Former President Donald Trump to hold campaign rally near Coachella on Saturday (2025)

(This story has been updated to add new information and fix a typo.)

With just a few weeks left until Election Day, former President Donald Trump plans to hold a rally on a ranch near Coachella on Saturday afternoon, his campaign announced Monday.

The rally will be held at the Calhoun Ranch, with the former president slated to speak at 5 p.m., according to Trump’s campaign website. The event appears to be focused on criticizing the Democratic presidential nominee, Vice President Kamala Harris, and her ties to California.

“Under Kamala Harris and her dangerous Democrat allies like Tim Walz, the notorious ‘California Dream’ has turned into a nightmare for everyday Americans,” states the campaign email announcing the event. “Californians are suffocating under rising prices for everything from groceries to housing, thanks to Kamalanomics.”

The event is public, and people who want to attend can register online.

Trump last visited Coachella Valley in 2020

Trump is no stranger to the valley. While still in office in early 2020, Trump held a fundraiser at the Rancho Mirage estate of Oracle Chairman Larry Ellison. Trump’s visit brought dozens of supporters to greet him at Palm Springs International Airport, cheering him on with chants of “Four more years!”

Meanwhile, hundreds of Trump’s opponents rallied near Ellison’s estate in Rancho Mirage with signs and a large balloon mocking the president. The counter-protest was organized by Courageous Resistance, a progressive local politicalgroup.

Unlike the upcoming event, which has registration open for the public to get tickets, the 2020 event was private and costa minimum of$100,000 per couple to attend, with a higher ticket price of $250,000 for those who wanted to participate in a policy roundtable with the president.

The full guest list for the Rancho Mirage fundraiser was not madepublic, but local gas station mogul Nachhattar Chandiwas among those who said he was attending.The president’s arrival at the airport also drew some local political figures, such as Jeff Gonzalez, a Marine veteran and pastor who’s running as a Republican for a state Assembly seat this year;conservative radio talk show hostRich Gilgallon; and Joy Miedecke, president of the East Valley Republican Women Patriots club.

More: Donald Trump's past golf history Donald Trump part of legacy of golf and the presidency in Coachella Valley

Who owns ranch where Trump will hold rally?

Trump's rally will be at a property owned by the Haagen Co., a firm connected to the family that founded the Empire Polo Club, home to the Coachella and Stagecoach music festivals, in 1987.

The polo club's music festival history dates to 1993, when rock band Pearl Jam was looking for somewhere to play that didn't sell tickets through Ticketmaster.

Alexander Haagen III's 110-acre club seemed perfect to Goldenvoice CEO Paul Tollett and his late partner, Rick Van Santen. The concert ended up drawing 25,000 Pearl Jam fans. In the next decade, Haagen went on to double the size of his property and create a landscape design unique in the polo world.

In 2022, the Indio City Council approved a request from Alexander Haagen IV to rename the Avenue 51 right-of-way stretch, half a mile west of Monroe Street, to Haagen Way. But ahead of the vote, a few residents spoke in opposition to the change, citing what they say are negative repercussions in the city from the festivals the Haagens host.

The Haagen Co. also has been involved with other business ventures in the Coachella Valley, including a since-scrapped plan to redevelop the mall long known as Indio Fashion Mall.

The land where Saturday's rally will be held is in unincorporated Riverside County, just west of Coachella city limits.

Who will attend Trump rally in Coachella Valley?

It’s unclear which local elected officials and political candidates could appear on stage at Trump’s rally Saturday, but at least one statewide candidate — Steve Garvey, California’s Republican candidate for U.S. Senate — told The Desert Sun in a text that he won’t be there.

Instead, Garvey will be out of the state accepting an award at the International Symposium on Women in Sports Media in Philadelphia. Garvey's daughter, Olivia, is a past sports anchor at NBC Palm Springs and is now a sports anchor at KNBC in Los Angeles.

Trump has recently criticized Garvey, saying at an event in Rancho Palos Verdes earlier this month that the former Dodger “made a big mistake because he hasn’t reached out to MAGA, and if he doesn’t have MAGA he’s got no chance.”

Miedecke, president of the East Valley Republican Women Patriots, told The Desert Sun on Monday that her club was aware of the rally before Monday's announcement, but she was unsure of who's joining Trump for the rally. She said her club members will be "very involved" with the event.

Coachella mayor, U.S. Rep. Raul Ruiz oppose Trump rally

Several elected officials in the eastern Coachella Valley condemned Trump’s rally following Monday’s announcement, with Coachella Mayor Steven Hernandez saying Trump “wasn’t invited by the people who live here.”

