Trump campaigns on day off from hush money trial, calls Biden ‘a horrible president’

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump speaks at the Minnesota Republican Lincoln Reagan Dinner, May 17, 2024, at the Saint Paul RiverCentre in St. Paul, Minnesota. (AP Photo/Abbie Parr)
Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump speaks at the Minnesota Republican Lincoln Reagan Dinner, May 17, 2024, at the Saint Paul RiverCentre in St. Paul, Minnesota. (AP Photo/Abbie Parr)

ST. PAUL — Former US president Donald Trump uses a day off from his hush money trial to headline a Republican fundraiser in Minnesota, a traditionally Democratic state that he boasts he can carry in November.

Trump takes the stage late last night as he headlines the state GOP’s annual Lincoln Reagan dinner in St. Paul after attending his son Barron’s high school graduation in Florida.

“This November the people of Minnesota are going to tell Crooked Joe Biden — right? ‘The Apprentice’? ‘You’re fired!'” Trump says, referencing his former reality television show and the catchphrase he used on it.

He also makes a profane attack on US President Joe Biden, calling him “a horrible president” who is “destroying our country” and then adding, “He’s a horrible human being too.”

Trump then shifts to calling the president a “non-athlete” and attacks his golf game, accusing him of inflating his golfing abilities and making other misrepresentations before using an expletive that drew loud laughs and sustained applause.

Trump was using part of the day granted by the trial judge for the graduation to campaign in Minnesota, a state he argues he can win in the November rematch with Biden. No Republican presidential candidate has won Minnesota since Richard Nixon in 1972, but Trump came close to flipping the state in 2016, when he fell 1.5 percentage points short of Democrat Hillary Clinton.

Trump returned to Minnesota several times in 2020, when Biden beat him by more than 7 percentage points.

Experts are split on whether Minnesota really will be competitive this time, given its history and the strong Democratic Party ground game in the state. But David Hann, the chairman of the Republican Party of Minnesota, says there’s “great dissatisfaction with President Biden” in the state, noting that nearly 19% of Democratic voters in its Super Tuesday primary marked their ballots for “uncommitted.” That was at least partly due to a protest-vote movement over Biden’s handling of the Israel-Hamas war that has spread to several states.

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