President Trump on Monday said that he will deliver his Republican presidential nomination speech in either the Gettysburg battlefield or the White House.
In a Monday tweet, Trump said that an announcement will come soon on the final decision. The President said last week that he would “probably” give his acceptance speech from the White House, which was met with pushback from even some Republicans over the legality of the move.
We have narrowed the Presidential Nomination Acceptance Speech, to be delivered on the final night of the Convention (Thursday), to two locations – The Great Battlefield of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, and the White House, Washington, D.C. We will announce the decision soon!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 10, 2020
The President’s tweet comes just two weeks before the Republican National Convention is scheduled to kick off. Trump called off the in-person RNC gathering altogether late last month amid surging cases of the coronavirus nationwide. Trump had moved the RNC to Jacksonville, Florida after North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper (D) required social distancing and masks if it were to be held at its original location of Charlotte, North Carolina.
Trump narrowing down the locale of his acceptance speech to include the Gettysburg battlefield has raised brows, given that he has turned his Twitter account into a racist bullhorn recently — tweeting late last month that “people living their Suburban Lifestyle Dream” would no longer have to deal with low income housing in their neighborhood — as well as expressing his vehement opposition to renaming military bases paying tribute to Confederate generals.
However, Trump’s consideration of delivering his speech in Gettysburg isn’t exactly a brand new idea — the then-presidential nominee gave a speech there in October 2016 to tout his plans for his first 100 days in office.
