The Trump campaign believes that the president can cling to all the states he won in 2016, while potentially also including Maine, New Hampshire, Nevada and Minnesota in his column.
The president’s new Campaign Manager, Bill Stepien, spent nearly an hour on Friday on a Zoom call with reporters explaining how he viewed the lay-out with 102 days to the 2020 presidential election.
“We just need to win Wisconsin or Michigan or Pennsylvania to win this again,” said Stepien. ‘If we win any of these states and the [rest of the] Claims the president won in 2016, Joe Biden stays in his basement. The President is in the White House for four more years.
President Trump’s new campaign manager Bill Stepien spoke to reporters for nearly an hour on Friday and argued that Trump could retake the states that Hillary Clinton won, including Maine, New Hampshire, Nevada and Minnesota.
Despite national and state polls suggesting otherwise, Bill Stepien (left) argued that the Trump campaign is in a good place 102 days before the election, where he is expected to face Democrat Joe Biden (right).
Bill Stepien pointed to several states where his 2016 Democratic rival Hillary Clinton (pictured) narrowly won, including Nevada, New Hampshire, Maine and Minnesota, and told reporters that he believed Trump could make a profit there.
This 2016 Electoral College map shows in red the four states that the Trump campaign said could turn red: Nevada, Minnesota, New Hampshire, and Maine.
Stepien dismissed national polls, some showing the presumptive Democrat nominee with a double-digit lead, explaining that not enough Republicans are being polled to accurately reflect the 2020 electorate.
That said, the campaign manager who replaced Brad Parscale earlier this month, said he believed 2020 would be a ‘shoot-and-drag fight’, and recalled how several months ago Trump seemed invincible, to that narrative that applied to Biden in more recent days.
Stepien told reporters that the Trump campaign has hired full-time staff in Maine, Nevada, New Hampshire and Minnesota, where voters selected Hillary Clinton the last time.
In Maine, Stepien argued, the president only lost by 22,000 votes.
He said having Senator Susan Collins, a moderate and sometimes controversial Republican, on the ballot will give Trump a boost in the state. “That is positive for us,” said Stepien.
Democrats are especially targeting Collins for his vote for Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, after he was charged with a teenage sexual assault.
A PPP poll in early July showed Collins’ Democratic challenger Sara Gideon with a four-point lead.
Stepien also pointed to Trump’s recent order that opened up more Maine waters for fishing as something that could compel voters in the state.
“These are the kinds of hyperlocal things that matter in an election year that a challenger can’t do,” Stepien said.
Trump visited Maine in June and discussed Maine fishermen and also visited a COVID-19 test kit swab factory.
Nevada, Stepien argued, could be at stake because Trump performed better in the state than any Republican in years, losing the state’s six Electoral College votes to Clinton by 2.4 points.
In comparison, President Barack Obama beat Senator John McCain in the 2008 statewide election by 12.5 points.
Stepien said Trump could take New Hampshire this time, and blamed a ‘negative-vote candidate’ in 2016 for allowing Clinton to win by a ‘very slim’ margin.
The campaign manager was probably talking about Senator Kelly Ayotte, the Republican incumbent who was on the ballot and lost to former New Hampshire Governor Maggie Hassan.
Ayotte publicly embarrassed Trump immediately after the release of the infamous ‘Access Hollywood’ video, which also toppled his 2016 presidential bid.
“I will not vote for Donald Trump,” he promised, a message that could have hampered Republican Party support for the now president in the state.
Finally, Stepien said the campaign had sent 49 employees to Minnesota in an effort to change the state from historically blue to red.
He noted that Trump had only lost the state by 44,000 votes, which is similar to the number Biden needs to pick up Pennsylvania.
“It seems only fair that Minnesota should receive the same treatment in reverse,” argued the new campaign manager.
Fox News polls released Thursday showed that Biden led the state 51 percent to 38 percent from Trump.
Minnesota became the epicenter of the Black Lives Matter movement in May after George Floyd’s Memorial Day death in Minneapolis.
It is unclear how that will affect the 2020 elections.
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