On Thursday, President Donald Trump abruptly canceled a rally scheduled in Kansas, sparking confusion and speculation among commentators. According to some, the cancelation lends credence to rumors that the GOP has given up the critical Kansas Senate race.
“Wow,” posted congressional reporter Jamie Dupree. “Trump cancels a planned campaign rally in Kansas.” The rally on Saturday was to be his only scheduled campaign-trail appearance for the final weekend before Election Day. According to the Independent, “The president will instead participate in a series of virtual rallies. It’s unclear whether he will reschedule the Kansas event. Trump was scheduled to appear at Salina Regional Airport to support embattled Republican incumbent Sen. Roger Marshall, who is polling closely in a race for re-election against Democratic candidate and pastor Adam Hamilton. The last time voters in the state elected a Democratic U.S. senator was in 1939.” A recent CNN poll found that Hamilton leads Marshall by four points, and as one commenter noted of the axed rally, “Round trip to/from Kansas is a long way to go for a race some Republicans have thought is a lost cause for more than a week.”
Trump’s previous appearance in Kansas was hammered by protesters. As the Independent elaborates, “Protesters repeatedly interrupted the president’s last appearance in the state, which Trump falsely claimed were ‘paid’ to be there. At least 11 people were escorted from the Heartland Credit Union Arena in Park City that night. It was at that event where the president invoked the antisemitic slur ‘shylock’ while defending Marshall’s history of suing former patients for failing to pay medical debt when he worked as an OB-GYN.” In Trump’s words, “They made it like, oh, he was some kind of a shylock-type guy.”
The cancellation announcement came as Trump was speaking at a rally in South Carolina, which was also interrupted by a protester, whom the president dismissed as “sloppy” and “paid.” The South Carolina rally — during which Trump claimed polls show he has 99 percent of Republican support — also caught attention due to an incident aired by Fox News just before the president spoke. When a Fox reporter asked one rallygoer why he was there, the response was not what he expected. “In the ’70s I was too young to get go to South America for the Jonestown massacre, so this is as close as I’ll get,” he replied. “There’s nothing like seeing a cult up close.” The Fox reporter laughed and hurried off to speak with someone else, saying, “Alright, maybe this is not a Trump supporter.”
Trump’s recent rallies have also boasted significantly smaller crowds than he’s drawn in the past. While Trump used to fill stadiums, yesterday, NBC News Chief White House Correspondent Garrett Haake — who has covered “dozens if not hundreds” of President Donald Trump’s rallies — expressed surprise at the unusual size of the venue selected for the president’s Ohio event, saying he couldn’t recall ever seeing the president speak in such a small space. One commenter noted it looked “like a high school gym.”