Donald Trump plans to hold first post-presidential rallies in Ohio, Florida in coming weeks
WASHINGTON – Following a series of speeches to Republican conservatives over the past five months, former President Donald Trump will head to Ohio and Florida over the next two-and-a-half weeks to hold the kinds of mass rallies with rank-and-file supporters that fueled his White House campaigns.
Trump is expected to stage his first post-presidential rally in the Cleveland area on June 26, and follow up with an event in the Tampa area on July 3, said two aides familiar with the planning.
The former president, who has attacked President Joe Biden on issues that include immigration, also announced Tuesday he would visit the U.S.-Mexico border on June 30, saying in a statement that he had “accepted the invitation of Texas Governor Greg Abbott.”
Trump, who has continued to protest his election loss to Biden and attack his political critics during his speeches, has long promised to conduct the more free-wheeling rallies in the months to come.
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“We’ll be doing one in Florida, we’re going to do one in Ohio, we’re going to do one in North Carolina,” Trump said during a May interview with One America News.
“There is a big danger that he will stir up trouble,” said John J. Pitney Jr., a professor of government at Claremont McKenna College in California. “A responsible public figure would lay off the Big Lie. But he’s not a responsible person. He’s Trump.”
Pitney and other analysts said Trump also wants to bask in the adulation of his most fervent supporters, and to seek the media spotlight for his grievances with the U.S. political system.
“One word: attention,” Pitney said, noting that Trump remains banned from Twitter, Facebook and other social media outlets. Trump recently shut down a new blog because of low traffic.
“Rallies are his ticket to media coverage,” Pitney said. “Another feature of rallies is appealing to him. He’s an applause junkie, and he needs his fix.”
Republican strategist Liz Mair said one of Trump’s goals is to get on television “as much as humanly possible,” knowing that will help him if he decides to run for president again in 2024. “I’m not sure media has the interest in covering his rallies that they did in 2015 and 2016, though,” she added.
Trump is also planning to get involved in the 2022 congressional and state elections, including Republican primaries in which he is backing GOP challengers to lawmakers who have been critical of him.
Lara Brown, director of the Graduate School of Political Management at George Washington University, said Trump will want to use the rallies to demonstrate continuing leadership of the Republican Party, despite his being out of office.
The events will also allow him “to reconnect with his supporters, which also means gathering and updating the contact information that his political team has for those who attend his rallies,” Brown said.
Two Trump aides discussed the upcoming Ohio and Florida rallies on condition of anonymity because final details of the appearances are still being worked out.
Trump gave a more formal speech in North Carolina on June 5 to the state Republican Party convention, following similar appearances earlier in the year.
In late February, Trump spoke to the Conservative Political Action Conference meeting in Orlando, Florida. In April, he addressed a group of Republican donors who gathered at his home in Palm Beach, Florida.
At each of these stops, Trump continued to make false claims about election fraud in 2020, while generally avoiding discussion of the Jan. 6 insurrection designed to try and overturn his election loss.
Trump has attacked Republicans over his impeachment for inciting the insurrection, a group that includes Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., and U.S. Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo.
Cheney, one of 10 House Republicans to vote for impeachment, has said the party needs to move on from Trump, and that his continuing claims of voter fraud could trigger more violence.
House Republicans who still support Trump, with their leader’s blessing, removed Cheney from her House GOP leadership position in May.
Trump will no doubt criticize Biden during the upcoming rallies. No president has publicly attacked his successor in such a public way so early in a new term.
One of Trump’s pet issues is immigration, the subject of his border trip to Texas on June 30. “My visit will hopefully shine a spotlight on these crimes against our Nation,” Trump said in his statement announcing the trip.
In his previous public appearances, the former president has even attacked his former vice president, Mike Pence, for refusing to heed his request to block the counting of electoral votes that elected Biden.
Trump has pledged to campaign against Republicans who went against him on impeachment. That includes a GOP member from the Cleveland area that will host his first rally: Rep. Anthony Gonzalez, R-Ohio, who like Cheney voted to impeach Trump over the Jan. 6 riot.
Trump has also hinted at another presidential campaign in 2024, and the rallies could be used to gauge support for such an endeavor.
Donald Trump to tour border wall with Gov. Greg Abbott on June 30
Abbott announced last Thursday that Texas would build its own border wall to stem the flow of migrants from Mexico.
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Former president Donald Trump announced Tuesday that he “accepted the invitation” to tour Texas’ southern border with Gov. Greg Abbott on June 30.
“The Biden Administration inherited from me the strongest, safest, and most secure border in U.S history and in mere weeks they turned it into the single worst border crisis in U.S history. It’s an unmitigated disaster zone,” Trump said in a statement.
Building a wall along the Texas-Mexico border was a key promise throughout Trump’s presidency, but he never fully delivered. His promise that Mexico would pay for the wall was unfulfilled, and the 450 miles of barrier he did build were mostly in Arizona and far less was completed in the Rio Grande Valley where border crossings are more prevalent, according to The Washington Post.
Abbott announced last Thursday that Texas would take the matter into its own hands and build its own border wall to stem the flow of migrants from Mexico. In a podcast interview Tuesday, he elaborated that the wall will be at least partially crowdfunded, and the state will solicit donations from across the country.
The announcement immediately sparked denunciations from those who said that immigration enforcement is a federal responsibility, not a state job, and questioned the constitutionality of Abbott’s intentions.
Abbott also announced plans to increase local jail capacity along the border, and increase arrests by having state troopers arrest migrants on state charges. Abbott scheduled a press conference for Wednesday afternoon, where he said he’ll provide more details about the plan.
Abbott has sharply criticized the Biden administration for its immigration policies in the past few months, calling the border a crisis and accusing the president of “helping the cartels make more money.” The policies include pausing border wall construction and ordering a review of the Trump administration’s “remain in Mexico” policy that requires asylum seekers to wait in Mexico until their hearings in U.S. immigration courts.
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At the end of May, he deployed more than 1,000 Texas Department of Public Safety troopers and National Guard members to the border as part of Operation Lone Star, an initiative aimed at increasing border security that he announced in March.
Earlier this month, Trump endorsed Abbott for his reelection, giving him an early stamp of approval as he confronts a possibly competitive primary.
Former state Sen. Don Huffines of Dallas has already announced his challenge to Abbott. Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller also has been considering a run, and Texas GOP Chair Allen West recently announced he would be resigning from his position to seek a statewide seat.
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