Donald Trump's campaign is quite literally nowhere to be seen in the critical swing states that will decide the election this fall.
As Joe Biden builds out campaign infrastructure in key battleground states, report after report shows that Trump's effort is invisible.
Take Michigan, for example. Biden reclaimed the state by a small 3-point margin in 2020 after Trump flipped it by less than a point four years earlier. Its 15 electoral votes will once again be up for grabs this year, which is why Biden's team just announced plans to open 30 offices throughout the state by mid-April, including in Detroit, Grand Rapids, and Marquette.
So where's Trump? When the Detroit News' Greg Mauger asked the Trump campaign to confirm Democrats' claim that the GOP's presumptive nominee had "yet to open a single campaign office" in the state, a spokesperson, Chris LaCivita, sputtered about polling and insisted he wouldn't "shar[e] our strategy with Democrats through the media."
A more honest take came from state GOP chair Pete Hoekstra, who admitted to the Associated Press' Steve Peoples that the Republican presence in Michigan was a "skeleton."
The situation is the same in other major states. In Pennsylvania, another state that ping-ponged from Trump to Biden, the Biden campaign just announced the opening of 14 offices, from Pittsburgh to Philadelphia. But Lindsay Walker of the Morning Call reports that it's "unclear" whether Trump plans to follow suit in pursuit of the state's 19 electoral votes.
Once again, though, a non-answer from LaCivita offers more clarity. Republicans, he said, "do not feel obligated however to discuss the specifics of our strategy, timing and tactics with members of the News Media." That's a good approach to take if you have no strategy to discuss.
Then there's North Carolina, a state that Trump won twice by small margins but that Biden is very much contesting. The Biden team just unveiled 10 offices throughout the state, with headquarters in the capital city of Raleigh. You can anticipate what's coming next.
"It's not clear where or when the Trump team will open field offices throughout North Carolina," reports Axios' Zachery Eanes. LaCivita, meanwhile, appears to have copied and pasted the same response he offered to the Detroit News, insisting that Republicans "have the message, the operation, and the money to propel President Trump to victory on November 5."
The one thing they don't seem to have, though, is a single campaign office. And not just in these three states, but maybe anywhere at all.
Across the country, the Biden campaign and its partners say they've stood up more than 100 offices, according to a new report from ABC News. But Trump's squad? It seems that LaCivita's gotten a bit tuckered out.
"A Trump campaign spokesperson did not respond on Tuesday to questions about their amount of field offices."
Pretty sure we know exactly what that means.
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