‘She was a little heavier’: Trump talks about candidate’s weight in final rallies
US President Donald Trump spent one of his final campaign rallies praising a senate candidate’s weight loss, as part of a final sprint to shore up support for the Republican Party ahead of the looming mid-term elections.
Trump spoke for more than two hours at a rally in Dubuque in Iowa, predicting sweeping victories for the GOP, while also offering now-familiar campaign trail beats such as groundless warnings of voter fraud, and commenting on the physical appearance of Republican candidates.
US President Donald Trump onstage with Iowa senate candidate Ashley Hinson. Jacquelyn Martin
In this case, the subject was senate candidate Ashley Hinson’s weight.
“I knew Ashley for a long time, and she was a little bit heavier,” Trump said.
“She knew what she was doing, she knew the weight that was on her. Really, literally the weight, and she knew the importance of what she was doing. And she went out, the old-fashioned way too, not with ‘give me a shot’.”
Trump said Hinson was in “perfect shape”.
“She was great the other way,” he said.
“But she put herself in shape and she did that for you.”
In contrast, he joked, he had “put on a couple of pounds”.
Trump also praised failed Democrat candidate Haley Stevens, who overnight stunned her party by withdrawing her endorsement for stablemate and primaries rival Abdul El-Sayed and backing Republican Mike Rogers as senator for Michigan.
“I don’t know Haley. I’ve never met Haley. But Haley said what few people were willing to say,” Trump said.
“I’d love her to join the Republican Party, actually.”
Trump also baselessly claimed Democrats were perpetrating voter fraud in Minnesota, Ohio, and Alaska, playing up conspiracy theories that have become part of the administration’s playbook despite multiple courts finding no evidence of any election-determining fraud.
Trump pushed unfounded claims of mass voter fraud. Jacquelyn Martin
“There’s tremendous groups of Somalians going into Ohio, and they’re trying to play with the elections, and they’re starting to form their communities here. We don’t want them,” Trump said.
“They’re all over Ohio now, and what they’ve done to Minnesota makes it almost hundreds of thousands of them, and they vote exactly the way they’re told to vote.”
He also lashed out at reports that the Democratic Party in Alaska had found a candidate with the same name as Republican Dan Sullivan to add to the ballot “in order to confuse the public”.
“This is voter fraud at the highest level,” Trump said.
While it’s considered to be dirty politics, “duplicating” a candidate is not an unprecedented situation and has been carried out by both major parties before.
YouGov polling, reported by Forbes, has found that Democratic Senate candidates in both states, which Trump has had an electoral lock on in presidential votes, are very narrowly leading their races.
Senator Roger Marshall speaks in Kansas before Trump’s arrival. Charlie Riedel
Trump had initially intended to end his campaign rallies early in Florida, before speculation he was too ill or tired to make further stops prompted a reversal.
In Kansas, Trump’s aim is to boost Republican Senator Roger Marshall’s re-election campaign in a tight race that has become the most expensive contest in Kansas history.
The outdoor rally was planned for later Sunday local time at the airport in Salina, about 175km west of Topeka, a venue seating at least 2000 people.
Methodist megachurch pastor Adam Hamilton is bidding to become the first Democratic candidate in Kansas to win a Senate race in 94 years.
Democrats have poured $US62 million ($88.2 million) into television and digital ads, according to the ad-tracking firm AdImpact.
Marshall and Republican groups have spent $US43 million ($61.2 million), bringing total ad spending to $US105 million ($149.4 million).
Trump indicated he may make one final pitch to voters at the Washington DC Reflecting Pool, on which he claimed renovations had finally finished after a troubled and lengthy process.
Trump blamed vandals for damage to the pool, but prosecutors found that shoddy repair work had been the cause.
– with Associated Press.
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