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, the president has been keeping his focus on states that he won handily two years ago.
Get The Latest News!
Don't miss our top stories and need-to-know news everyday in your inbox.
“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 supergluing gold medallions to the mantel in the Oval Office.”
Obama appeared in suburban Atlanta with that city's former mayor, Keisha Lance Bottoms, who could be the first Black woman elected governor in the United States, as well as Sen. Jon Ossoff, running for reelection and considered a potential future presidential candidate.
“Everywhere you go, it feels like change is in the air,” the former president said.
Even as he stages so many rallies, Trump also already turned to the courts to shape the midterms, directing his Department of Justice to file a lawsuit last week preemptively 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.”
Another closely watched Senate race pits Democrat Abdul El-Sayed against Republican Mike Rogers. Trump has 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, which he denies.
Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, who also 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 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.
The issue was a focal point in the Democratic primary between El-Sayed and Rep. Haley Stevens, whom he narrowly defeated. Stevens has endorsed her former rival, but her fiance Jason Turkish told The Detroit News on Wednesday that he plans to back Rogers because he believes El-Sayed is an antisemite.
Later, Stevens appeared on CNN and said of Turkish’s comments, “Like a households across America, we’re a household divided.”
“I still very much want our Democratic nominee — his name is Abdul — to win this race,” Stevens said.
But she also warned that El-Sayed is at risk of losing many of the Black and Jewish voters who backed her in the primary. She urged him to disavow an ad by Rebellion PAC, an independent left-wing group, that linked U.S. support for Israel with high grocery prices.
El-Sayed said, “I’m committed to the safety of the Jewish community like I’m committed to safety of all communities," and he distanced himself from the ad without addressing its substance, saying it “has nothing to do with our campaign” and it’s “not what I want to be talking about right now."
“He can do the right thing,” Stevens told CNN. “He can disavow these ads and he can reassure these undecided voters who are still left.”
Trump's stops in the closing stretch of the campaign reflect Republicans' defensive posture even as the party's finances — and the president's signature super PAC, MAGA Inc. — have helped sustain candidates.
Trump visited Mississippi on Monday and made another stop in a series of trips to Texas on Tuesday. He 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 Wednesday's 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 from his Mar-a-Lago club in Florida 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.
Husted is being challenged by former Ohio Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown.
Trump also chided his predecessor, slamming Obama for suggesting Trump has spent too much time renovating the White House. Trump said Obama “doesn't understand cleanliness" and things like broken stone exteriors and sidewalks.
“It's more beautiful than it's ever looked," Trump said of the White House.
Obama faced backlash for saying last weekend that Trump’s gilded flourishes to the White House looked like “Saddam Hussein opened a Cheesecake Factory,” and he responded to the controversy Wednesday in Georgia.
“These are not serious people. They don’t have solutions to actual problems,” Obama said of Trump and top Republicans. 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.”
At the same rally, Ossoff focused on Trump increasingly using his office as a profit source for his family business, though the White House has said Trump has ceded control to his sons.
“In Washington and at Mar-a-Lago, it’s a spectacle of grift unprecedented in American history,” he said.
“Never before has so little effort been made to cover up so much corruption,” Ossoff added.
___ Weissert reported from Washington. Barrow reported from Morrow, Georgia. Associated Press writers Jacqueline GaNun in Wyandotte, Michigan, Mike Catalini in Morrisville, Pennsylvania, Jonathan J. Cooper in Phoenix, Mike Householder in Birmingham, Michigan and Michelle L. Price in Washington contributed to this report.
