WASHINGTON _ President Donald Trump will come to Missouri next week to sell tax cuts and economic growth in his third presidential appearance in the Show-Me state.
Trump is expected to appear Wednesday afternoon at Boeing's St. Louis plant with Attorney General Josh Hawley, other Republican politicians in the state and business leaders for what the White House Friday described as a "roundtable discussion" that will highlight "the savings and benefits they have experienced as a result of the Tax Cut and Jobs Act."
That event is by invitation only but open to media. Trump's airport arrival will be open to the public, according to the White House. Details were still being worked out Friday afternoon.
It will be the president's first visit to Missouri since he signed the cuts into law last year.
Besides Hawley, who is running for the U.S. Senate seat now held by Democrat Claire McCaskill, state Treasurer Eric Schmitt and Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft also are expected to participate in the Trump-led roundtable at Boeing.
The White House did not list Missouri Gov. Eric Greitens, under felony indictment for allegations related to an extramarital affair, as an attendee in a statement issued late Friday to The St. Louis Post-Dispatch.
Trump will tack this policy appearance onto an already scheduled fundraiser for Hawley later Wednesday. Trump's visit will come the day after Hawley is scheduled to have campaign rallies in Kansas City, Springfield and St. Louis.
The Missouri Senate race already is one of the most-watched in the country, and a key to whether Republicans hold the Senate in 2019.
A new poll released this week showed Hawley leading McCaskill by 8 percentage points, although internal Republican polling has not shown a spread that wide. Hawley is also just off a rough patch in which leading GOP voices in Missouri were wondering if he was taking his challenge of McCaskill seriously enough.
The president will visit Missouri with a myriad of competing story lines swirling around him.
Economic confidence is up, the stock market has gained trillions of dollars in value since he was inaugurated and unemployment is at a 17-year low, according to a Labor Department report Friday. But he also is beset by controversy.
In a move that stunned even those in his own White House, the president announced Thursday that he would be willing to meet with North Korean President Kim Jung Un in May.
But special counsel Robert Mueller, in his probe of Russian influence on the 2016 elections and possible collusion with the Trump campaign, has indicted or turned into cooperating witnesses several former Trump campaign aides. Porn star Stormy Daniels has threatened to sue Trump over a non-disclosure agreement she is alleged to have signed to keep quiet about a decade-old affair with Trump just before the 2016 election.
And many members of Congress _ including those within Trump's party _ oppose his announcement this week that he would impose tariffs on imported steel and aluminum. Missouri exporters worry about retaliation from foreign customers on everything from American soybeans to motorcycles.
Trump won Missouri by 19 percent of the vote in 2016, a forceful showing in a Show-Me state that didn't even give favorite-son Democrat Harry Truman that margin in 1948. Trump's approval ratings have fallen _averaging 47 percent in 2017 in Gallup polling _ but are much higher than in many other states. Republican activists say that in many pockets of Missouri, he remains as popular today as he was on Election Day.
The president has been to Missouri twice since the election to sell his tax-reform plan: in Springfield in August, and in St. Charles in November.
Trump endorsed Hawley on the latter trip, declaring: "Josh, when you're ready, you have my word, I'm going to come here and campaign for you."
In August, Trump had tried to get McCaskill's vote on the tax-reform package that was not yet written at time. It eventually passed in December.
"Your Sen. Claire McCaskill must do this for you," said Trump, referring to providing support for his tax reform plans, "and if she doesn't do it for you, you must vote her out of office."
McCaskill eventually voted no, arguing that the tax plan that Trump signed into law without a single Democratic vote was skewed to the rich and was put together largely behind closed doors. She decried the lack of compromise to include Democratic ideas in the bill and predicted that, like the Affordable Care Act, Trump's tax plan would be perpetually corroded by partisan sniping.
"I think we could have had a permanent bipartisan tax-reform bill," McCaskill told the Post-Dispatch in December. "Now we have a bill that will be very political."
McCaskill's Republican colleagues, including Sen. Roy Blunt, R-Mo., said the bill would prove to be popular the more that cuts showed up in workers' paychecks.
Blunt has been one of the Senate's leading cheerleaders of the tax cuts. Before and since their passage, he has touted them in Senate floor speeches and in tweets, where he has highlighted Missourians who say the extra money in their paychecks has helped pay for things like groceries or gas.
Hawley trailed McCaskill by a wide margin in campaign coffers at the end of 2017, so Trump's visit will be a bottom-line boost for Hawley, who faces three primary challengers in Missouri's August recess.
McCaskill ended 2017 with about $9.1 million in the bank, Hawley about $1.2 million. The other three Republican challengers _ Tony Monetti, Austin Petersen and Courtland Sykes _ ended the year with roughly $36,000, $26,000 and $2,000, respectively.
Trump's visit will also boost enthusiasm in Hawley's Republican base, said Jeff Roe, a GOP consultant.
"It is awesome, it is all upside," Roe said, arguing that Trump's "blue-collar billionaire" status among his staunchest supporters has strengthened since he took office.
Democrats have been trying to tie Hawley with Trump's legal and political scandals, along with those of Greitens.
But Roe said that Hawley, by embracing the president, is taking a lesson from the 2006 campaign, when President George W. Bush was unpopular and some Republicans tried to distance themselves. McCaskill, the Democrat, defeated incumbent Republican Sen. Jim Talent that year.
"Republicans that try and run away from the top of the ticket do so at their own peril," Roe said. "In '06 people ran against Bush and they got clobbered."
But former Missouri Democratic Chairman Roy Temple said the legal and political scandals surrounding the president are bad optics when he is raising money for the top law-enforcement official in the state.
"It will help Hawley raise money," Temple said. "However, given the legal and ethical clouds hanging over Trump, it clearly demonstrates that Hawley is all about politics and not about law enforcement. That's unfortunate in an attorney general."
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