It's been more than 50 years since a Republican won Minnesota in a presidential election, but former President Trump says he has a “very good chance” of breaking the losing streak this November in his 2024 rematch with President Biden.
The former president is in the historically reliably blue state Friday night to headline the Minnesota Republican Party's annual Lincoln Reagan fundraising dinner. He began his speech with the usual attacks on Biden's cognitive ability, but also made reference to recently agreed debates between the two.
“He's going to be very excited about it, you'll see,” Trump joked, then said he was going to “demand a drug test” from Biden before the debate.
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Republican presidential candidate former President Donald Trump attends the annual Lincoln Reagan Dinner hosted by the Minnesota Republican Party on May 17, 2024 in St. Paul, Minnesota. (Scott Olson/Getty Images)
He went on to promise a rollback of Biden's environmental mandates related to automakers, criticized Biden's sour economic statistics and promised to fix the ongoing border crisis.
Trump also criticized Biden's habit of repeating false stories about his life experiences. “He's so full of s**t,” Trump said as the crowd laughed.
Trump lost Minnesota by just 1½ points in his 2016 presidential election victory over Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton. Four years ago, he lost the state to President Biden by more than seven points in his failed re-election campaign.
Before the 2020 election, Trump promised a victory in Minnesota and said that if he lost, “I'll never come back.”
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Republican presidential candidate former President Donald Trump speaks at the annual Lincoln Reagan Dinner hosted by the Minnesota Republican Party on May 17, 2024 in St. Paul, Minnesota. (Scott Olson/Getty Images)
Four years later, Trump returns and once again predicts a victory.
“We think we have a very good chance in Minnesota,” Trump emphasized in an interview Wednesday with KSTP, a local television station in the twin cities of Minneapolis and Saint Paul. “We have great friendships up there.”
Trump added that he has “worked hard in Minnesota” and that “Tom Emmer is very involved,” pointing to the House majority.
Emmer, who will join Trump at the state GOP gala, is chairing Trump's campaign in Minnesota even though the former president and his allies helped sink Emmer's bid last fall to become House speaker. .
As the Trump and Biden campaigns prepare to battle in seven crucial states that decided the 2020 election (Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, which were narrowly won by Biden, and North Carolina, which Trump won by a razor). narrow margin) and will likely play again in the 2024 rematch, both campaigns see opportunities to expand the map.
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Two weekends ago, at a closed-door Republican National Committee retreat for major donors at a resort in Palm Beach, Florida, Trump campaign senior advisers Susie Wiles and Chris LaCivita and veteran pollster Tony Fabrizio They highlighted internal polls suggesting that both “Minnesota and Virginia are clearly in play.”
“In both states, Trump is in a position to flip key electoral votes in his favor,” emphasizes the survey, which was shared with Fox News.
Republican presidential candidate former President Donald Trump attends the annual Lincoln Reagan Dinner hosted by the Minnesota Republican Party on May 17, 2024 in St. Paul, Minnesota. (Scott Olson/Getty Images)
And both states have sizable populations of rural white voters without college degrees who disproportionately support the former president.
The Biden campaign does not agree that Minnesota or Virginia are in play.
While noting that they are “not taking any states or any votes for granted,” the Biden campaign's swing states director, Dan Kanninen, told reporters last week that “we're not seeing polls six or seven months out.” general election, face to face”. Certainly, the numbers are upside, since anything more predictive than a weather report is six or seven months out.”
Kanninen noted that the campaign has teams on the ground in both states that engage voters.
“We firmly believe that the Biden-Harris coalition in both Minnesota and Virginia, which has been strong in the midterms and off-year elections, will continue to be strong for us in the fall of 2024,” he added.
And Biden campaign spokeswoman Lauren Hitt, pointing to the president's current fundraising dominance and his advantage in key battlegrounds, argued that “Trump's team has so little campaign or infrastructure to speak of that “They're turning to leaked memos that say 'the polls I paid to show us winning.'”
But Democratic Rep. Dean Phillips of Minnesota, who launched an unlikely and unsuccessful primary challenge against the president, insists that “Minnesota is in play.”
Phillips, in an interview this week on Fox News' “Special Edition,” argued that Minnesota “like a lot of states that I think a lot of my fellow Democrats don't want to confess is reality… I'm telling my fellow Democrats colleagues who support President Biden, including myself, that there is a lot of work to do.
While the Trump campaign looks for opportunities to expand the map in Minnesota and Virginia, the Biden campaign appears to be targeting the swing states of North Carolina and Florida.
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Trump won the Sunshine State by less than four points in 2020, but two years ago, Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis and Republican Sen. Marco Rubio each won reelection by nearly 20 points.
LaCivita argued that the Biden campaign was playing “a false game” in both states, but insisted that Trump has a “real opportunity to expand the map in Virginia and Minnesota.”
Trump's stop in Minnesota comes a week after he held a large rally in Wildwood, New Jersey, a red stronghold in an overwhelmingly blue state where no Republican has won the state in a presidential election in more than three decades. Trump lost the state to Biden by 16 points four years ago.
“We're going to win New Jersey,” Trump promised at the rally.
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