As the 2024 U.S. presidential race heads into the final stretch, the Republican nominee announced Wednesday that he will be in Texas on the same day this week as his Democratic challenger.
Former President Donald Trump is scheduled to be in Austin on Friday, where he will discuss border security and immigrant crime at a 12:30 p.m. press conference at a private jet terminal in East Austin, his campaign said.
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News of Trump’s visit comes a day after Vice President Kamala Harris announced that she would hold a rally in Houston on Friday with U.S. Rep. Colin Allred, who is running for the U.S. Senate. The location of Harris’ rally has yet to be announced, but it is slated to take place between 3 and 8 p.m. Friday, according to a Democratic National Committee event page.
This will be Trump’s first trip to Austin since May 2022, when he spoke at the Austin Convention Center as a part of the American Freedom Tour.
After Trump’s press conference, he is scheduled to appear on “The Joe Rogan Experience” podcast. According to Politico, Rogan and Trump have a complicated relationship and this would be Trump’s first appearance on the entertainer’s show.
Trump has frequently criticized both Harris and President Joe Biden’s policies on immigration and border security and said that communities are “being ravaged by migrant crime.”
On Harris’ first visit to the southern border in Arizona last month, she said that her administration would pursue more severe criminal charges against immigrants who repeatedly reenter the country unlawfully and will be barred from reentering for five years.
Meanwhile, Trump said he would restore the Remain in Mexico program, which required asylum seekers to wait in Mexico until their immigration court date. Also, he said he plans to conduct mass deportations of undocumented immigrants, a promise he made during his first administration that was not fulfilled.
Public polling has consistently shown Harris trailing Trump by several percentage points in Texas. No Democratic presidential nominee has carried the state since Jimmy Carter in 1976.
According to FiveThirtyEight’s rolling polls data, which was updated Wednesday, Trump is leading in Texas by 6.6 percentage points.
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Jasper Scherer contributed to this report.