With just 23 days left until election day and voters already casting ballots, former President Trump is returning to California on Saturday for a rally in the Coachella Valley.
The event is scheduled to take place at 5 p.m. on a polo field at Calhoun Ranch, located just outside the city of Coachella, but supporters lined up hours earlier in the scorching desert heat to see the former president. They sought shade in the few spots they could and large tanks of ice quickly emptied as attendees grabbed fistfuls of cubes to put under their hats or fill water bottles.
“Welcome to Trumpchella!” said state GOP chairwoman Jessica Millan Patterson, one of the warm-up speakers for the former president.
Trump’s visit to the home state of his opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris, offers him a chance to bash the liberal policies of the Bay Area native as well as California itself — one of his favorite refrains on the campaign trail.
And the Coachella Valley, home to a thriving agricultural industry and a large population of Latino farmworkers, provides a backdrop for Trump to highlight the region’s water and agricultural needs, as well as immigration. Latinos comprise almost 98% of Coachella, according to the U.S. Census.
Rep. Raul Ruiz (D-Coachella) said the “Coachella Valley is known for being a presidential playground,” noting that Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) campaigned in the valley, former President Obama came to golf and Presidents Ford and Eisenhower retired in the region. Still, he called Trump’s decision to visit Coachella “baffling.”
“We are familiar with having presidents come and leave a mark here and we respect and love them… but ex-President Trump is different,” Ruiz said on a call from Coachella Valley, where he was spending the day talking to reporters. “There doesn’t seem to be a lot of respect for the demographics that live here — not just in his vile rhetoric but also in his policies.”
The rally venue is located just outside the 41st Congressional District, where Democrat Will Rollins, a former federal prosecutor, is challenging Republican Rep. Ken Calvert, who is expected to attend the rally. The race will be critical in determining which party wins control of Congress.
Calvert, who was endorsed by Trump in the 2022 congressional election, voted against certifying the 2020 election results in Arizona and Pennsylvania though he acknowledged that Democrat Joe Biden won the presidency.
Mary and Pete Venegas drove more than an hour from their Hemet home to see Trump, whom they both plan to vote for for the first time in November.
Mary Venegas, a former Democrat who sat out the 2020 election because she was unenthusiastic about Biden, said Trump deserves “a second chance.” Wearing a red Trump T-shirt, she said she is now a registered Republican.
“He made me do it,” Mary Venegas said, laughing, as she poked her husband, who runs a construction and landscaping business and said he supports Trump because of his business acumen.
The visit marks Trump’s second trip to the Golden State in a month, after making a stop to talk to reporters at his Rancho Palos Verdes golf course in September sandwiched between two high-dollar fundraisers in Beverly Hills and the Bay Area.
Trump has announced that he will hold an Oct. 27 rally at Madison Square Garden in New York, another deeply Democratic state. California GOP strategists granted anonymity to discuss the former president’s motivation included the notion that he wanted to increase his share of the popular vote — and despite California’s Democratic tilt, it is home to more than 5 million registered Republicans.
At Saturday’s rally, mentions of Harris and Gov. Gavin Newsom from Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco, who was a delegate at the Republican National Committee, drew boos from the audience.
“The downfall of public safety in California began over a decade ago with Gavin Newsom’s policies, and ideas under the watch of Atty. Gen. Kamala Harris,” Bianco said, mentioning Proposition 47, a state ballot that reduced certain thefts and crimes to misdemeanors.
Though Proposition 47 was put in place under Harris’ watch, she declined to wade into the political debate as attorney general. California voters will decide whether to roll back some of the 2014 measure this year when voting on Proposition 36.
Trump held a rally in Aurora, Colo., on Friday — a state he lost by more than 13 points in 2002. He has falsely claimed that Aurora had been taken over by Venezuelan gang members. He also paid a visit Friday night to Nevada.
On Thursday, while speaking at the Detroit Economic Club, he insulted the city and warned that it foreshadowed what would happen to the nation if Harris is elected president.
“Our whole country will end up being like Detroit if she’s elected president,” Trump said. “We’re not going to let her do that to this country. We’re not gonna let it happen.”
Democrats in Michigan — one of the states likely to determine which party wins the White House — were apoplectic.
“Detroit is the epitome of ‘grit,’ defined by winners willing to get their hands dirty to build up their city and create their communities — something Donald Trump could never understand,” Gov. Gretchen Whitmer wrote on X, the social media site formerly known as Twitter. “So keep Detroit out of your mouth. And you better believe Detroiters won’t forget this in November.”
Republicans from the state were stunned by Trump’s remarks as well.
“Michiganders haven’t been this proud of the city of Detroit since Henry Ford put the world on wheels. The Lions and Tigers are flying high, the city has come back to life, and in comes Donald Trump to crap all over that progress,” said an exasperated GOP strategist who reached out to a Times reporter after hearing the remarks, and was granted anonymity to speak candidly. “I think he shouldn’t be surprised when they reward his comments by giving Kamala Harris their votes. And it won’t just be Detroit residents. It will be hundreds of thousands of voters who are deeply proud of their city.”
Harris said Trump’s remarks about Detroit represent a trend.
“My opponent, Donald Trump, yet again, has trashed another great American city when he was in Detroit, which is just a further piece of evidence on a very long list of why he is unfit to be President of the United States,” Harris told reporters on Thursday in Las Vegas.
Trump similarly criticized Milwaukee in a meeting with House Republicans shortly before the Republican National Convention was held there, in the battleground state of Wisconsin, earlier this year. He has also disparaged Philadelphia and Atlanta, both of which are in states that will determine which party wins the White House.
