Trump Hits Campaign Trail for Louisiana Senate Candidate
Trump will also host a rally for his thank-you tour tonight in Michigan.
— -- The president-elect returned to the campaign trail today.
Donald Trump joined Republican Louisiana Senate candidate John Kennedy at a get-out-the-vote rally in Baton Rouge this afternoon, arriving almost two hours late. Louisiana is holding a runoff election on Saturday between Kennedy and Democrat Foster Campbell.
Trump began by speaking of how Louisiana first taught him that the system he won was rigged. "So I came down on a Friday night to a massive hangar. The place was absolutely -- thousands and thousands of people. I think 24,000, 25,000 people, and I left and I said, you know, I think I'm going to win this state and I won the state easily, right?" he said. "And then I checked on the delegates, and the delegates were -- I didn't have as many as people I beat, and then I said this system is crooked.”
He went on to praise Kennedy.
“Tomorrow we need you to go to the polls and send John Kennedy to the United States Senate, and that's why I'm down here. That's why I'm here. He's a great guy. He's a great guy. He's a good guy, No. 1, he's a good person. And if he doesn't win, I have got myself a problem in Washington because, you know, we have -- it's pretty close. It's pretty close. We need John in Washington not only for the vote. We need him for leadership and everything else, but if you go there, we're going to win.”
Trump dispelled rumors that he may not run for re-election, intimating that he would run again.
"Hey, I don't need your vote anymore, but I'm telling you I'm very good at that. I don't need your vote. Can you imagine that? Four years I'll need your vote.”
Before Trump headed to Louisiana he held meetings in New York. House Speaker Paul Ryan convened with the president-elect there this morning, his first meeting with Trump at Trump Tower.
Ryan told reporters upon leaving Trump Tower that he had a "very exciting meeting." He did not take any questions from the press.
"We had a great meeting to talk about our transition," Ryan said. "We’re very excited about getting to work and hitting the ground running in 2017 to put this country back on track."
Trump is to close out the day with a thank-you tour rally in Grand Rapids, Michigan, that begins at 7 p.m. ET. He'll be joined by his pick to head the U.S. Department of Education, Betsy DeVos, a Michigan billionaire and charter school advocate.
Michigan was the last state Trump visited on Election Day before heading back to New York. The Great Lakes State's results were not certified until Nov. 28 -- nearly three weeks after the Nov. 8 election, and the final count was exceptionally close.
Trump won Michigan by a 10,704-vote margin over Democrat Hillary Clinton out of a total of nearly 4.8 million votes cast. A statewide vote recount of the presidential vote that was underway for three days at the request of Green Party candidate Jill Stein was cancelled Wednesday when a federal judge upheld a lower court ruling that Stein didn't meet the state's standard to request a recount.
Trump and Vice President-elect Mike Pence will continue the thank-you tour next week with planned visits to Wisconsin and Pennsylvania.
ABC News' Tom Llamas and Katherine Faulders contributed to this report.