Tallahassee: Donald Trump’s campaign said on Tuesday that it has scheduled no more big-money fund-raising events to benefit the Republican Party, another sign of the GOP nominee’s struggling campaign and a serious blow to the party’s get-out-the-vote operations with less than two weeks to go until Election Day.
The consequences of halting major fund-raisers will compound the challenges facing a candidate and a party already straining to match Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton’s much larger and better-financed operation. Unlike Clinton, who has an extensive turnout operation of her own, Trump and many other GOP candidates down the ballot are relying heavily on the Republican National Committee to bring voters to the polls.
In another sign of unexpected weakness, Trump also announced that Indiana Gov. Mike Pence, the GOP vice-presidential nominee, will pay a visit on Wednesday to Utah, where polls show Trump is at risk of losing the once reliably Republican state.
The developments came as both Clinton and Trump campaigned in Florida on Tuesday, underscoring the state’s importance on November 8, particularly for Trump, who acknowledged that he probably cannot win the White House without carrying the state.
Steven Mnuchin, Trump’s national finance chairman, said in an interview with The Washington Post on Tuesday that Trump Victory, a joint fund-raising committee between the party and the campaign, held its last formal fund-raiser on October 19.
“We’ve kind of wound down,” Mnuchin said, referring to formal fund-raisers. “But the online fund-raising continues to be strong.”
While Clinton is headlining her last fund-raiser on Tuesday night, outside Miami, her campaign has scheduled 41 other events between now and November 3 featuring high-profile surrogates such as her daughter, Chelsea, running mate Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Virginia, and the entertainer Cher, according to a schedule sent to donors over the weekend.
Mnuchin said the Trump campaign is continuing to help bring in funds for the party, but decided to keep the candidate’s final weeks focused on taking his message to the voters in person rather than on raising money.
During three events in Florida on Tuesday, Trump sought to focus his message on spikes in health-insurance premiums for Affordable Care Act plans, arguing that the law was “blowing up” and vowing to introduce legislation on his first day in office to replace it.
“Repealing Obamacare and stopping Hillary’s health-care takeover is one of the single most important reasons that we must win on November 8,” Trump declared at an evening rally here in Tallahassee.
But Trump, who has not focused much on the health-care law during his campaign, bungled his argument earlier in the day during an event at his luxe Trump National Doral Miami resort, where he suggested that “all my employees are having a tremendous problem with Obamacare.” He acknowledged minutes later that the resort — as required by law — offers health-care plans to its employees; Doral’s director said 95 per cent of workers were covered.
Trump also reminded reporters that he is scheduled to leave the campaign trail on Wednesday to attend the official grand opening of his new Trump-branded hotel on Washington’s Pennsylvania Avenue. “I always said I’m getting to Pennsylvania Avenue one way or another,” he said, jokingly, as employees behind him laughed.
During a radio interview on Tuesday, Clinton touted the ACA as “a major step” forward and vowed, as she has before, to “fix problems” with the law.
“I’m sure you noticed, predominantly working people, African-American, Latino people now have access to insurance, but the costs have gone up too much,” Clinton told WHQT-FM in Miami. “So we’re going to really tackle that. We’re going to get copays and premiums and deductibles down. We’re going to tackle prescription drug costs. And we can do that without ripping away the insurance that people now have.”
On the first of a two-day swing through Florida, Clinton told an enthusiastic crowd in Coconut Creek that she is optimistic about the election but warned her supporters about becoming complacent.
“I feel good, but boy, I’m not taking anything for granted,” Clinton said at Broward College’s North Campus.
As she has in recent days in other states, Clinton urged the audience to take advantage of early voting opportunities. She noted that her staff was available to escort people to a nearby location.
“You can go across the street right now,” Clinton said.
Clinton also took several jabs at Trump, including mocking his proposed “deportation force” to remove undocumented immigrants from the country.
Speaking in a state with a sizeable Latino population, Clinton called the idea “so unimaginable.”
“I think it is so wrong, and it is not going to happen in America,” she said.
Clinton also picked up the endorsement Tuesday of Colin Powell, a retired four-star general who also served as secretary of state.
In a brief interview, Powell said he had made the announcement during an appearance before the Long Island Association. “I said that I would be voting for her,” Powell said. Asked why, he said: “Because I think she’s qualified, and the other gentleman is not qualified.”
Powell joins a growing list of Republican national security figures who have endorsed Clinton. While Trump claims a long list of military endorsers, no former secretary of state has publicly backed his bid.
During an afternoon rally in Sanford, Trump declared that “we’re going to win Florida” and opened another line of attack on President Barack Obama. The GOP nominee claimed that hacked emails released by WikiLeaks show that Obama knew about Clinton’s private use of an email server while she was secretary of state.
“President Obama claimed to have no knowledge whatsoever of Clinton’s illegal email server,” Trump said, later adding, “but newly public emails — WikiLeaks — prove otherwise.”
