Trump campaign counters Democrats' convention in swing state barnstorm, major digital buy

President Trump and his reelection campaign aren’t waiting for their designated moment in the 2020 electoral spotlight. The Trump team this week is barnstorming critical swing states, knocking on doors and launching a digital ad blitz amid the Democratic National Convention that it says will expose rival Joe Biden's “abject failure” as an elected official and his campaign’s hard-left turn. 

In an act of political showmanship, Trump will start with a visit to Wisconsin on Monday – the same day that the Democrats’ nominating convention begins in Milwaukee – by holding a rally in nearby Oshkosh. 

Biden, however, is set to make his acceptance speech in home state Delaware amid coronavirus concerns, a contrast the Trump campaign is also highlighting. 

“Joe Biden has been hiding in his basement in Wilmington, Delaware for four months,” Tim Murtaugh, the Trump campaign’s communications director, told Fox News on Sunday. “He does not answer questions from the media and he sure isn't talking to regular Americans.”

Trump begins his four-state tour with stops Monday in Minnesota and Wisconsin, followed by visits Tuesday in Arizona and Thursday in Pennsylvania.

“The intention right now is for the president to go around to these key states …  and really tell the folks there and across the country what an abject failure Joe Biden has been for the 47 years that he's been an elected official in Washington, D.C.,”Murtaugh also told Fox. 

The president plans to attend the funeral this week of his younger brother, Robert, who died Saturday. But no date has been announced, and no plans to change Trump’s schedule have been announced.

Trump will likely need to win Arizona, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, as he did in 2016, to take a second term, with equally challenging circumstances.

Trump four years ago became the first Republican presidential candidate since Ronald Reagan in 1984 to win Wisconsin. Trump took the state by just 22,748 votes, or by less than 1 percent. 

He won Pennsylvania by an equally narrow margin. But Trump perhaps faces an even greater challenge in that state, considering Biden was born in Scranton and has long had the support of the union workers in western Pennsylvania, which helped Trump upset Democrat Hillary Clinton four years ago.

Most recent polls show Biden leading the president by single digits in Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, though a recent Rasmussen Reports survey shows the former vice president ahead of Trump in the latter by 12 points. 

Biden and Trump are essentially deadlocked in Arizona, a state that a Republican presidential candidate has won since 1996, amid changing demographics that continue to help Democrats. Clinton narrowly won Minnesota in 2016. Trump recently trailed Biden by as many as 13 points but has narrowed the lead in recent days to 3 points.

Trump, as he did in in 2016, will continue to try to tout himself as a law-and-order president, a platform solidified by voter discontent over the recent social justice protests devolving into riots in cities and states run by elected Democrats. 

He also continues to highlight his efforts to create a robust domestic economy and keep it afloat during a global pandemic. 

The Trump campaign is also planning a seven- or eight-figure digital ad buy during the course of the DNC convention and a get-out-the vote effort that includes a field staffers bus tour in Iowa. 

“I think voters want the interaction with the campaign, and our people knocking on doors hear from voters that they're happy that at least one campaign is reaching out to them,” Murtaugh also said. “The Biden campaign starts with their candidate. and it goes down throughout all the way down to their volunteers. They are just not interacting with the American people, the candidate himself Joe Biden has been hiding in his basement in Wilmington, Delaware, for four months.