RALLY REVERSAL

Trump Cooks Up Wild Excuse for His Red State Rally U-Turn

The president says his phone blew up after he canceled a pair of in-person rallies in the MAGA heartland.

President Donald Trump has cooked up a wild excuse for reversing the cancellation of two rallies in must-win MAGA states.

Trump claims he reinstated rallies in once-reliably-red Iowa and Kansas after his phone blew up with calls asking him to—not because the Republican Senate candidates, Rep. Ashley Hinson in Iowa and Sen. Roger Marshall in Kansas, are desperate for an electoral boost.

Trump said his “friends” implored him to change his mind, so he did.

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“I got a call from Iowa, from the people, and from my friends that are very, very good, and we have a couple of races that are very important, and they said if you could go, it would be better than a tele-rally,” he said. “And I tried to talk them out of that, I said ‘what about a tele-rally?’ but they asked me so I’m going to do two on Sunday.”

The White House claimed Thursday that Trump was abandoning the rallies because he could be even more effective in tele-rallies. Trump, 80, says he still thinks that tele-rallies would have been sufficient.

“I wanted to see if I could do tele-rallies because I’m very successful, you know, batting unbelievable at tele-rallies,” Trump said Friday. “I do ‘em well, it’s a great instrument, it only seems to work for me because other people call and nobody gets on the phone.”

Trump is now slated to headline rallies in Dubuque, Iowa, and Salina, Kansas, this weekend.

In Kansas, Marshall is trailing Democrat Adam Hamilton in October polls, with the most recent surveys tracked by The New York Times pegging the MAGA candidate as trailing by as many as 10 points. In Iowa, Democrat Josh Turek is essentially tied with Hinson.

The president has spent October traveling to usually deep-red states to drum up support for Republicans, who are expected to be hammered on Election Day. Even GOP strongholds like Florida and South Carolina are expected to feature close statewide races.

On his rally tour, many of Trump’s events are now being held in smaller venues, with supporters spotted leaving before the president finishes speaking.

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