WASHINGTON — When President Joe Biden visited five cities during a multi-day trip last week, former President Donald Trump was barely seen in public and spent most of his time in South Florida.
Trump has hosted just one public campaign event since winning the Republican presidential nomination on March 12: a rally in Ohio that was funded not by his campaign but by supporters of a Senate candidate he had endorsed. Nothing is listed on the events page on his campaign website.
Biden, meanwhile, has taken the country by storm. After a trip to North Carolina on Tuesday, the Democratic president will have visited all of the 2024 swing states in the less than three weeks since his State of the Union address.
The different approaches reflect the shortages both sides face.
Trump’s campaign is facing a serious cash shortage and mounting legal bills as he fights four criminal charges. His focus in recent weeks has been on recruiting potential donors as his campaign builds its infrastructure in battleground states to overtake Democrats, who have a significant lead.
For Biden, 81, the pace is a message in itself as he strives to combat voters’ lingering concerns about his age. Whoever wins in November will be the oldest president to be inaugurated, although polls show voters view the issue as more pressing for Biden. Trump is 77.
Both parties exude confidence and accuse the other of trying to hide its candidate’s problems.
Biden “looks like a lost puppy every time he hits the campaign trail,” said Trump spokesperson Karoline Leavitt, who accused Biden’s campaign of limiting his events to “stops at field offices with a few paid staffers who are less look more enthusiastic than those present at a meeting. funeral.”
Trump, she continued, “is greeted by crowds of enthusiastic Americans everywhere he goes, and he will continue to hold massive rallies across the country with tens of thousands of supporters who want to ‘Make America Great Again.’ Joe Biden’s campaign is a failing, boring disaster. President Trump is building the largest political movement in history.”
Biden campaign spokesman Ammar Moussa disagreed.
“We are two weeks into the general election and Donald Trump is unable to raise money, holed up in his country club and letting convicts and conspiracy theorists take over his campaign,” he said in a statement. strategy.”
Biden’s team is trying to sell the public on his achievements as concerns remain that voters are unaware of what he has done in office and are instead focusing on frustrations over high grocery costs and concerns about strong increase in illegal crossings at the US-Mexico border.
“We haven’t talked to people about the issues that President Biden has addressed,” said Yolanda Bejarano, the Democratic state chairwoman in Arizona, where Biden campaigned last week. “That’s what we’re determined to do.”
His aides have packaged his campaign stops into official White House events designed to promote his policy agenda and legislative achievements.
Trump spends his days in and around his Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach, Florida — fundraising, hosting elected officials who visit regularly, and meeting with aides.
But Trump has also made time for other pursuits. He recently said he won two championships at his golf club in Palm Beach, writing on his social media site that they were “very exciting” victories on a “GREAT and difficult course.” He visited his golf club in West Palm Beach on Sunday to receive two trophies from a cheering crowd.
Trump faces a slew of pressing legal challenges. That includes a Monday deadline to pay more than $454 million in penalties and interest. If Trump doesn’t come up with the money, New York’s attorney general could start the process of seizing his assets.
Instead of his signature large rallies, aides say, Trump is attending fundraising events five to six days a week. That includes lunches and dinners that generate immediate money, as well as relationship-building meetings that could result in future audits.
On Thursday, his super political action committee held a $100,000-a-person roundtable with Hispanic leaders at his golf club in Doral, Florida, according to a copy of the invitation obtained by The Associated Press.
“There is great excitement in the community,” said Miami-Dade County Commissioner Kevin Cabrera, one of the hosts.
Not hosting events also saves you campaign money that you don’t have to waste. Trump’s rallies cost “half a million each,” Trump senior adviser Chris LaCivita said in a podcast interview last year.
Federal campaign finance filings released last week showed Trump’s political operation at a serious disadvantage and struggling to catch up to Biden and the Democratic Party, which raised $53 million last month and ended February with $155 million cash on hand .
Trump’s campaign and his Save America political action committee, two key groups in his political operation, reported raising a combined $15.9 million in February and ended the month with more than $37 million.
The empty public calendar is also a reflection of scheduling changes. Trump planned to spend much of the next six weeks in court during his hush money trial in New York, which was set to begin Monday. That process has since been postponed, forcing the campaign to adapt. (Trump is expected to attend a hearing on Monday.)
But even without public events, developments in Trump’s lawsuits and a steady stream of inflammatory statements — such as his claim that Jews who vote for Democrats hate their religion and Israel — have him dominating the news cycles.
That claim emerged in a series of interviews he has done with friendly broadcasters since becoming his party’s presumptive candidate, including a conversation with right-wing British leader Nigel Farage.
Some allies of the former president argue that holding fewer rallies will not only help him by saving money but also by limiting the opportunities for him to go off script and say something that could alienate swing voters.
However, the campaign dismissed that notion, saying it does not plan to run the kind of “basement campaign” Trump aides attacked Biden for in 2020, at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. Trump ignored guidance from his own administration’s public health experts on social distancing and mask-wearing, holding White House rallies and events before vaccines were available, such as a reception for his Supreme Court nominee who became a superspreader event.
Biden has also raised tens of millions of dollars for his campaign in recent weeks. He will raise even more money Thursday at a joint event with former Presidents Barack Obama and Bill Clinton in New York that could break fundraising records for a single event.
Otherwise, he prefers smaller, more intimate events: joining a family for a meal at the kitchen table, stepping into small businesses and meeting supporters in backyards.
Like Trump’s, his campaign is questioning the value of expensive demonstrations so far before Election Day. And there are real concerns about his ability to fill a room, given the still-weak democratic enthusiasm and the protests he faces from voters angry about his support for Israel’s war against Hamas.
The smaller events are designed to produce short social media moments that resonate with Biden’s target audience online and reach an audience that would likely miss more conventional campaign stops.
Last week he met with several dozen supporters in Reno, Nevada, the center of the state’s only swing county, before heading to south-central Phoenix, where he mingled with about 80 people at a legendary Mexican restaurant as his campaign won a coalition launched called ‘Latinos’. con Biden-Harris,” or “Latinos with Biden-Harris.”
“I need you, I need the help,” Biden told them. “Look, there are only about six or seven states that are going to determine the outcome of this election. They are toss-up states, and this is one of them.”
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Colvin reported from New York. Associated Press writers Seung Min Kim in Phoenix and Adriana Gomez Licon in Miami contributed to this report.