President Donald Trump and Vice President Mike Pence will appear in Cincinnati at U.S. Bank Arena for a campaign rally. Some tips ahead of the event:
• People are already lined up outside the arena for the rally. Doors for the event open at 4 p.m. and the rally is scheduled to start at 7 p.m.
• Traffic will likely be difficult. A sold-out concert at Riverbend and the likelihood that Trump and Pence will fly into CVG means that I-275, I-75 and I-71 are all prone to congestion and possible shutdown as the presidential motorcade rolls in and out of town.
"A busy day," the Boone County Sheriff's Department tweeted this morning. "We can't give specific times, roads or routes for the @POTUS visit, just assume the interstates are no go zones this afternoon and into the evening."
Basically: don't drive near Cincinnati if you don't have to.
• Two protests are planned for the event to decry Trump's policies around immigration, taxes, inflammatory comments about Democratic women of color in Congress and other issues.
One, organized by local activists groups United We Stand and Indivisible Northern Kentucky, will meet at 5 p.m. at 443 Pete Rose Way, the parking garage just east of the arena.
Another protest called "We Stand Together" will start at 6 p.m. at the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center.
The president's appearance will be his fourth in Cincinnati since his 2015 campaign. Trump, a Republican, lost Hamilton County to Democrat Hillary Clinton by roughly 10 points in 2016, though he won Ohio overall by eight points that year.
Trump is expected to highlight the nation's economy at the rally and may discuss an announcement he made today that the U.S. will impose a 10 percent tariff on Chinese goods starting Sept. 1, likely inflaming trade tensions with one of the world's largest economies.
Some other recent rallies have seen controversial moments. At a rally earlier this month, Trump supporters chanted "send her back" after the president mentioned U.S. Rep. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota. Trump previously tweeted that four progressive Democratic Party congresswomen, almost certainly including Omar, should "go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came."
The racist tweet was widely condemned across the political spectrum, as was the crowd's chanting. The other three representatives assumed to be included in the tweet — Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, Rashida Tlaib of Michigan and Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts — were born in the United States, and Omar, a U.S. citizen, came here as a refugee when she was 12.
Ohio is shaping up to be a battleground state again this year. Democratic Party presidential primary hopefuls U.S. Sens. Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders have both made recent stops in the Queen City. Sanders also recently weighed in on a dispute between a nurse's union and University of Cincinnati Medical Center — a sign he is watching local politics and attempting to woo voters here.
