WASHINGTON _ President Donald Trump will lean on his family to make the case for him in the final stretch of the election.
With mail-in voting beginning in key states next month, the president and members of his family will pick up the pace of their events following the Republican National Convention, sources familiar with the plans told McClatchy, despite the ongoing coronavirus pandemic.
Beginning next month, Donald Trump Jr., the president's eldest son and an executive vice president at the Trump Organization, will be on the road three to four times a week. Ivanka Trump, the president's eldest daughter, will campaign at least once a week, in addition to her official duties as a senior White House adviser.
"We are fully in campaign season and in campaign mode now, although it is a bit of a different year," Lara Trump, who is married to the president's middle son, Eric, said in an interview. "I'll be out there. My husband will be out there, so it's going to be all hands on deck."
Lara Trump and Kimberly Guilfoyle, the girlfriend Donald Trump Jr., work on the president's reelection campaign full time. Lara Trump is a senior adviser and Guilfoyle chairs the Trump Victory Finance Committee.
Guilfoyle will campaign alongside Trump Jr., who will be in Montana immediately after the convention campaigning for friend and incumbent Republican Sen. Steve Daines. After Labor Day, a source familiar with the schedule said Trump Jr. will be in swing states campaigning for his father three to four days a week and had plans to increase his appearances to five to six days a week by October.
The person described it as a "full-court press" by Trump Jr. over the next two months. Guilfoyle is expected to accompany him.
Ivanka Trump will also be on the campaign trail, though not as frequently as her brothers, speaking about her father from her perspective as a daughter and close adviser and as someone who has worked alongside him in the White House on policies like child care and paid family leave.
"She is a mom, she is balancing a lot. And I think that people like to hear that from her," a person familiar with her plans said. "It is an interesting perspective, and some of the issues that she's talking about are issues that parents are thinking about every day right now."
The president's youngest daughter, Tiffany Trump, a recent Georgetown Law School graduate, did not immediately respond to an inquiry about her future plans from McClatchy. Like her adult siblings, she spoke in support of her father this week at the Republican National Convention.
A person close to Melania Trump could not say yet how much the first lady would be on the campaign trail, telling McClatchy in a text message that the details are still being worked out. The first lady also spoke this week at the RNC, delivering her remarks from the newly renovated White House Rose Garden, which was redesigned under her supervision.
The president regularly had more than one campaign rally a day in the fall of 2016, and the campaign plans to put him on the trail more frequently now that the GOP convention has concluded.
"It's not lost on anybody that the president has wanted specifically to travel to get out in the country to campaign. This is what he loves doing," Lara Trump said, "and so we do have a lot of that coming up for him in the coming weeks."
President Trump's first post-convention event will take place at an aircraft maintenance facility in Londonderry, New Hampshire, on Friday night. The state has a mask mandate for gatherings of more than 100 people that the Trump campaign plans to follow, a campaign spokesperson said.
Vice President Mike Pence is also accelerating his campaign travel and has events in Michigan and Minnesota on Friday.
As vice president, his footprint is smaller than the president's, which has allowed him to be on the road more frequently than Trump over the summer, his chief of staff Marc Short told McClatchy as Pence began to ramp up his schedule of campaign events.
"He's able to get into a lot of markets where we need to be and do multiple markets a day," Short said.
Trump frequently criticizes his rival, Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden, for not being out more meeting people. Biden has campaigned almost entirely remotely during the coronavirus pandemic. His campaign is holding Zoom calls and training sessions for its supporters and volunteers.
Biden said Thursday during a virtual fundraiser that he would campaign in person in battleground states where gatherings are allowed after Labor Day and may travel to Wisconsin, Minnesota, Pennsylvania and Arizona.
"But we're going to do it in a way that is totally consistent with being responsible, unlike what this guy's doing," he said, criticizing Trump as being "totally irresponsible."
"I'm a tactile politician. I really miss being able to, you know, grab hands, shake hands, you can't do that now. But I can in fact appear beyond virtually, in person, in many of these places," Biden said.
In North Carolina, a must-win state for Trump in 2020, the election begins in two weeks. The state will begin sending registered voters, who have requested them, absentee ballots by mail on Sept. 4.
Already, North Carolina has had more than double the number of absentee ballot requests than the absentee ballots that were cast in 2016. The state has received more than 420,000 requests and the number is expected to increase substantially before the Oct. 27 deadline.
North Carolina sends out absentee ballots by mail earlier than any other state and voters do not have to provide a reason for requesting one.
In Florida, another major battleground state, voters domestically will start receiving mail-in ballots as early as Sept. 24. No reason is required in Florida to request a mail-in ballot.
"A lot of these states are going to be early voting," Trump campaign senior adviser Mercedes Schlapp said of the plans to increase in-person campaigning, "and we want to make sure that we're part of that involvement in getting people to go out and vote for the president."
Trump traveled to North Carolina on Monday to speak to RNC delegates in Charlotte, and is expected to be back there frequently before the election, North Carolina Republican Party Chairman Michael Whatley told McClatchy.
The Trump campaign will also be sending two buses of staffers and surrogates to Texas, Arizona, Colorado and Nevada in the coming days to invigorate volunteers.
Campaign officials said the red and white "Team Trump" and bright pink "Women for Trump" buses will be on the road in battleground states nonstop until the November election.
"I call it advertisement on wheels," Schlapp said of the pink vehicle. "We want to show that we're putting our stamp in each of these states and each of these field offices."
Trump's campaign put bus tours on the road in July and opened more than a dozen Black and Latino outreach offices in August. Republican Party volunteers are also knocking on voters' doors.
Public polling continues to show Biden ahead in some swing states that Trump won four years ago. But that margin has narrowed since Trump canceled much of the GOP convention and limited campaigning to more smaller, outdoor settings such as airport hangars and Republican field offices.
"We feel it's very important to be in person and talking to grassroots organizers, our volunteers, being able to make sure that the ground game is in good shape as we go into November," Schlapp said of the decision to campaign in person during coronavirus. "We feel that being in targeted states is just critical."
