Trump hones attacks on Harris at St. Cloud rally as he seeks to flip Minnesota red

Hundreds of Donald Trump supporters watch his rally in St. Cloud on July 27, 2024, from a large screen in the parking lot after being turned away once the Herb Brooks National Hockey Center reached capacity. Photo by Max Nesterak/Minnesota Reformer.

ST. CLOUD — Former President Donald Trump had new material on Vice President Kamala Harris for thousands of cheering supporters in St. Cloud on Saturday evening at a rally with his running mate, Ohio U.S. Sen. JD Vance.

Trump called Harris — the likely Democratic nominee for president since President Joe Biden ended his reelection campaign a week ago — a “radical left lunatic” who supports defunding the police, taking away guns, letting in tens of millions of undocumented immigrants, and limiting red meat. He also said she isn’t very smart.

Trump also took swings at his other favorite targets: Biden, “fake news,” radical Islamic terrorism and violent “illegal aliens” whom he compared to Dr. Hannibal Lecter from the horror movie “Silence of the Lambs.”

“I mentioned him because we have people like that coming into our country. They’re closing their insane asylum all over the world. They’re sending the criminals into the United States,” Trump said.

Trump added some optimism to his speech, promising an immediate turn of fate for America as soon as he’s back in the Oval Office: “Inflation will stop. The illegal aliens will be turned back. The cartels will be in retreat. Crime will fall. Energy prices will plummet. Incomes will soar. And a world in chaos will rapidly be transformed into a planet of peace.”

In fact, economists from an array of think tanks and Wall Street firms say Trump’s plan to halt immigration and raise tariffs on imported goods would cause inflation to increase and inflation-adjusted incomes to drop.

Mark Zandi, chief economist of Moody’s Analytics and economic adviser to the presidential campaign of the late Sen. John McCain, told CBS MoneyWatch that consumers “will be hopping mad a year from now” about inflation if Trump wins and enacts his policies.

The line to see Trump at the Herb Brooks National Hockey Center serpentined nearly a mile through a residential neighborhood, with people sweating in the 90-degree heat through t-shirts reading “I’m voting for the felon” and “Mean tweets and cheap gas.”

Standing in line, Jake Wolf of St. Cloud said he believed Trump would get the country “under control” with border security and “getting transgender sh** out of childrens’ schools.”

Darla Schmidt of Montevideo befriended fellow truck driver Brian Nelson of Pine City in line. Both said their main concerns are the increased cost of living eating into their wages, and believes Trump will be able to rein in prices.

Asked about the prospect of higher tariffs driving up prices, Schmidt said it was like cleaning a house: “It gets nasty first, but eventually it’s going to work its way through.”

While some 8,000 supporters made it inside the arena, more than a 1,000 others were disappointed to be turned away and left to cheer for Trump’s image on a giant screen set up in the arena’s parking lot. The Reformer was outside the arena with them.

Trump said they will win Minnesota easily as long as “they don’t cheat.”

Ahead of the rally, Democrats including Gov. Tim Walz and U.S. Sen. Amy Klobuchar held their own event to energize 300 volunteers at the St. Paul Labor Center to kick off a Saturday door-knocking session.

“Three days ago, the nation found out what we’ve all known in Minnesota, [Trump and Vance]  are just weird,” Walz said at the rally.

Walz is suddenly receiving lots of chatter as a potential running mate to Harris, in part for his blistering attacks on the Trump-Vance ticket: “They’ll be happy to only be 10 points behind by the time we’re done with them,” he said, according to a Harris campaign press release.

Despite its faint-purplish hue, Minnesota hasn’t gone red in a presidential election since voting for Richard Nixon in 1972.

Even when Trump knocked down much of the blue wall across the Upper Midwest in 2016, Minnesota remained stubbornly Democratic. Hillary Clinton won the state, albeit by just 1.5 percentage points, a closer margin than in any election since native son Walter Mondale squeaked out his only state win against Ronald Reagan in 1984.

Minnesota’s elusiveness has made the state a particularly precious prize for Trump, who spent millions here in 2020 even as he lost ground in the state, trailing Biden by 7 percentage points.

Trump vowed never to return to Minnesota if he lost the state in 2020, although he returned this year in May to speak at the Minnesota GOP’s annual Lincoln Reagan Dinner, where he repeated the flagrant lie that he won the state in 2020.

Even though Biden suffered floundering approval ratings in recent years, he maintained a 6 percentage point lead over Trump in Minnesota, according to a June KSTP/Survey USA poll.

Harris has widened the margin for Democrats since becoming their all-but-certain presidential nominee with a 10 percentage point lead over Trump — 50% to 40% — in a KSTP/Survey USA poll released on Saturday.

Ruby red St. Cloud was friendly territory for Trump, who won 60% of the vote in Stearns County in 2020.

Vance took the stage first, speaking for about 20 minutes, with a speech that previewed Trump’s message on immigration at the southern border, Islamic extremism and support for the police, even though his running mate is now a convicted felon and facing charges in three other cases.

Vance also repeated a new attack on Harris for a tweet she sent four years ago in support of Minnesota Freedom Fund, a nonprofit organization that pays cash bail for people facing criminal trials or immigration hearings. At the time, the organization was bailing out people arrested in the protests and riots following the police killing of George Floyd. Harris hasn’t been involved in the organization beyond that one tweet, according to the organization.

“When rioters and looters were burning American cities to the ground, including Minneapolis, Kamala Harris was raising money to bail them out of jail. Let’s throw them in jail and deport them out,” said Vance, who’s now on a ticket that promises to pardon many of the people convicted of rioting at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, when Trump sought to disrupt the peaceful of transfer of power after losing the election.

The Minnesota Freedom Fund has bailed out more than 2,500 people awaiting trial since its founding in 2016, arguing that the constitutional right to be innocent until proven guilty shouldn’t depend on a person’s income. Some of the people for whom the organization has posted bail have gone on to commit serious crimes, including rape and murder.

But the Trump campaign also attacked the organization for bailing out Jaleel Stallings, who was accused of attempting to kill police officers but later acquitted of all charges by a jury. One officer involved in the incident pleaded guilty to felony assault on Stallings, and apologized to him.

Trump also falsely said Saturday that he sent in the National Guard to quell the rioting in Minneapolis after Floyd’s murder; in fact, Walz, a 24-year veteran of the National Guard before his time in politics, called up the Guard.

Other speakers included pillow mogul Mike Lindell, Shannon Owen, whose husband Josh Owen was killed in the line of duty as a Pope County Sheriff’s Deputy, and Paul Perez, president of the National Border Patrol Council.

The rally drew many East African immigrants, despite Trump’s anti-immigrant message. He promised in his speech to reinstate the travel ban on predominantly Muslim countries, including Somalia.

Osman Dagane, an Uber and Lyft driver from Minneapolis, said he arrived early Saturday morning to organize East African immigrants to come support Trump. He brushed off Trump’s previous comments on immigration — including that Somali migration to Minnesota has been a “disaster.”

“Well, now he gets to know a lot,” Dagane said. “He didn’t know that time, but now he know a lot.”

Dagane left before Trump took the stage because he was mainly interested in seeing Vance. Many people started filtering out of the arena thirty minutes into Trump’s speech, leaving only the most devoted behind.