MANKATO, Minn. _ President Donald Trump flew to Minnesota Monday planning to talk about economics with small business owners and farmers who lifted him to office four years ago, but he first seized on the recent violence in the Twin Cities to boost his case for re-election.
"My message to Minnesota is clear. I'm here to help you. We will bring back law and order to your community, we will bring it back and bring it back immediately," Trump said as met a small crowd after landing on Air Force One at Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport.
He then made a short flight to Mankato, where he declared, "If we win Minnesota, it's over."
Trump's ability to tout his economic record against Vice President Joe Biden, who will become the Democratic nominee later this week, has been weakened after the coronavirus outbreak led to the first U.S. recession since 2008.
He has turned to using the protests over racial injustice, which sprang up nationwide following the killing of George Floyd by Minneapolis police on May 25, as new fuel in a perennial division in American life: between people in cities and smaller towns. He has repeatedly criticized protesters and activists and, in some cities, deployed federal troops against them.
His biggest applause line in Mankato was when he talked about the riots in Minneapolis. "When I sent in the National Guard, that's when it stopped," he said.
Gov. Tim Walz was the one who sent in the National Guard, but Trump on Monday sought to position himself as the man in the gap against political extremism, and bashed efforts to "defund" the police department in Minneapolis.
"These people are crazy. They're terminating the police department," Trump said. The city has not defunded or disbanded the police department, although that language has been used by council members since Floyd's death.
Trump called Biden a "puppet of left wing extremists" who doesn't "know what the hell is happening," and will abolish the border, abolish effective policing, and "abolish the American way of life."
Trump hopes to flip Minnesota and its 10 electoral votes into his column by the time of the November election, ending Democrats' uninterrupted streak of wins in the state since 1976.
Heidi Soderberg, who drove to Mankato from Wayzata, said she believes Trump is the only choice for voters who believe in capitalism. "We should be able to go out and make our own business, and keep it because we've earned it," Soderberg said. "I don't think the Democrats support that. I don't think they believe in capitalism."
Kurt Freitag, the sheriff of Freeborn County drove up for the event wearing a "Blue lives matter" tie, and said Trump's emphasis on law and order resonates with him. The rioting and spike in gun violence in Minneapolis after Floyd's death are troubling, he said, and he's afraid of the progressive turn he sees in the country.
"I don't want to go this direction. We're descending into chaos," he said. "I'm not a racist by any stretch, but I don't believe in what they're pushing. I joined the Army back in 1985 to fight communism and socialism."
Everyone prospered in Trump's presidency before the pandemic started, Freitag said, adding expects support for the president from people of color to surprise everyone in November. "I think there's more Black people, and Latinos, that are going to vote for Trump than many people believe," Freitag said. "I think it's going to be a decisive win."
Trump came close to winning Minnesota in 2016. He lost the state by 1.5 percentage points, the smallest margin of any of his losses to Hillary Clinton. But he also got fewer votes in Minnesota than the 2012 Republican nominee, Mitt Romney, did that year.
And recent polls show Biden leading Trump in the state.
A Fox News poll in late July found Biden with a lead of 10 percentage points. An Emerson College poll last week placed Biden's lead at 3 percentage points, within its margin of error. Emerson found Biden held wider leads in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Arizona, states Trump won in 2016.
A few hundred people greeted Trump at MSP, where he switched to a smaller plane to fly to Mankato. In a brief speech there, Trump focused chiefly on the riots. With a group of local business owners to the side, Trump said, "All they wanted was to live the American dream. Their dreams were burned to the ground."
White House officials apparently discussed whether Trump should briefly visit the site of the Floyd's death, just a few miles from MSP, Walz said on an interview with Twin Cities Public Television.
"I spent this weekend trying to tell the White House why it was a really bad idea to have President Trump go down and stand at the George Floyd memorial and use as a backdrop for his campaign and ignite the pain and the anguish that we're feeling in Minnesota," Walz told TPT.
After Walz's comments went public, a White House spokesman wrote on Twitter that there was no consideration that Trump would visit the Floyd site.
