Get ready for Donald Trump’s blue state extravaganza.
With less than four weeks until Election Day, Trump is scheduled to hold rallies in staunchly Democratic states he has virtually no chance of winning. It’s an unorthodox strategy campaign advisers say is designed to focus on areas where Democratic policies have failed, but it will also keep him away from the small handful of swing states almost certain to determine the election.
Over the next month, the former president has events scheduled in Colorado, California, Illinois and New York. President Joe Biden won those states by an average of 20 points in 2020, with his 13-point Colorado win the closest margin. Colorado is the only one of those states to vote for a Republican nominee for president this millennium, backing George W. Bush in 2004.
While each event will be held in slightly different venues, the most notable will be later this month in Madison Square Garden, a place where Trump has long said he wanted to hold political rally.
“Choosing high-impact settings makes it so the media can’t look away and refuse to cover the issues and the solutions President Trump is offering,” said a senior Trump campaign adviser of the strategy behind late-election cycle events in Democratic states. “We live in a nationalized media environment and the national media’s attention on these large-scale, outside-the-norm settings increases the reach of his message across the country and penetrates in every battle ground state.”
“President Trump is closing the campaign highlighting the problems the country faces as a result of Harris and Biden’s failed leadership and articulating his solutions to solve the problems they created,” the adviser added.
The decision to deviate from a traditional campaign playbook comes at a time when the race is almost certain to be decided in places like Georgia, Pennsylvania, Nevada, North Carolina, Wisconsin and Michigan, places that are within the margin of error in most public polling and considered winnable for both Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris.
“This does not seem like a campaign putting their candidate in critical vote rich or swing vote locations — it seems more like a candidate who wants his campaign to put on rallies for optics and vibes,” longtime Republican operative Matthew Bartlett said.
He called Trump the “most unorthodox candidate in modern history,” which means the off-script strategy could have some value.
“In 2016, Trump realigned the party to be much more rural and working class, now in 2024 he is trying to expand his voting base along certain cultural lines that may eat away at traditional Democratic voting blocs,” Bartlett said.
A second Trump adviser said that no matter where Trump holds rallies, he gets huge online viewership, including in swing states, and there is a confidence within the campaign about their chances, which in their estimation allows for some risk.
“Certainly we are bullish on our prospects writ large,” the adviser said.
Some Trump supporters argued that going into areas of the country traditionally not visited by Republican presidential candidates could have a sort-of coattail effect, helping boost down-ballot Republicans in tough races. None of the states where Trump is visiting has a competitive Senate race, but there are a handful of competitive House races in a year where the majority of that chamber will likely be decided on a razor-thin margin.
In California, House District 40 is represented by Republican Young Kim, and House District 41 is represented by Republican Ken Calvert, both of whom are in contested races in the Los Angeles media market along with Coachella, which is where Trump will be holding his rally.
In New York, Rep. Mike D’Esposito won Nassau County’s 4th district in 2022, but it is a seat that leans Democratic and was won by Joe Biden by 15 points in 2020. Flipping the seat played a big role in helping Republicans take the House majority in 2022.
“The fact that we can pickup down ballot seats with President Trump’s aggressive travel plan is a testament to the well orchestrated and effective campaign plan that focuses on unifying all Americans,” said Ed McMullen, a Trump donor who served as ambassador to Switzerland during the Trump administration.
“It is a well-planned effort to reach out and win key seats,” he added.
Bartlett, the veteran GOP consultant, agreed.
“Some of these spots could help sway House races,” he said.
The strategy to venture out into firmly blue areas of the country, however, is getting some pre-emptive pushback.
Coachella Mayor Steven Hernandez, a Democrat, issued a statement blasting Trump after he announced he would be holding a rally in the city.
“Trump’s attacks on immigrants, women, the LGBTQ community and the most vulnerable among us don’t align with the values of our community,” he said. “He has consistently expressed disdain for the type of diversity that helps define Coachella.”
Hernandez added the city was “proud” to welcome Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., when he was running for president as a Democrat in 2020.
The stop in Aurora had long been promised by Trump after earlier this year he spread debunked rumors about Venezuelan gangs overrunning the city, including taking over an apartment complex. Trump’s claims put Colorado’s third-biggest city in the national spotlight and made it a key part of his anti-illegal immigration messaging, which is a central tenet of his campaign.
Trump’s claims have been refuted by local police, and the Republican Mayor Mike Coffman, who called them “not accurate.”
Despite that, Trump’s stop in Aurora will no doubt once again put the city in the national immigration debate.
“Aurora, Colorado has become a ‘war zone’ due to the influx of violent Venezuelan prison gang members,” Trump’s campaign said in a statement announcing the event.
The Chicago stop will feature both Trump and his running mate, Ohio Sen. JD Vance, at a Bloomberg-hosted event at the Economic Club of Chicago.
Meanwhile, holding a rally at Madison Square Garden, in the overwhelmingly Democratic borough of Manhattan, has long been on Trump’s wishlist. He has previously talked about the idea of a rally at the iconic venue, including earlier this election cycle.
For the native New Yorker, it’s comfortably his home turf, even if not politically.
A person familiar with the planning said the campaign had been working on a Garden rally since the primary season.
“With 27 days to go, nothing is unintentional,” Tricia McLaughlin, a GOP strategist who worked on businessman Vivek Ramaswamy’s 2024 presidential campaign. “Might be an optics game play — crowd sizes. Or a psychological game — big crowds on Democratic turf.”
“Or maybe, there is a there there,” she added. “When I saw the New York rally, I thought, ‘Is New Jersey in play?'”
This article was originally published on NBCNews.com
