He will also attend the President’s Cup golf tournament this weekend. Officials say Trump’s GOP campaign push will ramp up in October.
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President Donald Trump has vowed to go all-out campaigning for Republicans ahead of November’s midterm elections, which he has said could decide the fate of the country.
But first: it’s time for golf and college football.
Trump is set to travel to Tennessee on Saturday to watch a high-profile clash between the University of Texas and University of Tennessee’s college football teams. Texas, the nation’s number-one ranked team, also features quarterback Arch Manning, scion of the Manning football dynasty and arguably the most prominent player in the college sport.
The president will then head to a golf club outside Chicago for Sunday’s final round of the President’s Cup tournament, where he will serve as honorary chairman. The President’s Cup tournament, which is held every two years at different locations, pits a team of U.S. golfers against an international team.
Trips to a Tennessee football game and an Illinois golf tournament may not be the destinations that Trump’s allies would have prioritized as the reality of Republicans’ difficult midterm picture has sunk in. Advisers have warned the president that the GOP is likely to lose control of one or both chambers of Congress in November’s elections amid opposition to Trump’s war with Iran, which has sharply raised oil prices, his extensive construction projects in Washington and other priorities that Democrats say are out of step with voters’ needs.
But this weekend will continue Trump’s second-term tour of major sporting events. Trump has become the first sitting president to attend the NFL’s Super Bowl and the NBA Finals, take a lap before NASCAR’s Daytona 500 and host a PGA tournament at his own club. He also took in the college football national championship game earlier this year between Indiana University and the University of Miami and hosted a UFC fight match on the White House’s South Lawn.
At least some of the participants say they welcome Trump’s attendance.
“Being an American and having the president of the United States coming to watch you play golf is something that as a kid you don’t ever imagine or fathom happening. I just think it’s pretty amazing,” U.S. golfer Wyndham Clark told reporters this week. “It’s going to be definitely really exciting on Sunday.”
Trump’s supporters say a president should feel free to spend his weekends attending sporting events — and that it’s smart politics. Both the football game and the golf tournament are expected to draw tens of thousands of fans in person and millions of TV viewers.
“Iconic moments in sports are the president’s unique wild card to connect with voters of all ages and showcase one of his strongest attributes: his genuine passion for something we all love,” said Harrison Fields, who served as a Trump spokesman before leaving the White House last year. “It’s a rally that doesn’t require MAGA caps or political chants. These venues check all the boxes for the president and his political operation.”
Taylor Rogers, a White House spokeswoman, said that Trump was looking forward to attending Saturday’s game in his capacity as the “People’s President.”
Trump “is the greatest champion of college sports in American history, as evidenced by his consistent efforts to save them,” Rogers said, invoking Trump’s executive orders and support for new regulations to limit athlete compensation, transfers and other developments that have upended decades of college sports tradition.
The Senate is expected to vote as soon as Monday on the Trump-backed Protect College Sports Act. The bill, which has bipartisan support, could cap the earnings of high-profile athletes such as Texas’s Manning, who by some metrics was the most highly paid player in college football last year.
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“College football fans overwhelmingly agree college sports needs fixing, and this bill is going to get 75-plus votes from Democrats and Republicans,” said Clay Travis, the founder of Sport & State, a sports and political media network, and who broke the news that Trump would attend the Texas-Tennessee football game.
The House would still need to take up the legislation before it can go to Trump’s desk. The chamber is on recess until after the midterms.
With those elections looking increasingly dire for his party, Trump has pledged to personally support dozens of GOP candidates in potential swing districts.
“We’re gonna have rallies just like this. We’re gonna have big arenas loaded up with people,” the president said on Sept. 9 when he addressed the GOP’s midterm convention in Dallas. He also pledged to return repeatedly to Texas to help elect Attorney General Ken Paxton, the party’s nominee for the Senate.
“You’re gonna be saying, “Get him the hell outta here. He’s here too much,’” Trump told the crowd.
Since those remarks, Trump has held just one rally — in North Carolina. His trips to Tennessee and Illinois are not expected to swing local races. Neither state is expected to be key to determining the outcome of November’s midterms. Cook Political Report, a nonpartisan election prognosticator, does not identify a single House seat in either state as a toss-up or otherwise in play.
Next week, the president is set to resume campaigning, but in Oklahoma and Alabama, two deeply red states. Republican officials say they hope those appearances will spill over into media markets in neighboring states, Texas and Florida. An RNC official said Trump’s activity will ramp up extensively in October with more in-person rallies and tele-rallies in states such as Florida, Michigan, Ohio and Texas.
Trump’s trip to Saturday’s football game may have an effect on what happens on the field. Several college football coaches this week said that the president’s movements around the stadium have historically led to security-related communications blackouts that interfere with the headsets they use to coordinate with their teams.
“You’ve got to be prepared to have no communication for a short amount of time,” said Steve Sarkisian, Texas’s coach, who served as an assistant coach during a game that Trump attended in his first term.
Curt Cignetti, Indiana’s coach, on Thursday confirmed that his team lost access to communication when Trump left his seat during January’s championship game.
“The communication devices go out, the headsets, and that’s a fact. That happens,” Cignetti said on his radio show. “When President Trump left the game around the seven-minute mark of the fourth quarter, there were two or three plays, we were on defense, we couldn’t hear at all.”
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