President Trump to hold rally at Sanford Airport on Friday
President Trump is scheduled to hold a rally at Orlando Sanford International Airport on Friday, his campaign said Sunday.
The event is set for 7 p.m. Friday, with tickets available at the Trump campaign website.
The rally at the Sanford Airport will be Trump’s first visit to Central Florida since a fundraising event to Seminole County in early March, just days before he suspended travel from Europe because of the coronavirus pandemic. He flew into and out of Sanford that day and greeted supporters on the tarmac.
Trump’s Sanford visit will also come one week after he held a campaign rally in Jacksonville. The dual visits to his now-home state show the importance of Florida, where polls have shown a dead heat between Trump and Democratic opponent Joe Biden in the upcoming election. Trump won the state in 2016 by 1.2 percentage points over Democrat Hillary Clinton.
The president kicked off his reelection campaign at the Amway Center in Orlando in June 2019 but had stopped doing large rallies amid the coronavirus pandemic and canceled plans to hold the Republican National Convention in Jacksonville because of the pandemic.
A restart of his favorite campaign event stalled after a Tulsa rally in June led to increased infections in northeast Oklahoma, according to local officials, and he did not hold another large event until a rally in Reno, Nevada, earlier this month.
Trump had previously held a rally at the Sanford Airport in October 2016. He flew in on his private jet, which pulled up directly to the crowd outside the Million Air hangar.
As a presidential candidate, Trump held numerous rallies in Central Florida in 2016, including ones at the Unversity of Central Florida, Kissimmee, Ocala, and Orlando.
Biden visited Central Florida earlier this month for a Hispanic Heritage event in Kissimmee, shortly after a visit to Tampa. Vice presidential candidate Kamala Harris also campaigned in Miami earlier this month.
U.S. Rep. Stephanie Murphy, D-Winter Park, who represents Sanford in Congress, criticized Trump in a statement Sunday.
“Few places have been harder hit by the economic crisis resulting from President Donald Trump’s mismanagement of the COVID-19 response than Central Florida,” Murphy said. “The Orlando-Sanford area has an unemployment rate that exceeds 15 percent, one of the highest rates in the country.”
The region’s tourism and hospitality industry “won’t recover until the pandemic is brought under control, something Donald Trump has failed to do over the last seven months,” Murphy said. "Our community doesn’t need another campaign event full of excuses and empty promises. We need a national plan to end this nightmare and rebuild our economy.”
slemongello@orlandosentinel.com
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