President Donald Trump on Monday kicked off a week of red-state campaigning with a raucous rally in Ohio, where Republicans are fighting to hold onto a Senate seat that could be key to the majority.
He spent portions of his nearly 90-minute remarks railing against Somali and Haitian communities, delivering red meat political attacks and catering to his base. He at times conjured two out-of-state Democrats — Minnesota Rep. Ilhan Omar and Michigan Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed — as bigger threats than former Ohio Sen. Sherrod Brown, who’s giving GOP Sen. Jon Husted a run for his money in a state that Trump had turned into a reliably red bastion.
After Ohio, Trump’s scheduled to hit Alaska and Montana — states he won by 13 and 20 points in 2024 — as his team banks on him juicing base turnout in conservative areas. But on Monday night — as Trump returned to the same arena where he held a packed 2017 ‘thank you’ tour — large sections of seating on the left and right of the press riser, which came with prime views of the president, were empty.
Still, it was a much livelier affair than some recent rallies, with two significant interruptions. At one point, a brawl appeared to break out between a protester wearing a “Release The Epstein Files” t-shirt and a rally-goer in the stands. Another interruption came from a young woman holding a Mexican flag.
A big part of Trump’s pitch was about immigration, returning to a theme he hit hard in 2024, when he repeated his false claim that Haitian migrants in Springfield, Ohio, were eating their neighbors’ pets.
“Just look at what’s happening in the once great state of Minnesota,” he said, teeing up his attacks on Omar — a frequent target of his ire.
Federal officers executed a search warrant early Monday at the Washington, DC-area home of the congresswoman, according to a Justice Department spokesperson and a source familiar with the matter.
And while Trump insisted he was not involved in that search, he went on to call Omar — who’s a US citizen — a “disaster” and attack the country where she was born.
“[Rep. Omar] comes in from a country without laws, without police, without military, without — all they do is shoot each other — and she comes into our country, and she says, ‘I have a constitutional right,’” Trump said. “She’s got a constitutional right? She’s telling us about the Constitution, and she comes from one of the worst countries anywhere on the planet.”
Kevin Lamarque/Reuters
As he launched into into a tirade against Somalis in the US, supporters in the audience began chanting “Deport!”
“They think they’re in Somalia, where they don’t have pants to wear,” Trump said at one point, going on to repeat his insult about “low IQ people.”
He made blue-state Minnesota the foil. “If you want to stop Ohio from being plundered, ransacked, and destroyed like Minnesota’s being destroyed, we’re going to stop it. Just like we did with Springfield, we’re going to stop it,” Trump said.
When the president turned to Brown — who holds a 6-point lead over Husted in CNN polling released last week — he tried to link the former three-term incumbent to national Democrats in more generic terms.
“Sherrod Brown is the candidate of the Marxists, the communists, the anti-American radicals, who want to tear down America’s heritage,” Trump said, arguing that he also wants the Midwest “turned into Mogadishu.”
Brown, a progressive populist first elected to the Senate in 2006, held onto his seat in 2018, during Trump’s first term, but lost reelection while on the ballot with Trump in 2024.
“So, what happens is every time I run, we do great,” Trump said, repeating his call for voters to “pretend” he’s on the ballot this year.
The first days of early voting in Ohio showed signs Democrats are more enthusiastic to vote, with affiliated Democrats making up larger shares of pre-election voters than they did two years ago, even in the most Republican parts of the state, according to data from the secretary of state’s office last week. (But Republicans in recent years have much been much more likely to vote early in person or on Election Day.)
Trump seemed to tacitly acknowledge Ohioans’ previous tendency to back Brown, arguing that a vote for the former senator could have much wider ramifications.
“It’s one vote, but that one vote can steer Congress into a direction that you’re not going to be happy with. And it’s not Ohio values.”
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