Former President Donald Trump believes he has “a perfect shot” at winning Minnesota in the 2024 presidential election.
He aims to end a more than 50-year Republican losing streak in the state.
On Friday evening, Trump headlined the Minnesota GOP’s annual Lincoln Reagan fundraising dinner, a significant event in this historically Democratic stronghold.
He began his speech with familiar jabs at President Joe Biden’s cognitive abilities and referenced their recently agreed-upon debates.
“He’s going to be so jacked up for those, you watch,” Trump joked, suggesting he would “demand a drug test” for Biden before the debates.
Trump promised to roll back Biden’s environmental mandates on automakers, criticized the current economic statistics, and vowed to resolve the ongoing border crisis.
The former president also criticized Biden for repeating false stories about his life experiences. “He’s so full of s–t,” Trump said, eliciting laughter from the crowd.
Trump narrowly lost Minnesota by just 1.5 points to Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton in the 2016 election.
However, he lost more than seven points to Biden in the 2020 election.
Ahead of the 2020 election, Trump confidently predicted a victory in Minnesota, saying that if he lost, he would “never come back.” Four years later, he is back and again, predicting a win.
“We think we have a perfect shot at Minnesota,” Trump emphasized in a Wednesday interview with KSTP, a local TV station in Minneapolis and Saint Paul. “We have great friendships up there.”
Trump mentioned his efforts in Minnesota and highlighted the involvement of House Majority Whip Tom Emmer in his campaign.
Emmer, chairing the Trump campaign in Minnesota, joined Trump at the state GOP gala. This comes despite Trump and his allies opposing Emmer’s bid to become House speaker last autumn.
As the Trump and Biden campaigns gear up for a rematch, they focus on seven crucial swing states that determined the 2020 election.
These include Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, which Biden narrowly won, and North Carolina, which Trump won by a slim margin. Both campaigns see the potential to expand their influence in these states.
At a recent closed-door Republican National Committee retreat for top donors in Palm Beach, Florida, Trump campaign advisers highlighted internal surveys suggesting that Minnesota and Virginia are competitive.
The surveys, shared with Fox News, indicated that Trump has opportunities to gain critical electoral votes in both states. These states have significant populations of rural white voters without college degrees who tend to support Trump.
The Biden campaign, however, disputes the notion that either Minnesota or Virginia are up for grabs.
Biden campaign battleground states director Dan Kanninen stated last week that they didn’t view early polls as reliable predictors and emphasized that the campaign has vital ground operations in both states.
“We feel strongly the Biden-Harris coalition in Minnesota and Virginia, which has been strong in midterms and off-year elections, will continue to be strong for us in the fall of 2024,” Kanninen added.
Biden campaign spokesperson Lauren Hitt pointed to the president’s fundraising dominance and ground-game advantage in critical battlegrounds.
She argued that Trump’s team is resorting to leaking favourable internal polls because they lack substantial campaign infrastructure.
Democratic Rep. Dean Phillips of Minnesota, who recently launched an unsuccessful primary challenge against Biden, insists that Minnesota is indeed in play.
In an interview on Fox News‘ “Special Edition,” Phillips said Minnesota is “like a lot of states that I think a lot of my fellow Democrats don’t want to confess is the reality. … I’m telling my Democratic colleagues supporting President Biden, myself included, that there’s a lot of work to do.”
Trump carried Florida by less than four points in 2020, but two years later, Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis and GOP Sen. Marco Rubio won re-election by nearly 20 points.
LaCivita argued that Biden’s campaign is “a faux game” in both states but maintained that Trump has a “real opportunity in expanding the map in Virginia and Minnesota.”
Trump’s visit to Minnesota follows a large rally in Wildwood, New Jersey, a red enclave in an overwhelmingly blue state where no Republican has won in a presidential election for over three decades. Trump lost New Jersey to Biden by 16 points in 2020.
“We’re going to win New Jersey,” Trump vowed at the rally.
