As Biden tours the country and visits swing states, Trump is fundraising and playing golf

WASHINGTON (AP) — As President Joe Biden visited five cities in a multiday trip last week, former President Donald Trump was hardly seen in public, spending most of his time in South Florida.

Trump has held just a single public campaign event since he locked up the Republican presidential nomination on March 12: a rally in Ohio funded not by his campaign but by backers of a Senate candidate whom he had endorsed. The events page on his campaign website has had nothing listed.

Biden, meanwhile, has been barnstorming the country. After a trip to North Carolina on Tuesday, the Democratic president will have touched down in all of the 2024 swing states in the less than three weeks since his State of the Union address.

The differing approaches reflect the deficits each side is facing.

Trump’s campaign faces a serious money shortfall and mounting legal bills as he fights four criminal indictments. His focus in recent weeks has been on wooing potential donors as his campaign builds its infrastructure across battleground states to catch up to Democrats, who have a significant head start.

For Biden, 81, the tempo is a message in and of itself as he aims to combat persistent voter concerns about his age. Whoever wins in November will be the oldest president to be inaugurated, though polls find that voters see the issue as more pressing for Biden. Trump is 77.

Both sides are projecting confidence and accusing the other of trying to hide its candidate’s problems.

Biden “looks like a lost puppy any time he ventures onto the campaign trail,” said Trump spokesperson Karoline Leavitt, who accused Biden’s campaign of limiting his events to “stops at field offices with a few paid staffers who look less enthused than attendees at a