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President Donald Trump is scheduled to make a campaign stop in Wisconsin on Monday as the Democratic National Convention (DNC) kicks off in Milwaukee.
The president is also expected to visit Mankato, Minnesota, on Monday. The two stops mark the first of several that the president's campaign will make this week in battleground states as Democrats rally behind their party's presumptive presidential nominee, Joe Biden, and his running mate, California Senator Kamala Harris.
Trump's campaign said in a news release last week that the president will discuss his competitor's "failures on jobs and the economy" during both of his Monday campaign events.
Trump will first visit North Star Aviation in Mankato at 2 p.m. local time and will then travel to Basler Flight Service in Oshkosh, Wisconsin, in time to speak at 4:30 p.m. local time, according to the Minneapolis-based paper The Star Tribune. When he is in Oshkosh, he will be less than 100 miles away from the Wisconsin Center, which is hosting this year's DNC.
The Democratic National Committee's battleground state communications director, David Bergstein, told Newsweek the committee is encouraging Trump to tune into the convention's message instead of targeting its events.
"If Trump wants to understand what's happening in these states and how badly working families are suffering under his administration, he should watch our convention—not fly in and out of an airport hangar," Bergstein said. "If he watches, he'll see Americans across the country speaking about how they're fed up with his incompetence, his total failure to deal with the coronavirus and why they're excited for Vice President Biden's leadership in the White House."
According to the DNC event schedule, a Black Caucus meeting is slated to begin as Trump speaks in Mankato and a Youth Council meeting will be in progress as he speaks in Oshkosh. The bulk of the DNC's public events will take place later Monday night as several high-profile politicians deliver speeches to convention participants and the public between 9 and 11 p.m. ET. All of this year's DNC speakers will give their remarks remotely due to the ongoing threats posed by the coronavirus pandemic, marking the first time in the convention's history that scheduled speakers, convention participants and members of the public will collectively watch the event from home.
Trump's campaign stops this week come at a time when support for the president is fading in several key swing states, including Minnesota and Wisconsin. An average of state polls calculated by FiveThirtyEight said that Biden is currently leading Trump by more than five points in Minnesota and by seven points in Wisconsin. Trump won Wisconsin by less than 1 percent in 2016 but lost Minnesota to Hillary Clinton by 1.5 percent, according to the Associated Press's election results.
Trump is expected to make additional campaign stops in Arizona and Pennsylvania this week as the DNC continues, according to The Hill. His speech in Pennsylvania is expected to begin a few hours before Biden formally accepts his party's nomination and was described as a "sideshow" by Biden's campaign spokesperson, Andrew Bates.
The speech is "a pathetic attempt to distract from the fact that Trump's presidency stands for nothing but crises, lies, and division—the opposite of what Pennsylvanians are hungry for and what Joe Biden and Kamala Harris represent," Bates said in a statement shared with The Hill.
On Monday morning, Biden was leading Trump by more than six points in Pennsylvania and more than three points in Arizona, according to state polling analyses by FiveThirtyEight. Hillary Clinton lost both states to Trump in 2016.
Updated 8/17 at 2:03 p.m. ET: This article has been updated to include a response from David Bergstein, the battleground state communications director for the Democratic National Committee.
About the writer
Meghan Roos is a Newsweek reporter based in Southern California. Her focus is reporting on breaking news for Newsweek's Live ... Read more