Trump Cancels Weekend Rallies in Kansas and Iowa and Phones It In: Tele-Rallies in at Least 19 States Replace the Final Weekend
Salina on Saturday and Dubuque on Sunday are both off. After 25 rallies in 19 states since October 1, the president's closing weekend goes to the telephone - with one Florida stage still standing on Friday.
WASHINGTON - President Donald Trump canceled his planned weekend campaign stops in Kansas and Iowa on Thursday, and his allies said he would instead phone in to rallies nationwide after four weeks of travel to boost Republican chances in Tuesday's midterm elections, Reuters reported. The canceled in-person rallies were set for Salina, Kansas, on Saturday and Dubuque, Iowa, on Sunday. The Iowa cancellation came later Thursday, when the Republican National Committee said in a statement that the Dubuque rally - in a state with several competitive congressional races - would also not happen.
Trump told reporters he did not "feel like I have to go to Kansas," where Sen. Roger Marshall is in an unexpectedly competitive race with Democratic challenger Adam Hamilton. "He is doing very well," Trump said of Marshall. "We are going to have a strong Tuesday night." The replacement is a telephone campaign at national scale: MAGA Inc, a campaign funding group aligned with Trump, said Thursday it would host a series of tele-rallies with the president in at least 19 states, including Kansas and Iowa, before Election Day, and the White House has put the count at more than 20 tele-rallies in all.
The scale of what is being paused is the context. Since October 1, Trump has hosted 25 rallies in 19 states, often speaking for his party in rural areas of Republican-friendly states, frequently for more than an hour at a time. Sounding hoarse in Mississippi on Monday, he said, "God didn't make your vocal cords to do a rally every day." On Thursday, after campaigning for Sen. Darline Graham in South Carolina, he ridiculed a Reuters reporter who asked how he felt after weeks of rallies and whether he was sick of traveling: "You've been following me for two weeks," Trump said. "I feel perfect."
He is not done traveling entirely - a Friday rally in Florida remains on the schedule - but the final weekend's two Midwestern stages are now phone calls. Tuesday's elections will determine whether Republicans retain narrow control of the Senate and the House, and the closing bet in Kansas and Iowa is that the president's voice on a phone line moves the same voters his presence on a stage was booked to move.
