Trump holds rallies in blue-green California in unusual campaign | 2024 US Election News

Former President Donald Trump held a rally in California, part of an unusual campaign in the final stage of the United States presidential race.

Saturday night’s event near the Coachella Valley — best known for its annual music festival — came 22 days before the Nov. 5 vote.

The last election period is reserved for visiting the most competitive battleground states, which include Pennsylvania, Georgia, Michigan, Wisconsin, Arizona and Nevada this year.

That makes Trump’s stop in California — a Democratic stronghold but guaranteed to vote for Vice President Kamala Harris — unusual. Born and raised in the state, Harris previously served as California’s attorney general and San Francisco’s district attorney and remains popular there.

In the last presidential election, in 2020, Trump lost in California to Democrat Joe Biden by almost 30 percent.

Speaking at the rally, Trump said: “Democrats on the left have destroyed this state, but we’re going to save it, and we’re going to make it better than ever.”

“Of course you had someone here who was bad, Kamala,” he continued. “And now he wants to destroy our country.”

The former president then delivered a stump speech that focused on misleading claims related to criminal immigration in the US.

Trump has named immigration as a top priority in the election, despite polls showing the economy is growing strongly among many voters.

Why are you visiting California?

The visit to the state is widely seen as an attempt to bolster support for Republicans. That’s especially necessary in six key House races in California.

Control of both the House and the Senate – the two chambers of the US Congress – will be up for grabs this election season. And some congressional districts in California are sharply divided between Republicans and Democrats.

A win in six contested House races could help Republicans hold onto the lower chamber.

Going to California gives Trump “the ability to tap into and use this large number of Trump supporters”, Tim Lineberger, former communications director for Trump’s 2016 campaign in Michigan and worked in the former president’s administration, told the Associated Press.

“He comes here and turns that on”, added Lineberger.

The move could also be an attempt to boost Trump’s final vote tally. In the US, the winner of the presidential race is determined by the Electoral College, a weighted voting system that assigns electors to candidates based on state-level votes.

Almost all states reward all their voters with a winner-take-all system: Even if a candidate wins by a narrow margin in a particular area, he gets all the voters.

That means a candidate can lose in the popular vote but win in the Electoral College system, as Trump did in 2016. In 2020, however, he lost both measures to Biden.

Never winning the popular vote remains a sore point for the former Republican president. California, with its population of nearly 40 million, offers an opportunity to turn out supporters who may not feel the need to go to the polls.

“I believe Donald Trump is coming to California because he doesn’t just want to win the Electoral College, but he wants to win the popular vote,” Jim Brulte, former chairman of the California Republican Party, told the Associated Press.

Battlefield blitz

Indeed, Trump is preparing his visit to California between a stop in Nevada on Saturday and a rally in Arizona on Sunday, two of the most common battlegrounds in the final weeks of the presidential campaign.

In Nevada, Trump attended a rally with Latino voters, as his campaign sought to capitalize on signs that Latino men are increasingly turning away from Democrats.

On the other hand, Harris visited North Carolina, which was recently devastated by Hurricane Helene. He said his visit was “the first and most important to see how they are doing after the storm”.

Harris was also scheduled to promote his “opportunity economy” plan and meet with Black community leaders. Trump narrowly won North Carolina in 2020, but the eastern state has been leaning toward Democrats in some recent polls, buoyed by its large college-educated and Black population.

Earlier in the day, Harris released the results of a medical examination. He said he “has the necessary physical and mental stamina to carry out the duties of the president effectively”.

Issuing health tests has long been the norm for US candidates, and Harris was quick to stress that Trump, 78, had not yet done so.

“It’s clear to me that he and his team don’t want the American people to really see what he’s doing and whether or not he’s ready to do the job of being president of the United States,” he said. journalists.

The Trump campaign has maintained that the former president “voluntarily released updates from his doctor” and from the doctor who treated him after the July assassination attempt.

“They all concluded that he was in perfect health and too good to be Commander in Chief,” his campaign spokesman said, while noting that Harris “doesn’t have the energy” of Trump.