WASHINGTON – President Donald Trump makes his second trip this week to a crucial battleground state, traveling Thursday to Wisconsin as polls show him losing ground to former Vice President Joe Biden in this fall’s election.
Trump is heading to the northeastern part of the Badger State, where he is set to tour Fincantieri Marinette Marine. The shipbuilder recently was awarded a $5.5 billion federal contract to build up guided missile frigates for the Navy, a deal that will keep the company’s employees working for the next two decades and lead to the hiring of about 1,000 new workers.
Trump also will stop in Green Bay, where he is scheduled to tape a town hall meeting with Fox News host Sean Hannity.
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Though not an official campaign trip, the events will give Trump an opportunity to appear before voters in a state that could be pivotal in deciding the November election.
The trip – Trump’s first to Wisconsin since January – comes just two days after Vice President Mike Pence made a pair of appearances in the state to court evangelical voters.
Both Trump and Biden hope to win Wisconsin this November after Trump narrowly carried the state four years ago, handing it to Republicans for the first time in years.
Trump won Wisconsin by less than a percentage point in 2016, a margin that helped give him an edge in the Electoral College and propelled him to the presidency. But a Marquette University Law School Poll released Wednesday showed Biden with an eight-point lead in this year’s presidential contest.
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Nationwide, the political landscape appears even more bleak for the president.
A New York Times/Siena College poll released Wednesday shows Trump trailing Biden by 14 points, the former vice president’s largest lead yet in any of the dozen national polls taken this month.
Trump is trying to regain his footing in the face of discouraging poll numbers and an underwhelming political rally last Saturday that found him speaking to a smaller-than-expected crowd in a half-empty arena in Tulsa, Oklahoma.
Trump traveled Tuesday to the swing state of Arizona, where he surveyed a section of border wall along the U.S.-Mexico border and fired up a crowd of young people at a campaign-like rally in a megachurch in Phoenix.
Trump also has made recent stops at other swing states, including Michigan and Pennsylvania, to showcase U.S. companies.
Contributing: Haley BeMiller of Green Bay Press-Gazette and Bill Glauber of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
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