JONATHAN J. COOPER, KeynoteUSA
7 minutes ago
Former President Donald Trump speaks during a press conference at Trump Tower, Friday, May 31, 2024, in New York. A day after a New York jury found Donald Trump guilty of 34 felonies, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee addressed the conviction and likely attempted to cast his campaign in a new light. (KeynoteUSA Photo/Julia Nikhinson)
PHOENIX (KeynoteUSA) — Donald Trump returns to the campaign trail Thursday with a trip to Arizona, his first appearance in a battleground state since he was convicted in a hush money scandal.
Trump is scheduled to speak at a town hall in Phoenix hosted by Turning Point, a conservative youth organization that has seen its influence rise along with Trump’s takeover of the Republican Party.
Trump responded defiantly to the verdict against him a day after a New York jury found him guilty last week of a scheme to illegally influence the 2016 election by paying money to a porn actor to maintain his silence. But he has not spoken directly to voters in the swing states that will decide the November elections.
You’re likely to find a friendly audience at Turning Point. Led by Charlie Kirk, the group has harnessed the energy of young people drawn to Trump’s Make America Great Again movement by cultivating conservative influencers and hosting splashy events. And it has made Kirk and his allies rich.
Nowhere is Turning Point’s influence greater than in Arizona, the group’s adopted home state, where its loyalists have taken prominent roles in the state Republican Party but have struggled to win general elections. Turning Point’s slate of conservative candidates lost in the 2022 midterm elections, including Kari Lake, who lost the race for governor and is now running for the US Senate.
The group is looking to expand its influence this year to other battleground states and got a boost when Trump unseated former Republican National Committee Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel in February. She was replaced by Trump’s hand-picked successor, her daughter-in-law Lara Trump, who has spoken positively about working with Turning Point.
President Joe Biden won Arizona in 2020 by about 10,000 votes. It was, along with Georgia, one of two states decided by less than half a percentage point and is expected to be close again this year.
Arizona Republicans have enthusiastically embraced Trump’s lie that the 2020 election was stolen from him. State lawmakers commissioned an unprecedented partisan recount that confirmed his loss. Officials in Cochise County in southern Arizona face criminal charges for refusing to certify the results of the 2022 midterm elections.
Hours before Trump speaks, Jake Hoffman, a Republican state senator who is also a top Turning Point consultant, will be impeached for his role in an alleged plot to overturn Trump’s loss in Arizona. Hoffman is accused of being a false elector who signed a document falsely claiming to represent Arizona in the Electoral College.
Trump’s former chief of staff, Mark Meadows, will be indicted in the same case on Friday.
Despite the state’s importance on the presidential map, Trump has not campaigned in Arizona since 2022, when he held a rally to support his slate of midterm candidates, all of whom ended up losing.
Trump’s trip west includes several private fundraisers and a rally Sunday in Nevada, another battleground state he narrowly lost in 2020.
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