Trump’s light-hearted campaign schedule as Harris, Walz and Vance run wild

Former President Donald Trump said Thursday that he would not participate in any presidential campaign rallies until after the Democratic National Convention, which ends on Aug. 22.

The Republican nominee’s platform this month defies conventional campaign strategies and stands in stark contrast to Trump’s in August 2016, the last time he successfully ran for the White House.

That month, Trump held 27 raucous campaign rallies in 15 states. So far this month, Trump has held just one.

On Thursday, a reporter asked Trump why he hadn’t “campaigned this week.”

“Because I’m way ahead and I’m letting their convention go and I’m doing a lot of campaigning,” Trump responded during a wide-ranging press conference at his home in Palm Beach, Florida.

The reporter continued: “Are you going to collect your travel ticket?”

“After their convention, yes,” Trump responded, again referring to the Democratic convention, which begins on August 19.

Meanwhile, Trump’s Democratic opponents, Vice President Kamala Harris and her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz — as well as his Republican running mate, Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance — spent the week poring over swing states for the presidency.

After debuting their partnership Tuesday night at a rally in Philadelphia, Harris and Walz spoke at rallies in Wisconsin and Michigan on Wednesday and Thursday. The pair will travel to events in Arizona on Friday and Nevada on Saturday. All five states are highly competitive in November elections.

For the past five days, Trump has been at his resort, Mar-a-Lago, where he has conducted telephone interviews and podcasts and where he held Thursday’s hour-long press conference.

His public schedule also appears to confirm his stated plan to reduce travel to rallies in the coming weeks. The only event currently listed on the “Events” page of Trump’s campaign website is a rally Friday in Montana that will benefit in part Republican Senate candidate Tim Sheehy.

Sheehy hopes to unseat incumbent Democratic Sen. Jon Tester in November, and Trump’s appearance will likely energize Republicans in the deeply red state.

While in Montana, Trump will attend a campaign fundraiser. He will then stop in Aspen, Colorado, on Saturday for another fundraiser before returning to Florida.

Vscek reached out to Trump’s campaign to confirm that the Republican nominee has no plans to resume large in-person presidential rallies ahead of the Democratic convention.

“President Trump has a robust travel schedule, consisting of rallies, messaging events and fundraisers in the coming week. He has held multiple campaign events [Harris] and Walz combined,” Trump spokesman Steven Cheung told Vscek.

With less than 13 weeks to go until Election Day, polls show the presidential race in a statistical neck-and-neck tie. That makes Trump’s decision not to ramp up his campaign in a full-blown state blitz all the more unusual. It also raises the possibility that Trump could be missing important opportunities to connect with the voters he needs to engage with to give himself the best chance of winning in November.

Typically, the final three months of a presidential campaign are a race to the finish line, beginning with the party’s nominating convention in midsummer and ending on a Tuesday in early November.

For a good example of how this sprint traditionally plays out, and how effective it can be, consider Trump’s victory in the 2016 race for the White House.

Eight years ago this month, Trump held more than 20 rallies in a dozen different states.

Between August 9 and 13 alone, Trump ignited huge crowds at seven major campaign rallies: two each in the key states of North Carolina, Florida, and Pennsylvania, plus an additional rally in Democratic stronghold Connecticut.

Trump would then flip Florida and Pennsylvania in November, two states that Democrat Barack Obama had won in 2012. He also swept North Carolina, which Obama had won in 2008. All of this translated into a victory for Trump against former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

In 2020, in-person campaign rallies on both sides were largely suspended due to the Covid pandemic.

So far this month, Trump has traveled to Atlanta for a rally on August 3. The day before, he attended a fundraiser in the Hamptons, New York’s upscale beachfront enclave.

Rather than holding back-to-back rallies as he did during his first campaign, Trump (who survived an assassination attempt at a rally in Pennsylvania in July) has recently given several media interviews.

On Monday, he was interviewed on a live stream by controversial influencer Adin Ross, appeared on Fox News’ morning show “Fox & Friends” on Wednesday morning, and said he will be interviewed by billionaire Tesla CEO Elon Musk next week.

Meanwhile, Trump’s running mate, Vance, has adopted a more visible and traditional campaign platform.

On Tuesday, on his way to an event in Philadelphia, Vance defended Trump’s decision to abandon the August raid, telling reporters that he and Trump were pursuing a “divide-and-conquer strategy.”

“One of the things you have to do is, of course, get out there and talk to people and talk to reporters,” the senator said. “The last thing you have to do, of course, is increase resources. I know the president is very committed to doing exactly that.”

“We obviously do events together sometimes,” Vance said. “But I think we’ll use the fact that we have two people who can both go out and spread the message.”

In an effort to counter-schedule Harris and Walz’s campaign stops this week, Vance spoke in Michigan and Wisconsin on Wednesday. He had also planned to hold two events in North Carolina on Thursday, but postponed them because of the tropical storm.

However, none of Vance’s campaign stops this week were billed as rallies. Instead, they were staged as “press briefings,” with only small groups of staff, reporters and supporters in attendance.