Trump Falsely Claims He Won Minnesota in 2016 and 2020

In a speech to the state’s Republican Party, the former president said “I know we won” there in 2020. But it has been 52 years since a G.O.P. presidential candidate carried Minnesota.

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Former President Donald J. Trump speaking at the Minnesota Republican Party’s Lincoln-Reagan dinner in St. Paul on Friday.

Former President Donald J. Trump, speaking Friday night in Minnesota, which he vowed to boycott if he lost there in 2020, falsely claimed that he had won the state twice, adding that it was in play for him in 2024.

“I thought we won it in 2016,” Mr. Trump said during a fund-raiser for the state’s Republican Party in St. Paul, Minn. “I know we won it in 2020.”

The last time a Republican presidential candidate won Minnesota was in 1972, when Richard M. Nixon carried the state.

Nevertheless, Mr. Trump, the presumptive nominee of the Republican Party who is seeking to avenge his loss to Joseph R. Biden Jr. four years ago, said that his campaign was adding the state to its “official expansion” of its electoral map.

Mr. Trump’s nearly 90-minute appearance at the party’s annual Lincoln Reagan dinner was another deviation from the usual campaign battlegrounds on a day off from his criminal trial in New York. Last Saturday, Mr. Trump held a rally in New Jersey, a state he lost by double digits in both 2016 and 2020. Earlier on Friday, his campaign announced that it would hold an event in the deep blue Bronx next week.

Mr. Trump used his speech in St. Paul to lean into a narrative that he stood for law and order, suggesting that he had played a critical role in quelling the riots in the state after the killing of George Floyd by Minneapolis police officers in 2020.

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