Trump rallies Indiana GOP

WASHINGTON -- President Donald Trump is returning to the campaign trail with big-stage events targeting vulnerable Senate Democrats and mobilizing his most fervent supporters on behalf of Republicans, after primaries this week that saw GOP congressmen lose in key races.

Trump took the stage in Elkhart, Indiana, Thursday night, two days after Republicans nominated former state lawmaker Mike Braun to challenge vulnerable Democratic Sen. Joe Donnelly. Trump's political advisers viewed the event as a way to project party unity following a bruising primary. Vice President Mike Pence, the state's former governor, joined Trump.

The Indiana rally came as the president has told advisers he is eager to ramp up his campaign travel on behalf of Republicans.

The president, who helped raise $132 million for the Republican National Committee in 2016, won 10 states where Democratic senators are on the ballot this year. He's expected to campaign heavily to help Republicans maintain Senate and House majorities and elect GOP governors.

"The president takes his role as leader of the Republican Party very seriously, and after more than a year in office, he understands too few Democrats are willing to join hands across party lines to support issues that the American people resoundingly called for," said White House political director Bill Stepien. "The president's calendar is mapped out with his political priorities in mind."

Trump's bold strokes on the foreign stage come while he is dogged by the special counsel's ongoing investigation into Russian election meddling and developments about his personal attorney's payments to a porn actress, allowing him to frame the campaign debate, specifically Donnelly's "no" vote on last year's tax overhaul.

Trump's political advisers chose to hold the rally in the heart of Donnelly's political base. Before his 2012 election, the senator represented a House district including Elkhart.

The city, home to manufacturing jobs and the recreational vehicle industry, was also paid a visit by President Barack Obama in 2009 when the region was suffering from unemployment rates surpassing 19 percent. Obama returned to Elkhart in 2016 to point to economic progress, but Trump carried the county and much of the region overwhelmingly then.

The rally comes on the heels of bruising defeats this week for Republican incumbents: Two Indiana congressmen making a bid for a U.S. Senate seat lost to Braun, a North Carolina congressman lost to a pastor and a third incumbent lost in a contested Senate primary in West Virginia.

Ahead of the rally, Donnelly's campaign said the senator had voted with Trump 62 percent of the time "because he works for Hoosiers, not any politician or political party."

The Indiana rally will be Trump's fourth political-style event in the past two weeks. Trump skipped the White House Correspondents' Dinner late last month to rally supporters in Macomb County, Michigan.

His speech last week to the National Rifle Association in Dallas put him before thousands of gun-rights activists who actively backed his campaign. And last Saturday, Trump was in Ohio, long the key electoral piece for any GOP presidential hopeful.