With the presidency hanging in the balance in battlegrounds like Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, Donald Trump spent Saturday night in solidly liberal California, trying to link Vice President Kamala Harris to what he described as her home state’s failures.
Trump will almost certainly lose California, and that won’t change after his Saturday stop in Coachella, a desert city east of Los Angeles best known for the annual music festival that bears his name. Still, Trump took advantage of his visit to invade the nation’s most populous state, highlighting recent struggles with homelessness, water shortages and a lack of affordability. Harris, the Democratic nominee, previously served as the state’s junior senator and attorney general.
“We will not let Kamala Harris do to America what she did to California,” Trump said, referring to the state as “Paradise Lost.”
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The former president lost California in a landslide in 2020. He received more than six million votes, more than any Republican presidential candidate, and his margins exceeded 70% in some rural counties where conservatives are typically favored in the ballot.
That’s a huge pool of potential volunteers to work state races and participate in phone banks to the most contested states. And Trump received media attention in the Los Angeles market, the second largest in the country.
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Trump visited Coachella between stops in Nevada, during a Las Vegas roundtable for Latinos earlier Saturday — where he praised Hispanics for having “so much energy” — and Arizona, before a rally Sunday in Prescott Valley. He narrowly lost those two swing states to Democrat Joe Biden in 2020.
Participants who waited in sweltering temperatures approaching 38 degrees Celsius said they did not expect Trump to win their state, but were thrilled to see him.
“It’s like a convention of like-minded people,” said Tom Gibbons of Palm Desert, who has supported Trump since 2016 but was only able to see him in person Saturday while waiting in line. “Everyone understands the heartbeat of America, the plight of the working man… It’s reassuring.”
Going to California gives Trump “the opportunity to penetrate and leverage this large population of Trump supporters,” said Tim Lineberger, communications director for Trump’s 2016 campaign in Michigan who also worked in the former president’s administration . He “comes here and activates that.”
Lineberger recalled that Californians had called Michigan voters on Trump’s behalf in 2016 and said the campaign’s decision to tread on safe, Democratic ground at this point was “an aggressive, offensive move.”
California is also a source of campaign cash for both parties, and Trump will raise money. Photos with the former president at Coachella cost $25,000, including special seating for two. A “VIP experience” cost $5,000.
During an 80-minute speech Saturday night, Trump ran through the standard list of Republican complaints about the Democratic-dominated state — the large number of illegal immigrants in the U.S., its homeless population and its tangle of regulations — and waded into a battle over water rights . the endangered Delta smelt that has turned environmentalists against farmers.
The former president was particularly scathing about illegal immigration, at one point warning: “Your children are in danger. You can’t go to school with these people, these people are from another planet.”
He continued his long feud with Democratic Governor Gavin Newsom, who called Trump “new scum.” Trump threatened Newsom again over the water rights fight, saying that if he didn’t act on behalf of farmers, “we’re not going to give you any of that fire money that we send you all the time for all the wildfires you have.” .”
Republicans mentioned in advance a number of possible reasons for Trump’s visit.
With congressional races in play that could determine which party controls the House, the Coachella rally is “a kind of get-out-the-vote vote that motivates and energizes California Republicans while not being as close to what’s going on be in the House of Representatives. the national campaign,” said Republican consultant Tim Rosales.
Jim Brulte, a former chairman of the Republican Party of California, said he thinks Trump is looking for something that has eluded him in previous campaigns: winning more votes than his Democratic opponent.
“I believe Donald Trump is coming to California because he not only wants to win in the Electoral College, but he also wants to win the popular vote. There are more registered voters in California than residents in 46 of the other 49 states.” said Roar.
The Trump National Golf Club Los Angeles is located on the Pacific coast, south of the city. But Trump has long had a conflicted relationship with California, where a Republican hasn’t held the state since 1988 and Democrats outnumber registered Republicans by about two to one.
California was home to the so-called Trump resistance during his time in office, and Trump often portrays California as representative of everything he sees wrong with America. As president, he called the homeless crises in Los Angeles and San Francisco shameful and threatened to intervene.
Newsom predicted Wednesday that Trump would denigrate his state at the rally, overlooking the strengths of the world’s fifth-largest economy. The governor said that for the first time in a decade, California has more Fortune 500 companies than any other state.
“You know, that’s not what Trump is going to say,” he predicted.
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Blood reported from Los Angeles. Associated Press writers Thomas Beaumont in Las Vegas and Nicholas Riccardi in Denver contributed to this report.
