Former President Donald J. Trump, in his speech Friday night in Minnesota to boycott the country if he loses there in 2020, falsely claimed that he had won the state twice, adding that this was for him in the year will be in play in 2024.
“I thought we won it in 2016,” Trump said during a fundraiser for the state Republican Party in St. Paul, Minnesota. “I know we won it in 2020.”
The last time a Republican presidential candidate won Minnesota was in 1972, when Richard M. Nixon won the state.
Still, Mr. Trump, the Republican Party’s presumptive nominee seeking to avenge his loss to Joseph R. Biden Jr. four years ago, said his campaign was including the state in its “official expansion” of its electoral map.
Mr. Trump’s nearly 90-minute appearance at the party’s annual Lincoln-Reagan dinner was another departure from the usual campaign battles on a day off from his criminal trial in New York. Last Saturday, Mr. Trump held a rally in New Jersey, a state where he lost by double digits in both 2016 and 2020. Earlier Friday, his campaign announced it would hold an event next week in the deep blue Bronx.
Mr. Trump used his speech in St. Paul to lean on the narrative that he stood for law and order and suggested he played a crucial role in quelling unrest in the state following the killing of George Floyd by police officers from Minneapolis in 2020.
“I saved your city,” Trump said, adding: “If you didn’t have me as president, Minneapolis wouldn’t exist today.”
Mr. Trump began his day at his youngest son Barron’s high school graduation in Florida, for which he was granted a day off from court by the judge presiding over his trial in New York. However, that didn’t stop him from launching further attacks on Judge Juan M. Merchan, whom he falsely accused of rejecting his pardon request.
“You know, for a while the judge said, ‘You can’t go to your son’s graduation,'” Trump said.
Earlier on Friday, Democratic Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz attacked Mr. Trump over his false claims to a local television station that he won the state in 2020. Mr. Walz called Mr. Trump’s falsehoods “an insult” in an online broadcast. to democracy.”
“He lost by over seven points,” Mr. Walz said. “And to make him crow that he thinks he has a chance, I remind people that Joe Biden came closer in Texas than Donald Trump did in Minnesota.”
On Saturday, Mr. Trump will be a headliner again, at the National Rifle Association’s annual meeting in Dallas. It will be the ninth time the former president, who has promised to lift gun restrictions, has addressed the group.
Mr. Trump last spoke at the 2022 NRA convention in Houston, although other politicians and music performers were a no-show following the massacre of 19 children and two adults at an elementary school a few days earlier in Uvalde, Texas.
Jazmine Ulloa contributed reporting.
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2024-05-18 04:33:55
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