Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump will hold a campaign rally in Naples, Florida this evening, his first event of the week.
Trump will speak from the Collier County Fairgrounds beginning at 6:00 p.m. Eastern Time. The event can be viewed in the embedded YouTube player via Right Side Broadcasting.
It makes sense that Trump is headed to Florida on Sunday, as this is a state that he absolutely needs to secure in order to win the election. With the current electoral map, it simply is not possible for Trump to reach 270 electoral votes without Florida.
Some within Trump’s party, though, are surprised to see him in Collier County, an extremely Republican part of the state where Mitt Romney won in 2012 with 65 percent of the vote. It might make more sense to visit a county like Duval or Hillsborough, where the results in 2012 were tighter.
“This close to the general election, it’s unbelievable that he’s in Collier County,” Collier County GOP Chairman Mike Lyster told the Naples Daily News. “But I’m delighted to have him.”
In fact, Trump has made many campaign stops recently that have had some within his own party asking questions. For example, the Republican candidate recently held several rallies in Pennsylvania, a state that has not voted for a Republican since 1988 and where Hillary Clinton leads Trump by up to 10 points in virtually every single poll.
But in order to hit 270 electoral votes, Trump not only needs to win battleground states like Florida, North Carolina and Ohio; he also needs to pick off a state that’s currently favoring Hillary Clinton, and clearly the Trump campaign is hoping Pennsylvania will be that state. Their other option appears to be Virginia, where Trump has also been holding rallies recently but where Clinton again holds a substantial lead.
This weekend, Trump began to outline what he will do during his first 100 days in office, including imposing term limits on Congress and cutting back on federal regulations. However, this was a bit overshadowed by the fact that Trump, while veering off script, threatened to sue all 11 women who have accused him of sexual assault.