell 1.5 percentage points short of beating Democrat Hillary Clinton in 2016. But four years later, Joe Biden extended the Democratic victory by beating Trump by more than 7 percentage points.

But the former Republican president is optimistic about the state.

In a memo last month to the campaign and the Republican National Committee, Trump political director James Blair called Minnesota a battleground where Trump compares favorably to Biden, their then-opponent. He also said the campaign was hiring there and opening eight offices in the state.

The campaign did not make it clear on Friday whether those eight offices were open.

Earlier this month, Republican congressional candidate Tayler Rahm dropped out of his primary and began serving as a senior adviser to Trump’s campaign in the state.

“The Biden/Harris administration has been so disastrous, and the Democrats are in such disarray, that President Trump not only leads every traditional swing state, but also longtime Democratic states like Minnesota, Virginia and New Jersey are in play,” Karoline Leavitt, Trump’s national press secretary, said in a statement.

Lexi Byler, communications director for Harris’ Minnesota campaign, said Trump and Vance “are completely out of alignment with the values ​​of Minnesotans and the state is not going to be won by a Republican presidential candidate this year.”

“Democrats are excited and taking nothing for granted, with a powerful, well-organized, coordinated campaign and thousands of volunteers ready to elect Kamala Harris to continue fighting for them,” she said in a statement.

Trump’s St. Cloud appearance is scheduled for the Herb Brooks National Hockey Center, a 5,159-seat hockey arena. Since surviving an assassination attempt on July 13 at an outdoor rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, Trump has only performed at 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. THEY HAVE BIG AUTHORITY TO DO SO. NO ONE SHOULD EVER STOP OR INTERFERE WITH FREEDOM OF SPEECH OR ASSEMBLIES!!!”

Secret Service officials declined to say whether the agency had agreed to expand activities at Trump’s campaign events or whether it had concerns 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.”

At the bitcoin conference on Saturday afternoon, Trump vowed to make the United States the “crypto capital of the planet” and create a “strategic reserve” for bitcoin using the currency the government currently holds. He sought to contrast his support for cryptocurrency with the Biden administration’s efforts to regulate the industry, saying he wanted the digital tokens to be “mined, minted, and created” in the U.S.

The former president wasn’t always a fan of cryptocurrencies.

He wrote on social media in 2019 that their “value is highly unpredictable and based on thin air.” But he has embraced digital currencies in recent years, writing in the recently adopted Republican National Committee platform a statement of support for the right to mine bitcoin, hold cryptocurrencies and digital assets, and transact in them without government regulation.

In May, his campaign began accepting cryptocurrency donations.

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Associated Press journalist Aamer Madhani in Washington, Ali Swenson in New York and Kimberlee Kruesi in Nashville, Tennessee, contributed to this report.