SACRAMENTO, Calif. — Before Donald Trump builds his border wall, he wants to tear down Democrats’ blue wall on the West Coast.

Trump vowed to campaign in California and Washington in the general election and said he may also contest Oregon at a rally here on Tuesday evening.


If Trump follows through on his words, it would make for an unorthodox gambit.

In California, Hillary Clinton leads Trump by 15 points in the Real Clear Politics polling average. One recent poll has Clinton up 11 points in Oregon. Another recent poll from Republican firm Clout Research gave Trump a two-point edge, but partisan pollsters are considered less reliable. There has been little recent general election polling of Washington, which is considered reliably Democratic.

California has not voted for a Republican presidential candidate since George H.W. Bush in 1988. Oregon and Washington last went red for Ronald Reagan in 1984.

But Trump appears undaunted by recent history or any compulsion to devote his time to more traditional battlegrounds where political observers and polls indicate the race will be won and lost.

“We’re going to come to California. Now everybody said for a Republican to run in California, it’s not going to happen. But I’m sort of different, you know? I’m, like, different,” Trump said. “We’re going to work California hard. We’re going to work the state of Washington hard. We may even work Oregon hard because we’ve been really treated up there great. We’re going to work a lot of states that you wouldn’t work.”

Trump who casts himself as a “counterpuncher” also said he was looking forward to taking harder shots at President Barack Obama — whom he already regularly skewers — when the president hits the trail for Clinton in the general election. “When he starts campaigning that means I get to hit him just like I hit bill Clinton,” said Trump from the podium set up outside a hangar at the city’s airport, where the rally was held. Trump rolled up to the site of the rally in his private jet.

And he continued to hit Clinton’s foreign policy record. “Do you really believe that Hillary is presidential?” Trump asked. “Her Libya invasion was disgusting.” The Obama administration supported NATO airstrikes in Libya and offered other support for the overthrow of Muammar Qadhafi but did not invade the country. At the time, Trump praised the NATO intervention.

The businessman lamented the PGA’s decision this week to stop hosting its World Golf Championships at Trump’s Doral golf course in Miami, which has hosted a PGA tournament every year since 1962, and move it south of the border.

“They moved the World Golf Championship from Miami to Mexico City, can you believe it?” he said. “If I become president this stuff is all going to stop.”

And he unleashed a new line on another familiar bogeyman of his stump speech, Japan.

“If the United States gets attacked they don’t have to do anything. They can watch it on television,” Trump said, specifying, “They’re watching on Sony television.”