Following President Donald Trump’s recent impeachment by the House, he’s keeping his attention on a mad dash to the finish line of the 2020 presidential election, apparently. This week, shortly before Christmas, his campaign abruptly announced its first 2020 rally, which is set for Toledo, Ohio, on January 9. Some observers consider Ohio to be a swing state following Trump’s 2016 victory over Hillary Clinton in the state with a leading margin of about eight percent. The sparse polling that’s been conducted in the state ahead of 2020 has former Vice President and Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden leading Trump in a hypothetical general election match-up, which matches up with Trump’s consistent losing margins in similar national-level head-to-head polling.
In their announcement, the Trump campaign claimed that Ohio is doing great thanks to Trump’s actions while in office, although in reality, trends of job creation are continuing that were established well before Trump took office and he’s actively threatening Ohioans’ livelihoods with his ongoing trade wars.
The campaign’s chief operating officer Michael Glassner claimed:
‘Ohio is booming thanks to President Trump and jobs are coming back to the state. Since President Trump’s election, Ohio has added 94,700 new jobs, including 14,700 manufacturing jobs. President Trump is delivering on his promises, and he looks forward to celebrating those successes with the great men and women of Ohio.’
And in what’s effectively a direct rebuttal to that, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce — which is not exactly some kind of rogue organization — notes that a full 1.5 million jobs in Ohio are dependent upon global trade, and in addition, Trump’s punitive import taxes against China, which they have retaliated against with their own import taxes on U.S. goods, threaten $3.2 billion worth of exports from Ohio alone.
The Chamber of Commerce says there’s a chance for “very significant damage” from the trade war, and the situation gets worse elsewhere in the U.S. States across the country are recorded as facing possible “very significant damage,” and the best that Trump has come up with in response is a struggle to even acknowledge that the Americans doing the importing pay the taxes when he slaps tariffs on goods from China and other countries. The Trump administration recently claimed a “phase one” trade deal had been reached between the administration and China, but that’s yet to translate into economic realignment.
Yet, Trump seems totally undeterred anyway. His newly announced January rally will take place the same week that Congress returns following their Christmas break, at which time Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) has indicated that a window will open for the approval of rules for Trump’s impeachment trial. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) has delayed transmitting the approved impeachment case to the Senate until she and her colleagues can examine the trial rules that the Senate comes up with, considering the Republican majority’s leaders have explicitly said they will not be impartial.
Trump and his allies have either suggested or outright claimed that the delay is illegal, but there’s no actual evidence for that. Democratic investigators have very publicly made their case against the president for his Ukraine bribery attempt.
