While the 2020 Democratic presidential crowd has moved into Detroit for two days of debates, the Republicans are also there to make a big point that the Trump campaign is not ceding Michigan, one of the surprise states that gave President Trump his 2016 victory over Hillary Rodham Clinton.
The Republican National Committee is leading the effort, staffing a “war room” to challenge Democratic debate claims, strategically distributing Trump supporters, and hosting events that highlight the president’s agenda and show the depth of the GOP’s 2020 Election Day ground game.
“As Democrats prepare to take the stage for two more nights of political theater, our team is armed with a fully-equipped rapid response operation and we stand ready to fact-check their socialist claims and highlight their egregious statements and missteps,” said RNC Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel, the former chair of the Michigan Republican Party.
“We made history when we delivered my home state of Michigan for President Trump in 2016, and we’ve been hard at work building and growing our infrastructure so we can do it again in 2020,” she added.
McDaniel was chair of the state party in 2016, the first time a Republican presidential candidate won Michigan in almost 30 years.
Since @realDonaldTrump was elected:
– Michigan added 107,300 jobs
– Michigan added 27,500 manufacturing jobs
– Michigan’s unemployment rate fell from 5.1% to 4.2%President Trump will Keep Michigan Great in 2020!
— Ronna McDaniel (@GOPChairwoman) July 30, 2019
Since taking charge of the party, she has built out its ground operation and a lot of that is in Michigan, which joined Wisconsin and Pennsylvania as the surprise victory states for Trump.
On the ground in Detroit, the RNC plans to engage in “street theater” by placing Trump supporters placed at strategic locations.
McDaniel will also be in Detroit to take on the Democratic presidential candidates and make TV stops on the site of CNN’s debates. She and her team plan to focus on themes key to Michigan voters, including the economy, the new trade deal with Mexico and Canada, and manufacturing.
This week in Lansing, the “Trump Victory Leadership Initiative Training” took place and focused on how to highlight the division in the Democratic presidential field.
Today, McDaniel is participating in a business event focused on the booming economy and Democratic criticism of it.
Democrat presidential candidates are in Michigan where they will try and sell their radical agenda of a government takeover of health care. Michiganders don’t want that.
According to a recent poll, the majority of Michiganders oppose the elimination of private health insurance.
— Ronna McDaniel (@GOPChairwoman) July 29, 2019
Tomorrow, GOP surrogates are hosting an event featuring female business owners who are expected to highlight how women have benefited from the economy.
Back in Washington, the RNC war room will be on high alert, its rapid response and research teams feeding the media and surrogates with fact checking information, officials said.
Ditto for the social media and digital team, which will be pushing out tweets from @GOP and @GOPChairwoman and @RNCResearch channels, including fact checks, video clips, and video compilations.
Partly because it is the home state of McDaniel and Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, the former Michigan GOP chairwoman from 1996 to 2000, the RNC is well-established there. It has had a state director in place since earlier this year and has ground operations there since before the 2016 election. During a week of training in July, Trump Victory, the joint RNC-Trump campaign operation, held over 20 sessions to show 300 new volunteers how to register voters.
