Former President Donald Trump is finally gearing up for an all-out sprint in his bid to reclaim the White House.
Trump, caught flat-footed when Democrats switched horses this summer, has held 26 campaign events this month — most of them rallies — more than the 21 he participated in during June and July combined, according to an NBC News analysis of his schedule. The ramp-up started in August, when he held 19 events.
While it is traditional for campaigns to gather steam after Labor Day, some Republicans worried that Trump let the Democratic nominee, Vice President Kamala Harris, get the jump on him when she barnstormed the country in August after she took over for President Joe Biden at the top of her party’s ticket. Now, Trump is racing against Harris and the clock.
“They’re double-timing it because they know they got screwed with this 100-day window,” said Ford O’Connell, a Republican strategist. “Basically, you’re fighting for inches on the electoral map. Nobody knows exactly what’s going to put one campaign over the other at the end of the day.”
Similar lurches forward in campaigning around the end of summer were evident in Trump’s 2016 and 2020 presidential runs, as well.
For allies who had complained of a slow start this summer, Trump’s brisk pace addresses nagging questions about whether the campaign was prepared to take the fight to Harris after it knocked Biden from the race. What also allows Trump’s supporters to consider the possibility of victory in November is polling showing Trump on a stronger trajectory after Harris quickly set fundraising records and erased his advantage among voters.
Trump held two rallies over the weekend, in the battleground states of Wisconsin and Pennsylvania. At both, he lobbed increasingly personal attacks at Harris, baselessly questioning her mental fitness and calling her “mentally impaired.” At the rally in Pennsylvania, he called for Harris to be “impeached and prosecuted” for her policies related to the U.S. border with Mexico.
Leading the charge for more events is Trump himself, a campaign official said, saying Trump was supposed to have a slow Sunday but insisted instead, “We got to do something,” leading to the rally in Erie, Pennsylvania.
In the coming days, Trump has several high-profile events. On Monday, he’s set to visit the battleground state of Georgia, which was hit hard by Hurricane Helene. Trips by politicians to storm-ravaged areas are always gambles, with the risk that such high-profile visits strain resources in the communities still trying to recover. Neither Biden nor Harris has visited the region in the aftermath of the storm.
Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp, a Republican, will not appear at Trump’s event Monday, an aide told NBC News.
On Saturday, Trump plans to return to Butler, Pennsylvania, to hold an event at the venue where he was shot in an assassination attempt on July 13.
For Trump, the frequent campaigning is not without challenges, with both candidates receiving unprecedented levels of security after the two attempts to assassinate Trump.
The Trump campaign had wanted to hold an outdoor rally in Wisconsin on Saturday, but Secret Service officials told it they would not have access to the manpower and assets necessary to secure an outdoor airport rally while the United Nations General Assembly was meeting in New York City, according to senior Secret Service officials and an official familiar with the planning.
On Saturday, Trump mused that he would have had as many as 50,000 people at his rally in Prairie Du Chien, Wisconsin, had he been allowed to have it outdoors.
Looking ahead to the final month before Election Day, the Trump campaign anticipates two to three rallies per week, a couple of smaller policy-focused events, retail stops at local stores and town halls hosted by campaign surrogates, a Trump campaign official familiar with the planning said.
“Nobody in the game of politics works harder than President Trump especially in the fourth quarter,” Trump campaign national press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a statement to NBC News. “President Trump and Senator Vance will continue to outpace Harris and Walz in the media, and bring their winning message to make America wealthy, safe, and strong again to voters across the country.”
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