Donald Trump will be behind bulletproof glass on Wednesday for his first outdoor rally since surviving an assassination attempt, but Republicans will face a major challenge in matching the intense enthusiasm of the crowds turning out for Kamala Harris.
The event, to be held in Asheboro, North Carolina, ahead of the November 5 election, is a chance for Trump to reclaim his long-time dominance by holding blockbuster rallies.
Joined by vice presidential candidate J.D. Vance, he will take the stage at an aviation museum and speak about his national security policies against a backdrop of vintage warplanes.
This is the first time he will hold a major outdoor event since he was slightly injured in a similar assassination attempt in Butler, Pennsylvania, a month ago. One person was killed in that attack, while the shooter was killed in a return fire by a Secret Service sniper.
The Secret Service has suggested that Trump, 78, stick to easily controlled indoor venues, such as sports arenas. He has attended about a dozen indoor events since then.
The Secret Service does not comment publicly on security operations and did not respond to requests for comment on Wednesday’s preparations. However, a screen has been installed around the stage, which can be clearly seen from where Trump and Vance will later give speeches.
Crowds are an integral part of Trump’s political brand, in which the right-wing billionaire seeks to portray himself as an outsider and a man of the people. Even as president, he continued a regular schedule of election-style rallies, often drawing at least 10,000 people in sports arenas.
He counted on these displays of force as a key weapon in his plan to render President Joe Biden, whose own public events are typically low-key and relatively small, ineffective.
Trump’s rally dominance ends
However, Trump’s strategy backfired on July 21, when the 81-year-old Biden abruptly abandoned his re-election bid and endorsed his young vice president as the future of the Democratic Party.
The immediate surge in Democratic support for Harris has stunned the Trump campaign.
And nowhere is this change evident beyond 59-year-old Harris’s ability to draw packed arenas.
She routinely fills venues with more than 10,000 people. On Tuesday night, supporters thronged the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, while she held a massive rally in Milwaukee.
In an apparent dig at Trump, he noted that his event in Milwaukee took place at the same venue used by Republicans for their convention in July.
North Carolina is one of a handful of states expected to determine the outcome of the Nov. 5 election.
U.S. presidential elections are decided not by an overall national vote but rather on a state-by-state basis, with each state having a different amount of electoral votes, and the winning candidate needing to win a majority.
Most states lean either heavily Republican or heavily Democratic, and there are only seven states that are truly contested—and where candidates spend most of their campaign time.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)