CHILLICOTHE, Ohio (AP) — Georgia Democrats rallied with former President Barack Obama Wednesday night, at the same time President Donald Trump was in Ohio attempting to energize his base, as both parties began crystallizing their closing messages ahead of next week's midterm elections.
Trump has been on a weekslong sprint around the country doing 20-plus rallies this month alone while packing upcoming days with more travel. But as Americans confront record fuel prices, rising costs and an unpopular war in Iran, Trump has been keeping his focus on states that he won handily two years ago.
“If you can get out to vote,” Trump told a raucous crowd in Chillicothe, south of Columbus, Ohio’s capital, “we’re going to have a tremendous victory.”
The last Democratic president to serve two terms, Obama is increasingly campaigning for his party and gleefully acting as a foil to Trump, including criticizing the Republican for spending too much time leading White House renovations and for becoming wealthier while in office.
He said Trump is “spending time super-gluing gold medallions to the mantel in the Oval Office.”
Obama appeared in suburban Atlanta with that city's former mayor, Keisha Lance Bottoms, who is seeking to become the first Black woman elected governor in the United States, as well as Sen. Jon Ossoff, who is running for reelection and is considered a potential future presidential candidate.
“Everywhere you go, it feels like change is in the air,” Obama said.
Obama — who has faced backlash for saying last weekend that Trump's gilded flourishes to the White House looked like “Saddam Hussein opened a Cheesecake Factory" — responded to the controversy on Wednesday.
“These are not serious people. They don’t have solutions to actual problems,” Obama said. He also noted, “I lived at Chuck E. Cheese and California Pizza Kitchen and the Cheesecake Factory — that was my jam for about a decade.”
Ossoff focused on the president increasingly using his office as a profit source for the Trump Organization, though the White House has said Trump has ceded control of the family business to his sons since returning to office.
“In Washington and at Mar-a-Lago, it’s a spectacle of grift unprecedented in American history,” he said, referring to Trump's estate in Florida.
“Never before has so little effort been made to cover up so much corruption,” Ossoff added.
Trump says Alaska Democrat should be prosecuted
Even as he stages so many rallies, the president also already turned to the courts, directing his Department of Justice to file a lawsuit last week pre-emptively contesting the outcome of Alaska's Senate race should Democratic challenger Mary Peltola win it.
That's due to the presence of a second candidate with the same name as Republican incumbent Sen. Dan Sullivan.
Speaking to reporters as he boarded Air Force One to fly to Ohio, Trump called on Peltola to drop out of the race and warned she could face prosecution.
His comments followed a New York Times report that Peltola’s campaign was involved in an effort to recruit the second Dan Sullivan, which Trump called “voter fraud at the highest level," adding, “It turned out it was a scheme by the Democrats. That’s what they do best: they cheat." Peltola’s campaign said in a statement that it “has no involvement with either Sullivan campaign.”
Trump sticks mostly to red states in pre-midterm blitz
The president's stops in the closing stretch of the campaign reflect Republicans' defensive posture as the party's finances — and the president's signature super PAC, MAGA Inc. — have helped sustain candidates. He visited Mississippi on Monday and made another stop in a series of trips to Texas on Tuesday, and plans to be in South Carolina, Florida, Kansas and Iowa in the coming days.
Going to so many deeply red states hasn't always gone smoothly.
Early in his speech, Trump was interrupted by a protester shouting about the late, disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein and made some rare remarks on his onetime friend, saying he'd expelled Epstein out of Mar-a-Lago decades ago.
“That was a great thing I did, I must tell you,” Trump said, adding, “I threw Jeffrey Epstein the hell out of Mar-a-Lago.” The president then pivoted immediately into praising Ohio Sen. Jon Husted’s physique.
Trump has been lavishly praising Republicans' physical appearances on the trail, often diverting into tangents about Husted — who played football in college — no matter where he's campaigning.
Trump is hoping to help Husted top former Ohio Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown.
As he often does during campaign rallies, Trump also repeated false claims that he won the 2020 presidential election he lost to Democratic President Joe Biden, noting, "To become a three-time winner of the presidency, I have not been doing this very long. Let’s face it.”
The president also chided his predecessor, slamming Obama for suggesting Trump has spent too much time renovating the White House. Trump said that Obama “doesn't understand cleanliness" and things like broken stone exteriors and sidewalks.
“It's more beautiful than it's ever looked," Trump said.
Accusations of antisemitism hang over Michigan Senate race
In addition to Georgia and Ohio, another closely watched Senate race pits Democrat Abdul El-Sayed against Republican Mike Rogers. Trump has lately intensified his anti-Muslim rhetoric against El-Sayed, who on Wednesday told a crowd at an event in Wyandotte, outside Detroit, “They want to point to me and my name. They’re doing this because they’re trying to distract us."
“Michiganders are big-hearted. We’re open-minded. We don’t care as much how you pray; rather, we care what you pray for," El-Sayed said.
Republicans have argued El-Sayed is antisemitic. Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, who is frequently mentioned as a 2028 presidential candidate, campaigned with Rogers in Birmingham, Michigan, at an event hosted by the Republican Jewish Coalition. Cruz said that antisemitism is “a poison that is ripping the country apart” and said that the Democratic Party was being taken over by “self-proclaimed communists and Islamists.”
The event featured several voters who described themselves as lifelong Democrats voting Republican for the first time because of El-Sayed's comments last year after a man attacked a synagogue in a Detroit suburb. El-Sayed tied the attack to Israel's actions in the Middle East, saying at the time that “hurt people hurt people." He later apologized for the statement, and has denounced antisemitism.
The issue was a focal point in the Democratic primary between El-Sayed and U.S. Rep. Haley Stevens, whom he narrowly defeated. Stevens has endorsed her former rival, but her fiancé Jason Turkish told The Detroit News on Wednesday that he plans to back Rogers because he believes El-Sayed is an antisemite.
___ Weissert reported from Washington. Catalini reported from Morrisville, Pennsylvania. Associated Press writers Jacqueline GaNun in Wyandotte, Michigan, Bill Barrow in Morrow, Georgia, Jonathan J. Cooper in Phoenix, and Mike Householder in Birmingham, Michigan, and Michelle L. Price and AP Diplomatic Writer Matthew Lee in Washington contributed to this report.
