The governor, a Republican, isn’t attending. It isn’t clear how many other G.O.P. elected officials will come. The turnout could be low, or expansive. And fears of the virus hang over the event.
Three days before President Trump’s latest rally, in a state that Hillary Clinton narrowly won in 2016, the only thing that seems clear is that the president’s team has no idea what to expect.
Mr. Trump’s campaign is planning an event at an airport hangar in Portsmouth, N.H. But the state’s governor, Chris Sununu, a Republican, has said he will not be attending. It isn’t clear how many other Republican elected officials will come. The number of attendees could be low, or it could be expansive. There could be lots of people drifting in from Vermont, Maine and Massachusetts.
Campaign officials believe they will be able to prevent the kind of ticket prank that helped turn Mr. Trump’s rally last month in Tulsa, Okla., into a far smaller event than expected — but they still cannot say for sure. And most significantly, there is the looming threat of the coronavirus spreading in a crowd where attendees will be in relatively close quarters, despite being mostly outdoors. Continue reading.