COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) - The Latest on President Donald Trump in Ohio (all times local):
8 p.m.
President Donald Trump didn’t mention Arizona Sen. John McCain during his speech at a Republican party dinner in Ohio Friday, hours after the family of the ailing senator said he had chosen to discontinue medical treatment for brain cancer.
The White House didn’t address McCain’s announcement and the president didn’t make any references to the senator. Trump has frequently criticized McCain for voting against a 2017 plan in the Senate to replace the so-called “Obamacare” law.
The two Republican leaders have had a strained relationship dating back to 2015, when Trump suggested the Vietnam veteran and prisoner of war was not a war hero.
McCain has been critical of Trump even while undergoing medical treatment in Arizona, slamming Trump’s summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin as a “tragic mistake.”
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7 p.m.
President Donald Trump is branding Democrats as “left-wing haters and radicals” who are trying to “tear down our institutions.”
He also says they’re “nasty.”
Trump unleashed the string of insults in a speech Friday at the Ohio Republican Party fundraising dinner in Columbus. The speech was meant to help unite fractious state Republicans heading into the November midterm elections.
Trump says that with Democrats, “it’s always negative, nasty, the way they come after me.”
Polls show that large majorities of Democrats disapprove of Trump’s performance in office, but he says they need to get over it and accept that he’s president.
Adds Trump: “We won the election. We’re going to win again in 2020. … These are nasty people.”
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6:40 p.m.
President Donald Trump is talking about the Iowa college student was found slain about a month after she disappeared.
Trump raised the case in a speech Friday at an Ohio Republican dinner. The family of 20-year-old Mollie Tibbetts has asked that her death not be politicized.
Authorities have charged Cristhian Bahena Rivera, a Mexico native suspected of being in the U.S. illegally, with first-degree murder in Tibbetts’ death.
Trump raised Tibbetts’ case as justification for his attempts to crack down on illegal immigration to the U.S.
He refers to Rivera as “this horrible illegal immigrant” and claims erroneously that journalists didn’t want to cover the story after questions were raised about Rivera’s status.
Trump says “what happened to Mollie is a disgrace.”
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6:05 p.m.
President Donald Trump is predicting victory in November as he opens a keynote speech at a fundraising dinner for Ohio Republicans.
Trump is trying to help unite a fractious state GOP with Friday’s speech in Columbus. But the annual event is being skipped by Ohio’s Republican governor, John Kasich. Kasich challenged Trump for the GOP presidential nomination in 2016 and remains one of Trump’s sharpest critics.
Trump says: “This November, we’re going to win really big. It’s going to be one big Ohio family.”
He is stressing the importance of electing more Ohio Republicans in November to help the party keep its hold on both houses of Congress.
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5:40 p.m.
President Donald Trump will seek to unite a fractious state Republican Party in Ohio on Friday in an address to GOP loyalists at a dinner that was being skipped by Gov. John Kasich, one of the president’s 2016 primary opponents and sharpest critics.
Trump’s appearance at the annual fundraiser sought to project an image of common purpose in the nation’s premier battleground state despite deep internal divisions. Ohio holds a number of high-stakes races for governor, Senate and several U.S. House seats that could factor into GOP control of Congress this fall - and importantly for Trump, linger into the next presidential campaign.
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