The rallies are back on. Less than a day after the Republican National Committee called off President Donald Trump's final-weekend rallies in Kansas and Iowa, the White House reversed course on Friday: Trump will hold both rallies back to back on Sunday, on top of nearly 20 tele-rallies planned for the closing days of the midterm campaign. "Rallies are BACK ON!" a White House official said on Friday. "President Trump loves his supporters, and in addition to nearly 20 tele-rallies, he will hold back-to-back rallies in Kansas and Iowa on Sunday."
The whiplash began on Thursday evening, when the RNC announced that the previously planned in-person rallies in those states "will no longer take place as scheduled" — Saturday's rally in Salina, Kansas, for Sen. Roger Marshall, and Sunday's at the Five Flags Event Center in Dubuque, Iowa, for Ashley Hinson's Senate bid. The committee said Republicans were "in a strong position" in both states, and the Dubuque rally was "moved to a huge tele-rally." In their place, Trump would spend a "72-hour sprint" doing rallies by phone across nearly 20 states. Tele-rallies, RNC Chairman Joe Gruters said, "can reach more voters in the limited time left before polls close," and the sprint would be "a huge boost in the closing days."
But the explanation did not settle the question — it started a different one. Observers and commentators suggested the real reason was the schedule itself: that the nonstop pace had worn the 80-year-old president down. The Associated Press counted 25 Trump rallies in October alone, short of a goal he had once placed north of 30, and noted signs that the travel and the long speeches had caught up with him. A campaign strategist with Republican Senate leadership told the AP there was "widespread curiosity" about why the schedule was changing. On Monday in Corinth, Mississippi, Trump himself — his voice raspy — told the crowd: "God didn't make your vocal cords to do a rally every day." Dan Pfeiffer, a former Obama White House communications director, asked whether Trump was "quiet quitting" the midterms, and Michigan Democratic Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed said the president had "given up."
Trump met the suggestion head-on on Thursday. Asked by a reporter whether he had cancelled Kansas because he was "sick of travel," he bristled. "You're sick to ask that question. You are sick," he said. "I don't feel I have to go to Kansas. … You've been following me for two weeks. I feel perfect. You are disgusting. Put yourself in shape. You look like hell." The Kansas rally was off, he said, because Marshall is "doing very well": "We're going to do a tele rally for him instead." On Friday morning, on Kansas City's KCMO radio, he said again that he "would imagine" Marshall is in "good shape."
His side's account of Friday's reversal is scheduling, not stamina. A source familiar with the plans told CBS News the rallies "were rearranged for scheduling purposes to accommodate dozens of additional tele-rallies that were recently added to the President's schedule." "No one works harder, fights harder, or loves the American people more than President Donald J. Trump!" the source added. Trump kept his Friday schedule too, flying to Daytona Beach, Florida, for an evening rally there.
The stakes explain why the reversal came so fast. Both states hold Senate races Republicans once expected to bank and now cannot take for granted. In Kansas, Marshall faces Democrat Adam Hamilton in what CBS News calls an unexpectedly tight race in a state Trump carried by 16 points in 2024; in Iowa, Hinson, Rep. Zach Nunn and other Republicans are in close fights of their own. The midterms on Tuesday could cost the GOP control of Congress, and nearly 45 million Americans have already voted. For voters in Kansas and Iowa, the flip means the president himself will make the closing argument in person after all — twice in one day, four days after his party said he did not need to come at all.
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