The President of the United States, Donald Trump, has decided to cancel the in-person campaign events he had scheduled for this weekend in Kansas and Iowa, planned as part of the final sprint toward the midterm elections ('midterms') next Tuesday, November 3. Instead of these physical rallies, the president will focus on participating only in virtual campaign events.
According to the information released by the Republican National Committee (RNC), Trump will concentrate the final stretch of his campaign on more than twenty 'tele-rallies', with the aim of expanding his presence as much as possible in states such as Texas, New York, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Montana and South Carolina.
The president of the RNC, Joe Gruters, has defended this change of schedule as a way to contact the largest possible number of voters in this "72-hour race against the clock", and has attributed the modification to the "solid position" that, he claims, Republican candidates maintain in both states. "Voters across the country want to hear from President Trump before Election Day," he stressed.
The event planned in Kansas was to be held this Saturday and would have meant Trump's second visit to the state in the current election cycle, after the rally on October 19 in support of conservative Senator Roger Marshall. The senator faces a tight battle for reelection against Democratic challenger Adam Hamilton.
The shift toward an exclusively remote format comes at a time when several Republican candidates in contested districts have tried to distance themselves from the president's figure, after the drop in his approval ratings associated with the rise in fuel prices caused by the war with Iran.