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Why is Donald Trump campaigning in California, a state he's almost certain to lose?
LOS ANGELES (AP) — With the presidency on the line in battlegrounds like Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, why would Donald Trump venture into California, one of the most solidly Democratic states, just weeks before Election Day?
Trump is almost certain to lose California, and that won’t change after his scheduled Saturday stop in Coachella, a desert city east of Los Angeles best known for the annual music festival bearing its name. Still, there are practical reasons for him to visit, despite the Republican nominee’s prospects Nov. 5 in the most populous state.
The former president lost California in a landslide in 2020. He did get 6 million-plus votes, more than any GOP presidential candidate before, and his margins topped 70% in some rural counties that typically favor conservatives on the ballot.
That’s an enormous pool of potential volunteers to work on state races and participate in phone banks into the most contested states. And Trump is likely to draw extensive media coverage in the Los Angeles market, the second-largest in the country.
Trump is visiting Coachella in between stops in Nevada, at a roundtable outside Las Vegas for Latinos earlier Saturday, and Arizona, for a rally Sunday in Prescott Valley. He narrowly lost those two swing states to Democrat Joe Biden in 2020.
Going to California gives Trump the “ability to swoop in and leverage this big population of Trump supporters,” said Tim Lineberger, who was communications director for Trump’s 2016 campaign in Michigan and also worked in the former president’s administration. He’s “coming here and activating that.”
Lineberger recalled Californians making calls to Michigan voters in 2016 on Trump’s behalf and said the campaign’s decision to go into safe, Democratic turf at this point was “an aggressive, offensive play.”
California is also a fountain of campaign cash for both parties, and Trump will be fundraising. Photos with the former president in Coachella were priced at $25,000, which comes with special seating for two. A “VIP Experience” was priced at $5,000.
With congressional races in California in play that could determine which party controls the House, the Coachella rally “is a get-out-the-vote type of thing that motivates and energizes Republicans in California, when they are not as close to what is going on in the national campaign,” Republican consultant Tim Rosales said.
Rosales also said to look for Trump to continue his long-running spat with Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom.
For Republicans, “It’s motivating when you can pick at California a little bit and the governor … will take the bait,” Rosales said.
Newsom on Wednesday predicted Trump would be denigrating the state at the rally, overlooking its strengths as 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.
Jim Brulte, a former chairman of the California Republican Party, said he thinks Trump is angling for something that has eluded him in previous campaigns: winning more total votes than his Democratic opponent.
“I believe Donald Trump is coming to California because he wants to win not only in the Electoral College, but he wants to win the popular vote. There are more registered voters in California than there are residents in 46 of the other 49 states,” Brulte said.
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The Trump National Golf Club Los Angeles sits on the Pacific Coast, south of the city. But Trump has long had a conflicted relationship with California, where a Republican has not carried the state since 1988 and Democrats outnumber registered Republicans by about 2-to-1.
California was home to the so-called Trump resistance during his time in office, and Trump often depicts California as representing all he sees wrong in America. As president, he called the homeless crises in Los Angeles and San Francisco disgraceful and threatened to intercede.
He is likely to spend time on Saturday linking California’s problems to Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee and a San Francisco Bay Area native who was California’s attorney general and represented the state in the Senate.
His campaign issued a statement alleging that under Harris, “the notorious ‘California Dream’ has turned into a nightmare for everyday Americans.”
Jessica Millan Patterson, chairwoman of the state GOP, said she looked forward to hearing Trump contrast his agenda with a Democratic White House that “has left Californians less safe and with less money in their pockets.”
Republicans, she promised, “will do our part to secure a House majority.”
Her opponent at the Babson fight night was her Harvard teammate Muskaan Sandhu, 18, a freshman, who had sparred before. No one likes getting hit, Ms. Sandhu said, but she liked learning that she could take a punch.
It made her feel she could do anything. “After the fight, I never felt so capable in my life,” she said.
Modern life — lived on screens or amid the constant distraction of screens — can feel isolating. She sees boxing as a way to engage with people. “You feel really human,” she said. “You feel a connection with the person you’re fighting. Like we’re in this together.”
Mr. Lake said he intended for Harvard’s club to join the National Collegiate Boxing Association, a nonprofit that provides structure and safety rules. The N.C.B.A. represents about 840 athletes, an 18 percent increase from a year ago, said the group’s president, George Chamberlain, who coaches the University of Iowa’s boxing club.
The well-attended fight night at Babson, which also included boxers from Brandeis University, reflected the growing interest.
Before it began, a volunteer passed out waiver documents. Most of the boxers immediately flipped to the end and signed. Mr. Jiang, of Harvard, appeared to be the only one who read it.
He was a mixed martial arts fan who resolved to try a combat sport in college. “I like the technique side of it,” Mr. Jiang said of boxing, “the science behind the sport.”
His fight plan, he explained, was to control the action with his jab and occasionally throw the right hand, to maintain good defense and try to tire out his opponent.
It seemed a solid strategy — though, as the heavyweight Mike Tyson famously noted, everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face.
A Frontier Airlines plane hit a person on the runway of Denver’s international airport during takeoff, sparking an engine fire and forcing passengers to evacuate, authorities said.
The plane, headed to Los Angeles, “reported striking a pedestrian during takeoff” at about 11.19pm on Friday, the Denver airport’s official X account wrote.
Neither the airport nor the airline has disclosed the person’s condition.
“We’re stopping on the runway,” the pilot of the plane involved told the control tower at one point, according to the site ATC.com. “We just hit somebody. We have an engine fire.”
The pilot told the air traffic controller they have “231 souls” on board – and that an “individual was walking across the runway”.
The air traffic controller responded that they were “rolling the trucks now” before the pilot told the tower they “have smoke in the aircraft”.
“We are going to evacuate on the runway,” the pilot added.
Frontier Airlines said in a statement that flight 4345 was the one involved in the collision – and that “smoke was reported in the cabin and the pilots aborted takeoff”. It was not clear whether the smoke was linked to the crash with the person.
The plane, an Airbus A321, “was carrying 224 passengers and seven crew members”, the airline said. “We are investigating this incident and gathering more information in coordination with the airport and other safety authorities.”
Passengers were then evacuated using slides, and the emergency crew bused them to the terminal.
Denver’s airport said the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) had been notified and that runway 17L – where the incident took place – will remain closed while an investigation is conducted.
Friday’s episode at Denver’s airport came one day after a Delta Airline employee died on Thursday night at Orlando’s international airport when a vehicle struck a jet bridge next to an airplane with passengers onboard, as the local news outlet WESH reported.
Meanwhile, on 3 May, a United Airlines plane arriving in Newark, New Jersey, from Venice, Italy, clipped a delivery truck and a light pole, which in turn struck a Jeep. Only the delivery truck driver was injured, but the plane was damaged extensively and the NTSB classified the case as an accident while also opening an investigation.
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