Trump Starts Thank You Tour
In the midst of a frenetic transition into the White House, President-elect Donald Trump has planned to hit the road. He's scheduled to kick off a thank you tour of sorts for voters Thursday with an event in Cincinnati, Ohio.
There had been suggestions of a Trump victory tour since he won on election night, but it was initially put off as he began to assemble his Cabinet. In mid-November however, the Trump team confirmed a victory tour was in the works.
"We're working on a victory tour now. It will happen in the next couple of weeks," George Gigicos, the Trump campaign's advance team director, said at the time, via a pool report.
That tour is set to kick off Thursday at 7 p.m. EST at U.S. Bank Arena, although with a bit of rebranding. The transition team is now calling it a "thank you" tour. Gigicos reportedly interjected when journalists called it otherwise. "'Thank you tour,'" he said, according to Bloomberg this week. "It's not a 'victory tour.'"
Regardless of what the tour is called, Trump reportedly plans to go to only the states he won, especially those the GOP nominee flipped from blue to red in 2016. Ohio proved a key state for Trump in his shocking victory over Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton. In what was expected to be a relatively close state, the GOP nominee won by 8 percentage points by dominating in the more rural counties.
The idea of the tour, as seems with most things concerning Trump, has proven somewhat controversial. Critics have said Trump should be focused on preparing to govern while supporters suggest it's a good way of showing his voters he's thankful.
"I don't have a problem with it at all ... [because] he has a lot of work to do to unify the country around his presidency," Allan Lichtman, a political analyst and history professor at American University in Washington, D.C., told the Cincinnati Enquirer. "I don't know if it will work or not. As it is with his entire life, I think this is all about his ego."
After Ohio is in the books, the next event is likely to be in Des Moines, Iowa, although that is subject to change, Bloomberg reported.
You can watch the Cincinnati event by clicking here or watch a live feed embedded below.
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