Donald Trump’s victory tour will be making a stop in Utah.
Multiple sources confirm to UtahPolicy.com that Trump plans to hold a rally of some sort in the Beehive State before he’s inaugurated in January. Trump intends to visit all 30 states he carried during the election, starting with Ohio on Thursday.
No date has been set for the Trump rally in Utah, but local Republicans have been in contact with his team and said a visit by the president-elect is imminent.
Trump carried Utah and its six electoral votes in November, capturing just under 48% of the ballot. That’s a relatively poor performance for a GOP presidential nominee in a reliably red state, especially one that gave Mitt Romney 73% of the vote in 2012. However, Trump easily outpaced pre-election polls that showed him in a virtual dead-heat with independent candidate Evan McMullin. It’s clear that many Utah Republicans were uncomfortable with Trump at the top of the ticket, but they “came home” and voted for him anyway. McMullin ended up in third place, grabbing about 22% of the vote.
Trump has not been very popular in Utah, particularly Mormons, because of some of the more controversial positions he took on the campaign trail. Trump advocacy of barring Muslims from entering the United States in the wake of some high-profile terrorist attacks drew a sharp rebuke from the Mormon Church-owned Deseret News. The high-profile video showing Trump bragging about sexually assaulting women also caused many Republicans in Utah to disavow their support for the GOP nominee publicly. However, Rep. Jason Chaffetz went back on his vow to not vote for Trump a little more than two weeks later.
Some leading Republicans in Utah never got on board the Trump train, most notably Lt. Gov. Spencer Cox. Others, like Rep. Chris Stewart and Sen. Orrin Hatch were openly critical of Trump but supported him anyway. Gov. Gary Herbert tried to thread a rhetorical needle by claiming his plan to vote for Trump was not an endorsement.
That reluctance to support Trump could get awkward when he’s here. Trump finished in third place during the March caucus vote, losing to Ted Cruz. Utah’s delegation to the Republican National Convention were some of the lone holdouts against Trump, vocally supporting Cruz during the roll call vote.
Perhaps all of that animosity will be forgotten since Trump ended up carrying Utah by 200,000 votes more than Hillary Clinton.
