Trump clings to New Hampshire dream after campaign aide questions chances: ‘I’ve done well there’

Former President Donald Trump pushed back on doubts about whether he would be able to win New Hampshire on Election Day as he expressed faith that he would claim victory in a state “badly treated by the Democrat Party.”

Trump held out hope he could flip the state red during an hourlong town hall interview with Fox News’s Sean Hannity released Wednesday evening.

“We really want to win New Hampshire,” the former president said. “I’ve done well there, and we really want to win New Hampshire,” he reiterated.

Trump’s comments came after his team deemed that a staffer who claimed “the campaign has determined that New Hampshire is no longer a battleground state” should no longer work for the former president.

“This isn’t true,” a senior adviser to the Trump campaign said this week of the staffer’s allegations in a statement to the Boston Globe. “President Trump’s campaign maintains an on-the-ground presence in New Hampshire, including staff and offices.”

The last time the New England state voted for a Republican presidential candidate was in 2000, though the state has seen multiple GOP governors since then, including sitting Gov. Chris Sununu (R-NH).

Trump told Hannity he believed the Granite State would not choose to support the Democratic Party after President Joe Biden broke the tradition of skipping the New Hampshire primary earlier this year.

“He didn't want to play the New Hampshire game,” Trump claimed. “He dumped New Hampshire. And I said to people today, who the hell from New Hampshire would vote for this guy? He changed the whole primary system. He changed the whole system because he took them out of the order.”

"I think it's going to have a big effect,” Trump said.

As he spoke to Hannity on Wednesday, the former president reiterated claims Vice President Kamala Harris helped stage a “coup” against Biden.

“He got 14 million votes, and they threw him out,” Trump said as he alluded to the millions of primary votes Biden received before he made his campaign exit in July.

“It was really a coup, when you think about it,” Trump claimed, doubling down on allegations that Democratic Party leaders strategized to replace the top of the ticket with Harris at the last hour. Harris was on the Democratic ticket with Biden when primary voters voted for the pair.

The vice president held a campaign rally on Wednesday in New Hampshire, where she unveiled her most recent economic proposals, which target small businesses.

“New Hampshire was so badly treated by the Democrat Party and by Joe Biden and [Harris]. I can't imagine New Hampshire voting for him, anybody in New Hampshire — because they're watching right now — but anybody in New Hampshire that votes for Biden and Kamala,” he added.

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The Washington Examiner reached out to the Harris campaign for comment.

Trump trails Harris by 5 percentage points, according to an average of recent polls from Real Clear Politics. Biden won the state by 7 percentage points in 2020.