Ahead of Trump rally, Emmer confident in security and party’s chances of making Minnesota red

Former President Donald Trump and his recent pick for Vice President — JD Vance — will be in Minnesota Saturday for a campaign event. Minnesota's Trump campaign chair Tom Emmer represents Minnesota 6th Congressional District, where the Republican rally will be held.

The Congressman spoke to All Things Considered host Tom Crann ahead of the event about security, Kamala Harris, the Freedom Fund, inflation and the party’s chances at turning Minnesota red.

This transcript has been edited lightly for clarity. Click on the audio player above to hear the full interview.

Are you confident the Secret Service and the Minnesota law enforcement working with them will keep this event secure?

Oh, I absolutely am. Butler was a huge wake-up call. There’s a lot of questions that need to be answered. You know, the Secret Service has “zero fail mission.” It just isn't enough to say, “Oh, that’s on me. It’s my fault. I’m sorry.”

We need to get all kinds of answers and make sure it never happens again. But I think what you’re going to see going forward, no matter what campaign it is, the security’s going to be, I think, much different. They’ll have more of it.

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And by the way, I’m a huge fan of Minnesota law enforcement. I think they do it best, so I think the event Saturday is going to be very safe and secure. And Americans — it doesn't matter what your political persuasion is — Americans don’t believe that we should have that type of violence in our political activity. I think people will do a good job on Saturday.

We’ve been hearing about energy when it comes to young people and energy online — that doesn't always translate into votes, I know, but the campaign has raised $100 million since Sunday. Has this changed the race?

No, not at all. I mean, you’re gonna remember Kamala ran for president before. It was much the same experience. When she started running the last time, all kinds of excitement. She’s this great thing. All this money came in.

And you might remember that as soon as she started talking and she was answering questions, her numbers tanked. The money disappeared. She was somewhere between 1 and 3 percent. And quite frankly, it hasn’t changed.

Kamala Harris co-owns the failures of the Biden administration. You might remember when Minneapolis was in flames and businesses were in ruins. She encouraged and enabled rioters.

If Joe Biden isn’t fit to run for president, she’s not. She’s been covering up his condition for the last three and a half years. And by the way, people should remember that Kamala Harris encouraged her supporters to donate to the Minnesota Freedom Fund to release people that should have stayed behind bars.

We have two awful examples: Sean Tillman, a repeat felon, shot and killed a man in St. Paul after being released from jail when his bail was posted by the Kamala Harris-supported Minnesota Freedom Fund.

George Howard is another one — shot and killed a man in a road rage incident following his release from jail after his bail was posted by Kamala Harris’s Minnesota Freedom Fund. So she’s not qualified to be president. I think America, Americans will see that rather shortly.

We have to add a little context here. Congressman, you’re referring there to a tweet that the Vice President did indeed send out in 2020, urging support for posting bail for protesters at the time. But according toreporting by Matt Sepic, the Vice President didn’t spring anyone from prison. You are right that some people who’ve been bailed out by that organization did go on to commit crimes. And that’s something we’re following in our reporting.

I have to agree to disagree on that one because she actually supported this fund, which did spring these people from jail, and it’s splitting hairs to say somehow that she is not responsible for her actions. These are rioters and they’re murderers, obviously. So people can make up their own mind.

Now I want to talk about an issue that comes up over and over: inflation. You’ve blamed it on the current administration. The economy and inflation seems to be a top issue for a lot of voters. Inflation did spike and then the rate has settled back down. But what is in Donald Trump’s plan to keep it stable and to even lower prices if that’s possible?

You know what, Tom, three and a half years under Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, we’ve had 20 percent inflation. The people of Minnesota are paying 1,000 bucks more a month for what they were paying for before they took office.

Kamala Harris was the last vote on the $1.9 trillion spending bill called the Inflation Reduction Act that started this whole process. You get gas that’s up by 55.3 percent, you’ve got groceries that are up by over 20 percent. Rent is up by over 20 percent. And that is a direct result of the failed policies of the Biden-Harris administration.

Let me ask, though, what is the Trump campaign’s approach to dealing with inflation? What will they do for Minnesotans because prices indeed are higher than they were four years ago.

Yeah, and wages are lower. You remember under the Trump economy before the pandemic hit. It was the best economy that we’ve had in any recent history. We unleashed American energy independence, we allowed people to keep more of their money in their own pockets.

So they were creating new opportunities and growing our economy. That’s what we have to get back to — we’ve got to get back to people actually growing the greatest economy on the face of the planet, so that there’s opportunity for everyone. And that’s not been happening under this administration.

They’ve been on a jihad against the energy industry. They’ve left the border wide open for whatever reason. And frankly, their lack of a definitive foreign policy has allowed all kinds of fires to start around the world.

It doesn’t matter how others want to put it in context. People understand that they were better four years ago than they are today. And they don’t need another four years of Kamala Harris.

Republicans seemed confident that Donald Trump could turn Minnesota red on the electoral map in 2024 on election night, and that would be for the first time in 52 years. What are you seeing that makes you confident of that?

Well, I’m seeing a Minnesota that is no different than other states across the country, with that inflation that we just talked about, the experience people feel when they’re going into the grocery store.

And what you have Kamala Harris now telling is that, “Oh, we’ve done wonderful things for you.” They just aren’t listening to Main Street. And that’s the case in Minnesota.

I think Donald Trump has a great chance of winning Minnesota in November because people recognize the choice is pretty easy. There’s a choice of opportunity, or there’s a choice to go down the same road that’s been failing us for the last three and a half years. I think they’re going to choose Donald Trump.

Trump lost in 2020. And then we talked on election night in 2022. In the midterms, Republicans didn’t do as well as expected, Democrats came within a few seats of taking back the House. Just last year, there’s evidence Trump torpedoed your own bid for House Speaker and he called you a globalist RINO. So why are you so enthusiastic about this man, this former president now?

Well, first, let’s go back to that 2022 election. You said the Democrats came close to the majority. Republicans won the majority in 2022. We won in 2020, when we were predicted to lose 24 seats, we won 15. We had 85 swing seats out of the 435 in Congress under the last decade’s map.

A swing seats is defined as a seat that can flip five points either way every two years. Under the last decades’ maps, a large majority was 240-plus. The new maps, we now have 51 swing seats so the simple math would tell you that a large majority is probably 230-plus.

Republicans right now we’re at 220. I expect we’re going to hold and we’re going to add to that come election night and a big part of that is going to be because of the enthusiasm for Donald J. Trump and his campaign.