President Donald Trump has canceled two campaign-trail appearances scheduled for the weekend before Election Day, opting instead for a series of telerallies amid dimming chances of Republican victories in midterms.
The president unloaded on a reporter who questioned why he canceled a Saturday appearance at a Kansas rally, one of last appearances on the road following two weeks of near nightly events. Hours later, the president pulled out of Sunday’s rally in Iowa.
Trump, who appeared to be sweating as he briefly addressed reporters following his remarks at a campaign rally in South Carolina, called a reporter with Reuters “way out of shape” and mocked him for asking whether the president was “feeling well.”
“You know what the reason is? I don’t feel I have to go to Kansas,” Trump told reporters Thursday. “He said, ‘You’re not going to Kansas, sir, are you feeling well?’ You’ve been following me for two weeks. I feel perfect.”
He then called the reporter “disgusting.”
“Put yourself in shape,” he said. “You look like hell.”
The president will instead participate in a series of 20 virtual rallies.
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.
Pieter Miller, executive director of the Salina Airport Authority, said “all Salina events are cancelled” due to the president’s schedule.
Trump’s Sunday rally at Five Flags Event Center in Dubuque, Iowa was also canceled on Thursday.
“With Republicans in a strong position in Kansas and Iowa, previously planned in-person rallies in those states will no longer take place as scheduled,” officials announced.
Protesters repeatedly interrupted the president’s last appearance in Kansas, 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.
“And they made it like, oh, he was some kind of a shylock-type guy. And if he didn’t make these requests, he would be breaking the law,” Trump said at the Kansas rally earlier this month. “He would have been breaking a very strong criminal law, and he would be subject to criminal arrest and liability. And he didn’t do it. He has a law firm that did it.”
Kansas GOP Chair Danedri Herbert told The Kansas City Star that she heard about the president’s plans to scrap the event through the Republican National Committee.
“That’s all they told me that it was canceled and we’d get more information,” she said. “They are going to do a series of telerallies but I don’t have any information about those.”
Rob Fillion, executive director for the Kansas Republican Party, told Wichita’s CBS affiliate KWCH that “Salina and Kansas are very important to our nation, but there are a lot of other races that are in play.”
Trump being able to speak at “multiple locations at the same time is probably more valuable for his time,” Fillion said.
The White House said the president will “continue connecting directly with Americans nationwide through more than 20 telerallies before election day.”
“Telerallies give him the opportunity to highlight his accomplishments and expand his reach across the country,” the White House added.
Kansas is among several states where Democrats appear to be in striking distance to reclaim a Senate majority and tip the balance of power in Congress, according to polling data.
The results of a recent CNN/SSRS poll published Thursday show Hamilton leading among likely voters at 49 percent to Marshall’s 45 percent. Marshall’s favorability rating among likely voters is only 36 percent to Hamilton’s 41 percent.
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