Donald Trump’s campaign is reportedly pulling out of Virginia and focusing its efforts on four battleground states: Pennsylvania, Florida, North Carolina, and Ohio.
Unnamed sources, including those directly involved in the GOP’s efforts in the Virginia, confirmed to NBC News that the Trump operation was leaving the state.
Another anonymous Trump staffer told NBC that the campaign’s status in the state was still uncertain, though. “There have been conversations about shifting resources,” the staffer said. “But I haven’t gotten any definitive answer on anything.”
Polling conducted this month by Roanoke College found Clinton nine points ahead of Trump in the state among likely voters, 45 percent to Trump’s 36 percent. TPM’s PollTracker Average shows Clinton leading Trump 47.3 percent to 36.9 percent:
The move comes just a day after the Trump campaign fired its Virginia state co-chairman, Corey Stewart, after he took part in a protest outside the Republican National Committee headquarters against who he called “establishment pukes” bent on undermining Trump, according to the Washington Post.
“David Bossie’s been a real problem,” Stewart told the Post after he was fired.
Stewart said Bossie, Trump’s deputy campaign manager, “basically refused to support the efforts in Virginia. I can say this now because I’m not a member of the campaign anymore.”
“The only thing the campaign had to do was spend money on an ad campaign and it would have been competitive,” he told NBC News Wednesday, after news broke of the campaign’s shifting priorities. “I’m just disgusted.”
