President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance both hit the campaign trail, but they headed to heavily Republican areas to shore up lagging enthusiasm in their party ahead of next month’s midterm elections. Trump’s travel to Texas and Oklahoma kicks off what the president said will be a 32-day campaign blitz leading up to November 3rd.
Trump’s Friday stop in Mobile, Alabama, is aimed not only at boosting Senator Tommy Tuberville as he runs for Alabama governor against former Democratic U.S. Senator Doug Jones, 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.
Vance 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 their party as representing common sense in the face of a Democratic push to the left.
“I have the easiest job in the world,” Vance 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’s headwinds are merely a matter of poor public relations about a job he says is well done.
“I give us an A+ on the government, on economics, on everything,” Trump said Thursday, as he left the White House, while blaming the press for not covering the positive aspects of his administration.
That followed Trump saying Wednesday, “We’re doing an extremely poor job of promotion and an extremely great job of running the country."
He said he'd traveling all over, attempting to persuade GOP voters to pretend his name is on the ballot.
“I’m going out because nobody’s selling it,” Trump added.
Delanie Bomar, a spokesperson for the Republican National Committee, said in a statement that “the president is barnstorming the country, energizing our base, and supercharging Republican candidates in battleground districts and beyond.”
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.
In Oklahoma, Trump will campaign with Republican Mike Mazzei, who is running against Democratic state House Minority Leader Cyndi Munson in the race for governor.
Democratic Governors Association spokesperson Kevin Donohoe said Trump’s campaign rally shows that Republicans “are in full-on panic mode.”
“This race continues to get more competitive — and national Republicans are right to be worried about Mazzei,” he said.
The event will be held on the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma, putting Trump in the company of just a handful of U.S. presidents who have visited tribal nations while in office.
Before his evening Oklahoma stop, Trump is touring a truck manufacturing facility in Texas, where Republicans are spending heavily to try to bolster state Attorney General Ken Paxton in a Senate race. Paxton faces a very competitive challenge from Democratic state Rep. James Talarico.
Paxton was planning to be with Trump at the official White House event Thursday in Denton, two campaign officials familiar with Paxton’s plans said on the condition of anonymity to discuss the candidate’s schedule before it was made public.
Trump will be campaigning in more politically competitive areas in the days and weeks ahead as he embarks on his travel blitz, 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, are aimed at hitting two targets with one stop, the person said.
Republican officials have noted that Durant is close to the Dallas and Fort Worth media market, meaning Trump’s message will also be carried to Texas voters, and he’s expected to talk about Paxton even while addressing voters in the neighboring state.
While Trump is in Oklahoma and Texas, Vance campaigned for Donalds in central Florida. 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.
Vance, speaking in Harlingen, Texas, on Wednesday, acknowledged broader discontentment over the high prices in the U.S. but shifted the blame away from Trump and Republicans.
“I know that there are people out there who are frustrated by the pace of progress,” he said, but "we have spent every single day fighting for you, digging ourselves out of the hole that Joe Biden left us in.”
Trump will also campaign on Saturday in Vandalia, Ohio, and on Monday in Grand Island, Nebraska.
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.
Wiles showed Republicans the president’s upcoming travel schedule, which attendees described as extensive and almost every day, all across the country.
West Virginia Republican Sen. Shelley Moore Capito said that White House officials are “acknowledging the headwinds” but that “they have a strategy, and we have a strategy,” including money that the president’s operation will continue to deploy.
Capito also defended the White House’s plan to send Trump to traditionally conservative territory, arguing that he can motivate the Republican base not just where he travels but elsewhere in the country because he has such a broad reach.
“He can get more of his voters out — that are going to be our voters — than anybody else,” Capito said.
