President Trump came off Air Force One at Joint Base Andrews on Thursday evening, straight from a rally in Rock Hill, South Carolina, and a Reuters reporter put it to him that he had cancelled Saturday's trip to Kansas because he was sick of travel. The president's answer made his case for him: he pointed to the schedule he has just worked. "You've been following me for two weeks," he told the reporters gathered on the tarmac. "I feel perfect."
The question was about the Salina rally — the Saturday appearance for Senator Roger Marshall that had been called off earlier in the day. Asked whether his not going to Kansas had anything to do with being sick of travel, Trump did not hide his shock at the suggestion. "You're sick to ask that question. You are sick," he said. "I don't feel I have to go to Kansas. I feel perfect. You are disgusting. Put yourself in shape. You look like hell!"
The cancellation itself had a stated reason before Trump ever reached the tarmac. The White House says demand for the president's time has outpaced his travel schedule in the final days before the midterms, and that he will connect with voters through more than 20 tele-rallies before Election Day instead — a format one official said lets him "hit EVERYWHERE with everything tightening," adding that every candidate wanted the president in their district: "We hadn't even left Ohio and they were asking us to come back." Tele-rallies are being lined up across Texas, Kansas, Iowa, New York, Pennsylvania and Michigan.
Trump gave his own reason, and it was not fatigue. "I'm not going to Kansas because he's doing very well," he said of Marshall. "I'm going to do a tele-rally. Tomorrow, I'm doing Florida." In other words, the Kansas seat does not need him in person, the tele-rally still puts him in front of Kansas voters, and the road goes on — Florida on Friday, in a closing run that has kept him in front of crowd after crowd for two straight weeks. That record, delivered on the tarmac by a president who had just flown in from one rally and was heading out to another, was his whole answer to the idea that travel had worn him down; speculation about his Saturday Halloween party at Mar-a-Lago got no encouragement from him.
Marshall can use the help the tele-rally brings. A poll released on Thursday put his Democratic challenger, Adam Hamilton, ahead 49 to 45 — within the margin of error, but in a state where Democrats have not won a Senate race since 1932, and where Trump himself carried the vote by more than 16 points two years ago. A second Trump trip to Kansas in a fortnight — he campaigned with Marshall at Park City on October 19 — became a phone call instead. The president's position is simple: the work is the evidence, and on Thursday evening the work was still going.
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