Former President Trump and his campaign team are ramping up their activities ahead of Labor Day to get his presidential race back on track and slow Vice President Harris’ advance.
Unlike in early August, Trump sometimes hosts multiple events a day and travels regularly to swing states. His campaign team presents him to smaller crowds to focus on issues like crime and immigration – with mixed results.
At the same time, Trump is giving podcast interviews, holding vast rallies and posting on X, formerly Twitter, to try to break the news cycle and reach a wider audience.
The campaign has also tried to forge key alliances that could prove decisive in November. Republican allies helped broker a truce between Trump and Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp (R), and the campaign secured the support of Robert F. Kennedy Jr., whose independent bid to win the White House stole votes from Trump in key swing states.
Two sources predict that Kennedy, Donald Trump Jr. and former Democratic Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (Hawaii) will hit the campaign trail in the coming weeks. This gives the campaign two more surrogates who can attract a lot of attention and media coverage. Gabbard, who left the Democratic Party in 2022, supported Trump this week.
Trump and his running mate, Senator JD Vance (Republican of Ohio), are expected to spend a lot of time in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, a campaign official said. The three states make up the so-called Blue Wall, which the Harris team cannot afford to lose in November.
“As Election Day approaches and the campaign enters its final stretch, voters can expect to see and hear President Trump more often as he takes his winning message of making America strong and prosperous again to every corner of our country,” campaign spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt said in a statement.
“Americans will not tolerate a presidential candidate who hides from the press and behind her anonymous campaign staff,” she added.
The flurry of activity follows criticism from some Republicans that Trump has struggled to adapt to the up-to-date state of the race since President Biden ended his candidacy and Harris, who has given the Democrats up-to-date momentum, was at the top of the ballot.
GOP allies have Trump pleaded to focus more on policy and less on personal attacks, a concept that the former president dismissedHis campaign team has planned smaller events for Trump that will focus on a specific topic – the border in Arizona, crime in Michigan, the economy in Pennsylvania – just to see Trump reading prepared remarks and later deviate from the script.
Others argue that Trump has failed to define his opponent, while repeatedly claiming that Harris is a communist, a radical left-wing prosecutor and one who is fickle on political issues.
“They need to develop an effective, sustained message that they can carry through the fall,” said Alex Conant, a GOP strategist who has worked on presidential campaigns. “He needs to explain what a second term would look like and define what a Harris administration would look like.”
“They just haven’t been able to convey a lasting message since Biden dropped out,” Conant added.
Since entering the race, Harris has been on a steep upward trajectory. She has raised record amounts of money, erased Trump’s lead in the polls and brought states like Georgia, Nevada and North Carolina back into the race for the Democrats.
A Decision Desk HQ/The Hill updated election forecast Harris is projected to have a 55 percent chance of defeating Trump in November, a stark reversal from when Trump was projected to have a 56 percent chance of defeating Biden.
Trump campaign pollsters Tony Fabrizio and Travis Tunis wrote in a memo released Saturday that they expected Harris to potentially gain another two to three percentage points after the Democratic convention, stressing that despite this gain, the race was still wide open.
“These highs will not last,” wrote Fabrizio and Tunis. “It is also important to remember that the media is focused on the national polls, but we have to keep our eye on the ball – these are the polls in our target states. Our goal is to get to 270, and we will achieve this by winning these states.”
A Trump ally argued that the campaign is already in a stronger position than it was just a few weeks ago, but acknowledged that there is something of a scramble to adjust to the up-to-date reality of facing Harris.
“I think the last two weeks have been really strong for him,” the Trump ally said. “It feels like the campaign has found its footing in terms of messaging, and I think the way they bracketed the DNC was extremely smart.”
A Decision Desk HQ/The Hill Average of surveys shows that Harris is ahead of Trump in the battleground states of Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and North Carolina. Trump leads in Georgia and Nevada, and the two are tied in Arizona.
While Trump’s campaign is in full swing, the next major turning point in the race is likely to come on September 10, when the two candidates face off on the debate stage.
Trump said in a Truth Social post on Tuesday that he agreed to participate in the debate hosted by ABC News after considering the possibility of skipping the event. It is the only scheduled debate between the two candidates, although both sides have indicated they would be willing to discuss a second debate after the Sept. 10 event.
“These campaigns are very stagnant because both candidates are speaking primarily to their own voters, except for the debates when the whole country tunes in,” said Conant, the Republican strategist. “That could dramatically affect the course of a campaign.”
