WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance both hit the campaign trail on Thursday, but headed to heavily Republican areas to shore up lagging enthusiasm in their party ahead of next month’s midterm elections.
Trump’s travel to Texas and Oklahoma kicked off what the president said will be a 32-day campaign blitz leading up to Nov. 3.
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“I think we’re going to win. Every place I’ve gone, we win,” Trump said during a speech at a truck facility in Denton, outside Dallas. He said some have suggested his “heart isn't in it. My heart is in it,” and if not, he'd be “home right now.”
“My heart is in it like never before,” Trump said of the runup to the midterms.
Vance, meanwhile, stumped in Florida, putting the Republican Party’s highest-ranking officials in areas where GOP candidates once expected to have glide paths to victory but are now facing tougher races. The vice president tried to cast the GOP as representing common sense in the face of a Democratic push to the left.
“I have the easiest job in the world,” the vice president said in Lakeland, Florida. “I get to talk about how crazy the Democrats are.”
Trump and Vance could have their work cut out for them, though.
A new poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research finds that only 17% of U.S. adults approve of Trump's handling of the cost of living. Just 26% approve of his handling of the economy overall, marking a new low.
Republicans have expressed growing pessimism about their chances in the election, which will determine control of Congress, as the president has repeatedly dismissed concerns about high costs and gas prices as his unpopular war in Iran drags on.
According to Trump, his party’s headwinds are merely a matter of poor public relations about a job he says is well done.
“We’re doing great, but I can’t get the word out,” Trump said in Texas. He also said, “Maybe we’re doing a bad job selling it.”
Still, the president spent far more time scoffing at his predecessor, President Joe Biden, reliving his 2024 presidential campaign and defending the war in Iran than he did talking about how he'll help lower the cost of living.
The Democratic National Committee said Trump and Vance are "desperately trying to rally their base as the midterm elections approach and Republicans face defeat.”
“Donald Trump and JD Vance started a deadly and costly war with Iran that sent the economy spiraling and pushed prices even higher, and now — in the final stretch to the midterms — they’re desperately pleading with voters to 'give (them) another chance,'” said DNC deputy communications director Kendall Witmer.
In Oklahoma, Trump is campaigning with Republican Mike Mazzei, who is running against Democratic state House Minority Leader Cyndi Munson for governor.
Democratic Governors Association spokesperson Kevin Donohoe said Trump’s campaign rally shows that Republicans “are in full-on panic mode.”
The event will be held on the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma, putting Trump in the company of just a handful of U.S. presidents who have visited tribal nations while in office.
Before his evening Oklahoma stop, Trump toured a truck manufacturing facility and chatted briefly with workers in Texas, where Republicans are spending heavily to try to bolster state Attorney General Ken Paxton in a Senate race. Paxton faces a very competitive challenge from Democratic state Rep. James Talarico.
Paxton attended the event and Trump joked that he “could be a pain in the ass sometimes, I’ll be honest” but also noted, “We need Ken so badly and that’s why I’m here.”
Trump will be campaigning in more politically competitive areas in the days and weeks ahead as he embarks on his travel blitz, but Republican officials will not send him to places where they think his presence could drag down their candidates, according to a person familiar with the party’s strategy who was not authorized to speak publicly and spoke on the condition of anonymity.
Trump’s Oklahoma visit, and likewise one on Friday to Alabama, are aimed at hitting two targets with one stop, the person said.
Republican officials have noted that Trump's visit brought him close to the Dallas-Fort Worth media market, meaning the president's message reached Texas voters who could back Paxton.
His Friday stop in Mobile, Alabama, is aimed not only at boosting Sen. Tommy Tuberville as he runs for Alabama governor but also at shoring up support in Florida’s adjacent panhandle for Republican Rep. Byron Donalds. Donalds is running for Florida governor against David Jolly, the Republican-turned-independent who is now running as a Democrat.
Donalds' campaign in heavily GOP Florida comes as Republicans there have faced some turbulence and voter concerns about affordability and artificial intelligence data centers have become central issues.
While Trump is in Oklahoma and Texas, Vance campaigned for Donalds in central Florida. That came a day after the vice president campaigned in Texas, rallying with Republican candidate Eric Flores, who is in a tight U.S. House race in south Texas.
Vance, speaking in Harlingen, Texas, on Wednesday, acknowledged broader discontent over the high prices in the U.S. but shifted the blame away from Trump and Republicans.
“I know that there are people out there who are frustrated by the pace of progress,” he said, but "we have spent every single day fighting for you, digging ourselves out of the hole that Joe Biden left us in.”
Trump will also campaign on Saturday in Vandalia, Ohio, and on Monday in Grand Island, Nebraska.
In a meeting on Capitol Hill this week, White House chief of staff Susie Wiles described privately to GOP senators that Trump will have a near-daily sprint of campaigning ahead of the Nov. 3 midterms.
Wiles showed Republicans the president’s upcoming travel schedule, which attendees described as extensive and almost every day, all across the country.
West Virginia Republican Sen. Shelley Moore Capito said that White House officials are “acknowledging the headwinds” but that “they have a strategy, and we have a strategy,” including money that the president’s operation will continue to deploy.
Capito also defended the White House’s plan to send Trump to traditionally conservative territory, arguing that he can motivate the Republican base not just where he travels but elsewhere in the country because he has such a broad reach.
“He can get more of his voters out — that are going to be our voters — than anybody else,” Capito said.
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Associated Press reporters Seung Min Kim in Washington, Jesse Bedayn in Austin, Texas, and Thomas Beaumont in Des Moines, Iowa, contributed to this report.
