LANSING, Mich. (AP) — Former President Donald Trump is campaigning in Michigan and Wisconsin as he ramps up his battleground state travel heading into the traditional Labor Day turn toward the fall election.
Trump is intensely focused on recapturing states he won in 2016 but lost narrowly in 2020 as he continues to adjust to the reality of his new race against Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris.
Trump's first stop was Potterville, Michigan, near the state capital of Lansing, where he railed against the Biden administration over inflation in the most dramatic terms, accusing Harris and President Joe Biden of having presided over “an economic reign of terror” and “committing one financial atrocity after another."
“Kamala has made middle class life unaffordable and unlivable and I’m going to make America affordable again," he vowed to supporters at Alro Steel.
Trump won Eaton County, where part of Lansing is located, in both 2016 and 2020, but by a smaller margin the second time. The visit is his third to the state in the past nine days and second this week after a speech to the National Guard Association in Detroit on Monday.
Later, he will visit La Crosse, Wisconsin, for a town hall moderated by former Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, who endorsed him in Detroit. It will be Trump's first visit to Wisconsin since the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, which ended three days before Biden dropped out of the race and made way for Harris.
Along with Pennsylvania, which Trump will visit on Friday, these three Midwestern states make up a northern industrial bloc Democrats carried for two decades before Trump won them in 2016. Biden recaptured them on his way to the White House in 2020.
Trump and his vice-presidential pick, Ohio Sen. JD Vance, have blitzed the battleground states in recent weeks, with Vance in both states this week as well.
The visits comes after Harris and her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, sat down for their first major television interview of their presidential campaign as the duo travels in southeast Georgia on a bus tour.
Trump's campaign is facing ongoing questions following a visit to Arlington Cemetery earlier this week. An Army spokesman said Thursday an Arlington National Cemetery official was “abruptly pushed aside” in an altercation with Trump’s staff during a wreath-laying ceremony to honor service members killed in the Afghanistan War withdrawal.
Trump’s spokesperson Steven Cheung said the team had gotten permission for a photographer to attend that portion of the visit and disparaged the cemetery official as having clearly been “suffering from a mental health episode.”
Trump has struggled in recent weeks to pivot to his new race against Harris, whose candidacy has reinvigorated the Democratic Party.
He complained yet again of the switch on Thursday, asking his crowd. “How would you like to be me?”
Harris and Walz are aiming to leverage the surge in enthusiasm among the party’s base since her campaign launch just over a month ago. They hope this excitement — which was on full display at last week's convention in Chicago — will extend to more moderate areas as they embark on a two-day bus tour in Georgia, including events in the state’s rural southern regions.
Trump's events in Michigan and Wisconsin are both in swing congressional districts.
Potterville is in Michigan’s 7th District, which features a mix of Republican-dominated counties like Clinton and Shiawassee, and Democratic strongholds such as Ingham, home to the state Capitol and Michigan State University. This district is expected to be one of the nation's most competitive this fall following incumbent Democratic Rep. Elissa Slotkin’s decision to run for the state's open U.S. Senate seat.
La Crosse, meanwhile, is a hub within Wisconsin's 3rd Congressional District, where Republican Derrick Van Orden won narrowly in 2022. Democrat Rebecca Cooke won the Aug. 13 primary to face him in November.
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Beaumont reported from Des Moines, Iowa. Associated Press writer Jill Colvin in New York contributed to this report.
