The president’s initial hopes for the event to be a four-day infomercial for his re-election bid have been steadily constrained by the coronavirus pandemic, culminating in his decision last month to cancel nearly all of the in-person proceedings.
In recent weeks, Mr Trump and his aides have looked for alternatives that would allow him to recreate at least some of the pomp of the event.
“We have narrowed the Presidential Nomination Acceptance Speech, to be delivered on the final night of the Convention (Thursday), to two locations – The Great Battlefield of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, and the White House, Washington, D.C.,” he tweeted.
He added that a decision on the location of the August 27 speech will be made soon.
Both sites are federal property, raising legal and ethical issues for their use in a political event.
The president is not covered by the Hatch Act, which prohibits political activity by nearly all federal employees, although White House and other federal officials supporting the event are.
The Civil War battlefield in Pennsylvania could also rekindle the president’s repeated defence of monuments to heroes of the Confederacy.
He has previously turned to national parks and monuments to hold politically tinged events, including a July 4 event on the National Mall in 2019 and one at Mount Rushmore in South Dakota last month.
In May, he gave an interview to Fox News inside the Lincoln Memorial, a move that required special dispensation from his appointed secretary of the interior, David Bernhardt.
Staging a convention speech at Gettysburg would go a step further, and raise questions about politicising the site of the deadliest battle of the Civil War.
Mr Trump has spoken openly of his fondness for Abraham Lincoln, whose short address dedicating the national cemetery for Union soldiers in 1863 crystallised the cause for which they died fighting, but Mr Trump has repeatedly courted controversy in office in opposing efforts to remove displays of the Confederate battle flag and failing to resoundingly condemn white supremacists.
The Republican National Convention was initially slated for Charlotte, North Carolina, before Mr Trump moved it to Jacksonville, Florida, in June, in hopes the Republican-led state would be more amenable to his aim of having thousands of mask-less supporters cheering his renomination.
But as a wave of new coronavirus cases swept the Sun Belt, he was forced to cancel last month.
Now almost all the convention will be conducted virtually, except for a formal renomination vote on August 24 in Charlotte by a few hundred delegates casting proxy votes for those unable to assemble in person.
