“With Tropical Storm Fay heading towards the Great State of New Hampshire this weekend, we are forced to reschedule our Portsmouth, New Hampshire Rally at the Portsmouth International Airport…
MIAMI — President Donald Trump made it to the critical battleground state of Florida on Friday to raise campaign cash and tend to issues of high interest there for his base supporters. But his efforts to relaunch travel after a hiatus caused by a surge in coronavirus cases hit a new snag as his campaign canceled a weekend rally in New Hampshire, citing a tropical storm threatening the area.
Press secretary Kayleigh McEnany told reporters the Portsmouth rally — slated to be held in an aircraft hangar open on one side — would be delayed by a week or two.
The New Hampshire event had been scheduled after aides spent weeks studying what went wrong at Trump’s last rally — a sparsely attended event in Tulsa three weeks ago. That was meant to be a massive, defiant return to the political stage but instead produced a sea of empty seats and questions about the campaign’s ability to attract people to large events in a pandemic.
“With Tropical Storm Fay heading towards the Great State of New Hampshire this weekend, we are forced to reschedule our Portsmouth, New Hampshire Rally at the Portsmouth International Airport at Pease,” Trump tweeted. “Stay safe, we will be there soon!”
Trump opened his Florida visit at U. S. Southern Command, where he got a briefing and spoke about U. S. counternarcotics operations. He also attended a roundtable in nearby Doral to show support for Venezuelan expatriates seeking the ouster of Nicholas Maduro, and is scheduled to attend an evening campaign fundraiser in Hillsboro Beach, Florida.
At the campaign-organized event focusing on Venezuela, Trump criticized former President Barack Obama’s efforts to lift some sanctions against Cuba and warned that the presumptive Democratic nominee, former Vice President Joe Biden, would take a similar approach and even embrace socialism domestically.
Trump reversed some but not all of Obama’s efforts to normalize relations with Cuba, an ally of the Maduro regime.
