Republican presidential candidate and former president Donald Trump stands alongside Republican vice presidential candidate Senator J.D. Vance during a rally in Grand Rapids, Michigan, on July 20, 2024. Photo by Tom Brenner/Reuters
ST. CLOUD, Minn. (AP) — Donald Trump is campaigning again in Minnesota, a state that leans heavily to Democrats but that the former president believes he can win this year.
President Trump is scheduled to hold a rally in St. Cloud, Minnesota, on Saturday night, this time accompanied by his running mate, J.D. Vance, as he signals his intention to face off against Vice President Kamala Harris rather than President Joe Biden in November's presidential election.
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Speaking at the Bitcoin Conference in Nashville, Tennessee on the same day, he outlined his plans to fully embrace cryptocurrencies if elected and promised to make the United States a “Bitcoin superpower.”
Trump appeared as the head guest at a Republican fundraiser in St. Paul in May, boasting that he could win the state, making a clear appeal to the iron-mining region of northeastern Minnesota, where he hopes the blue-collar workers and union members who have long been solidly Democrats will turn to the Republicans.
It's also a group of potential voters that Vance, an Ohio senator from a Midwestern Rust Belt city, is seen as especially easy for the Trump campaign to approach.
Appeal to Midwesterners and union members has also helped Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz get on the list of about a dozen Democrats being considered as Harris' running mate.
Minnesota is a state where Trump fell short of Democrat Hillary Clinton by 1.5 percentage points in 2016. But four years later, Joe Biden extended the Democratic victory, beating Trump by more than 7 percentage points.
But the former Republican president has taken a bullish stance on the state.
In a memo sent to the Trump campaign and the Republican National Committee last month, Trump's political manager, James Blair, called Minnesota a battleground state favorable to then-opponent Biden and said the campaign was hiring staff in the state and was in the process of opening eight offices in the state.
The campaign did not say Friday whether those eight offices were open.
Earlier this month, Republican congressional candidate Taylor Rahm dropped out of the primary and became a senior adviser to Trump's campaign in the state.
“With the Biden/Harris presidency in disarray and the Democratic Party in disarray, President Trump is not only leading in all traditional battleground states, but also in long-time Democratic states like Minnesota, Virginia and New Jersey,” Caroline Leavitt, national spokeswoman for the Trump campaign, said in a statement.
read more: JD Vance slams Harris in solo VP campaign debut
Lexie Byler, Minnesota communications director for the Harris campaign, said Trump and Vance were “so far removed from the values of Minnesotans that we don't believe a Republican candidate will win this year.”
“Democrats are passionate and taking nothing for granted. We have a strong, well-organized and coordinated campaign with thousands of volunteers ready to help elect Kamala Harris and keep fighting for us,” she said in a statement.
Trump's St. Cloud performance will take place at the Herb Brooks National Hockey Center, a 5,159-seat hockey arena. Since surviving an assassination attempt at an outdoor rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, on July 13, Trump has only held events at indoor venues. However, in a post on social media networks on Saturday, Trump announced plans for an outdoor performance, saying, “The Secret Service has agreed to significantly increase their operations, and they are fully capable of doing so. No one will be allowed to prevent or disrupt free speech or assembly!!!”
Secret Service officials declined to say whether they had agreed with Trump's expanded campaign activities or whether they had concerns about him potentially holding outdoor rallies again. “Ensuring the safety and security of our constituencies is our number one priority,” Secret Service spokesman Anthony Guglielmi said in a statement Saturday. “To maintain the integrity of our operations, we cannot comment on the specifics of our safeguards or methods.”
At a Bitcoin conference on Saturday afternoon, Trump promised to make the United States the “cryptocurrency capital of the planet” and create a “strategic reserve” for Bitcoin using the government's current holdings of currency. He contrasted his support for cryptocurrencies with the Biden administration's efforts to regulate the industry, saying he wants the digital tokens to be “mined, minted and manufactured” in the United States.
The former president wasn't necessarily a fan of cryptocurrency.
He wrote on social media in 2019 that Bitcoin's “value is highly volatile and unfounded,” but has come out in recent years as a supporter of digital currency, writing in the newly adopted Republican National Committee platform that he supports the right to mine Bitcoin, custody virtual currencies and digital assets, and trade them without government regulation.
In May, his campaign began accepting donations in cryptocurrency.
Associated Press writers Ammar Madani in Washington, Ali Swenson in New York and Kimberly Kruesi in Nashville, Tennessee, contributed to this report.
