Trump will hold a rally in New Hampshire on Saturday
The rally is scheduled to take place at Portsmouth International Airport at 8 p.m. ET, and “there will be wide access to hand sanitizers, and all attendees will be provided with a face mask that they are strongly encouraged to wear,” the campaign said in a statement.
The event will take place in an airplane at Portsmouth International Airport, campaign sources told CNN. Part of the pile will be inside the hangar and, depending on the size of the pile, will spill onto the asphalt outside, the source said.
“We look forward to so many patriotic patriots coming to the rally and celebrating America, the largest country in world history,” Trump 2020 Secretary of State Hogan Gidley said in a statement.
Retired Brig. General Don Bolduc, a Republican candidate for the U.S. Senate in the state, told CNN on Sunday night that he plans to attend the Trump event as he socially distances himself and “takes appropriate security precautions with everyone else.”
“We still have to get our economy moving forward and the leaders going out and taking the risk. If you’re going to be a leader, you have to take the risk,” he said. “And there you have to deliver your message and you have to gather the country and move forward.”
New Hampshire Democratic Party President Ray Buckley, however, said in a statement Sunday, “Trump is getting involved in a political rally that will only further highlight the chaos it has caused.”
“Trump’s response to the COVID-19 crisis was chaotic and terribly inappropriate, resulting in thousands of Granite Standards contracting the virus and losing hundreds of lives, causing significant damage to our state’s economy,” Buckley said.
In the end, the rally was attended by less than 6,200 people who were supposed to signal Trump’s return to the campaign. The low turnout was blamed on strong responses from the media and “radical protesters” about convening such a large crowd during the pandemic.
Trump has long viewed rallies as a way out where he can connect with his supporters in a way he can’t when he’s in Washington, DC, and with the wrong numbers polls his non-existence out of a campaign trail.
Still, Dr. Jonathan Reiner, who was an adviser to the White House medical team under President George W. Bush, said Thursday night that Trump is “clearly flirting with disaster” by holding rallies and attending events without wearing a mask.
Reiner said that, due to the age and weight of the president, “he probably has almost a 20% chance of dying if he becomes infected with the virus.”
EXPLANATION: The title and story have been updated to reflect that the rally will take place in the plane’s hangar, and it is crowded outside.
CNN’s Jeremy Diamond contributed to this report.
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