Trump, free from court, finds ‘a little fun on the campaign trail’

WAUKESHA, Wisconsin — At his first rallies since the start of his criminal trial, Donald Trump acknowledged the event that’s now consuming his spring and pulling him, most days, away from the campaign trail.

Addressing crowds in Wisconsin and Michigan on Wednesday, Trump called the New York judge in his case “crooked,” “corrupt” and “totally conflicted.” He called the trial “fake,” “bullshit” and part of a “kangaroo court,” while taking care not to disparage witnesses in the proceedings after being found in contempt of court on Tuesday for having done so recently.

But for the former president, who is expected to be tied up in court through at least the end of the month, his rallies Wednesday largely served as an escape from his judicial reality. In both states, Trump spoke for well over an hour. He talked about closing the border, suggested that pro-Palestinan college protesters are paid actors, decried electric cars and a “plunging” economy under President Joe Biden and discussed whether Chris Christie is a “fat pig.”

“It's called having a little fun on the campaign trail in Wisconsin,” Trump said during his first rally of the day.

Facing 88 charges across state and federal jurisdictions over the last year, and with his legal problems demanding much of his time and campaign money, Trump is fighting to win back the White House while trying to beat the criminal and civil cases against him. And for his most loyal supporters, a New York judge finding Trump in contempt for violating a gag order Tuesday was just the latest reason to double down.

“It’s all garbage. It’s just a way for Democrats to try to take him down,” Larry Solberg, a Waukesha resident and small-business owner who voted for Trump in 2016 and 2020, but had never attended a rally until Wednesday in Wisconsin. “They’re going to find him guilty, but I’m sure he’ll work his way around it.”

Some Trump supporters started lining up at 7 a.m., seven hours before the rally’s start, said Terry Dittrich, chair of the Waukesha County GOP, the largest Republican-leaning county in Wisconsin.

“They don’t believe that this has been anything but a witch hunt,” Dittrich said of charges against Trump.

The rally was the first of two Trump held in Midwest swing states on Wednesday, the standing weekday off from his New York criminal trial, when the presiding judge takes up other court business. Trump flew from Wisconsin to an evening rally in Freeland, Michigan, before he was set to return to New York City.

Trump’s trial in Manhattan on charges stemming from hush money payments to a porn star has hampered his ability to campaign this spring, taking up eight hours of most of his weekdays while he sits in court, and limiting any big events to Wednesdays and weekends.

Biden — free from the constraints of a courtroom — has increased the pace of his campaigning. On Wednesday afternoon, the president attended a fundraiser in Washington. And as Trump returns to court, Biden is set to travel Thursday to North Carolina, another battleground state where Trump’s April 20 rally was abruptly canceled due to severe weather.

Trump’s campaign swing Wednesday marked his second to Wisconsin and Michigan in the last month — after holding rallies in Green Bay and Grand Rapids at the beginning of April — another sign of its significance to either candidate’s path to victory.

Despite polls showing Trump with a lead in most swing states, the most competitive battlegrounds are likely to be the Rust Belt states of Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania — the longtime Democratic “blue wall” that Trump toppled when he won those states in 2016. His current leads there are narrower than in Sun Belt states that are also expected to be competitive.

In his speech in Wisconsin, Trump addressed issues that Democrats have sought to bludgeon him and other Republicans on, reiterating his pledge to “always protect Social Security and Medicare for our great seniors,” as well as wading into a topic that is much more of a minefield for Trump — abortion.

“Basically, the states decide on abortion, and people are absolutely thrilled with the way that's going on,” Trump said of abortion laws post-Roe v. Wade, a Supreme Court decision whose overturning he claimed credit for. “Every state is different.”

Hours earlier, a six-week abortion ban in his home state of Florida had taken effect, though it could be altered by a ballot referendum this fall that Trump has not yet weighed in on.

Speaking to the crowd gathered in Waukesha, Trump called all of the indictments against him “a great badge of honor.”

“Thank you,” Trump said, as his supporters applauded. “Because I'm being indicted for you.”

Rob O’Loughlin, a retired golf industry entrepreneur from Madison, said he has watched the trials closely and sees them all as “political.” And the nine instances in which Trump was determined to have violated his gag order? “That’s $1,000 each, the equivalent to two cents to Trump.”

“Going to jail for a day,” O’Loughlin continued, “would be just about better than that mugshot” for drumming up sympathy and campaign donations for Trump.