“The City of Coachella was proud to welcome Senator Bernie Sanders during the 2020 primary election, but news of former President Trump’s upcoming visit has been met very differently,” Hernandez said. "Trump’s attacks on immigrants, women, the LQBTQ community and the most vulnerable among us don’t align with the values of our community.”

“He has consistently expressed disdain for the type of diversity that helps define Coachella,” the mayor added. “We don’t know why Trump is visiting near Coachella, but we know he wasn’t invited by the people who live here. He ain’t like us.”

U.S. Rep. Raul Ruiz, D-Indio, echoed the sentiments, saying it’s “truly appalling — and yet another demonstration of his cluelessness and ignorance — that Donald Trump would stage a rally in Coachella” in a statement shared with The Desert Sun.

“Under a second Trump administration, there is literally no place in America that would be harmed more than the Coachella Valley,” Ruiz said, referring to Trump’s tariff policies, his “hate-driven immigration policy” and his “ignorant opposition to clean energy.”

“Donald Trump — and his policies — are an affront to everything that makes the Coachella Valley a vibrant community,” Ruiz added.

Coachella City Councilmember Frank Figueroa and Indio City Councilmember Waymond Fermon also condemned the rally in prepared statements, with Fermon calling Trump “a threat to our needs and to democracy itself.”

Beyond the event’s likely focus on Harris and her ties to Democrat-led California, it’s unclear why Trump’s campaign is holding the event near Coachella, where registered Democratic voters outnumber their Republican counterparts by a roughly 4-to-1 margin.

Coachella’s population is also roughly 98% Latino, while about 41% of its residents were born outside of the United States. During his 2024 campaign, Trump has repeatedly used racist rhetoric to describe undocumented immigrants, calling them “animals” and “not human,” while saying people crossing the Mexican border are fueling violent crimes in the U.S.

Trump has long history with Coachella Valley

Trump’s history with the valley stretches back several decades.

The former president, known for his love of golf, plays regularly in Florida and along the East Coast and owns golf courses throughout the United States and in Scotland. But he has rarely played golf in the desert, most notably in the 1993 American Express tournament, known then as the Bob Hope Chrysler Classic.

That tournament annually invited celebrities from entertainment and sports as well as politicians to play alongside PGA Tour pros. At the time, Trump was known for his books and television appearances but was still a decade away from hosting "The Apprentice"television show.

Years later, in 2001, Trump had a big plan for a casino in Coachella. Despite its being the smallest casino in the Coachella Valley at the time, he invested in Spotlight 29, a bingo parlor operated by the Twentynine Palms Band of Mission Indians, a tribe of just 12 members — recognizing its potential for profit.

Leveraging his reputation, Trump raised funds for an extensive expansion that would introduce slot machines, table games, a stylish nightclub and a private lounge for high rollers. In return, the tribe appointed him as the casino's manager and rebranded the casino as Trump 29 in 2002.

But three years later, Trump’s multibillion-dollar resort company filed for bankruptcy and subsequently, the tribe terminated his management contract early, buying him out for a mere $6 million — less than than the contract had earned him in a single year. Trump’s name subsequently came off the building.

“When Trump came in, we all thought, ‘Oh gosh, he is going to really run the tables on the tribe,’ and it was actually just the opposite that happened,” Victor Rocha, an Indian gaming advocate from Temecula, told The Desert Sun in 2016. “But it shouldn’t have been a surprise. If you look at anything that guy has done in this industry, he has a lead thumb — it’s the opposite of a golden touch.”

Trump has mocked Palm Springs windmills for years

A day after flying into Palm Springs for the 2020 fundraiser, Trump took shots at a familiar fixture of the desert landscape: the windmills that Palm Springs and the Coachella Valleyareknown for.

During a campaign speech Colorado Springs, where he discussed energy independence, Trump reminded his audienceabout the "rusty," "rotting" windmills made in "China" and "Germany."

He told his audience:"And they're all over the place. You look at Palm Springs, California. Take a look. Palm Springs. ... They're all over the place. They're closed, they're rotting, they look like hell."

Windmills in the Palm Springs area date back about four decades, and in recent years,energy developers here have replaced some aging wind turbines with state-of-the-art models.

It wasn't the first time he tilted at the windmills.

In 2016, during Herman Cain's radio show, then-candidate Trump referred to Palm Springs as a "poor man's version of Disneyland."

His disdain for windmills goes back to at least2012, where he tweeted about how Palm Springs had been "absolutely destroyed" by "the world's ugliest wind farm" along Interstate 10.

The Desert Sun staff contributed to this report.

Tom Coulter covers the cities of Palm Desert, La Quinta, Rancho Mirage and Indian Wells. Reach him at thomas.coulter@desertsun.com.