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WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump has rescheduled weekend campaign rallies in a pair of critical Midwestern states that he had previously canceled, according to a person familiar with the plans.
The Republican president will now visit Iowa and Kansas for back-to-back campaign rallies on Sunday, said the person, who insisted on anonymity to discuss his schedule.
The scheduling whiplash underscored the chaotic and shifting nature of the final days of the midterm campaigns, in which Trump and Republicans are scrambling to retain their majorities in Congress in an election that has turned largely on affordability issues and the president’s favorability. At the start of the month, Trump promised a marathon sprint of his signature rallies to shore up Republican candidates, and he has headlined 25 of them so far in October.
The president on Thursday furiously pushed back at the notion that the initial cancellation of his Kansas rally, which became public as he was returning to Washington from another campaign event in South Carolina, was tied to fatigue or his health. He lashed out at a reporter who asked about canceling the event in Kansas, where GOP Sen. Roger Marshall is running for reelection.
“I’m not going to Kansas because he’s doing very well,” Trump said, seeming to refer to Marshall. The president added that “I feel perfect” and that “I don’t feel I have to go to Kansas.”
The Republican National Committee initially said in canceling the rallies that Trump would do telerallies instead to reach more voters. But the person familiar with the latest plans said the Iowa and Kansas rallies have been rearranged to accommodate the new telerallies added to Trump’s schedule.
Trump’s initial plans had him in Salina, Kansas, on Saturday and in Dubuque, Iowa, on Sunday. Then the plans shifted so he would instead do a “72-hour sprint” of phone rallies, meant so the president could reach more voters nationwide, according to the RNC.
GOP officials have not released a schedule of the telerallies, which are significantly cheaper than the cost of staging in-person events. The telerallies typically involve the president speaking for about 10 minutes, usually sticking to a script, to hundreds or thousands of people who call in to listen, rather than the 90 minutes of winding remarks he often gives when he appears in person.
Sunday’s rally in Iowa will now be held in Cedar Rapids instead of Dubuque, according to another person familiar with the plans who spoke on the condition of anonymity to share information that was not yet public.
Now, Trump will be holding both the Iowa and Kansas rallies on Sunday. Both states are home to battleground Senate races that will help determine whether Republicans hold onto their majority in the chamber in the midterm elections.
Trump has already traveled to both states this month to boost Marshall in Kansas and Republican Iowa Senate candidate Ashley Hinson, who currently serves in the House.
Vice President JD Vance traveled to Kansas earlier this week to stump for Marshall and flew to Iowa in September to campaign alongside the party’s House candidates. The vice president’s office had announced that he would head to St. Cloud, Minnesota, on Friday to hold a news conference on his anti-fraud efforts, but he was no longer doing so because of a scheduling change, according to a person with knowledge of his plans.
In an interview with a Kansas City radio station on Friday morning, Trump called Marshall “fantastic” and credited the senator for pushing his administration on policies benefiting Kansas farmers such as expanding tax-free use of red-dyed diesel.
Trump criticized Marshall’s Democratic challenger, Methodist pastor Adam Hamilton, as a “radical” who has “caused turmoil with the church because he’s so liberal.” Hamilton has said that if Jesus were standing before them now, “Roger Marshall would call him ‘woke.’”
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