Donald Trump and Kamala Harris fought it out Saturday in the swing states on the final weekend of the tensest US election of modern times, with the Democrat urging voters to “turn the page” on the Republican’s scorched-earth brand of politics.
With only three days left in the campaign, 73 million people have already cast early ballots, with many more expected to go to the polls on Sunday ahead of the Election Day climax Tuesday.
The country — and the world — could then face a nail-biting wait to know whether Harris becomes the first US woman president or Trump secures a spectacular return to power after his unprecedented and at times violent campaign to overturn his 2020 reelection loss to Joe Biden.
They literally crossed paths Saturday, with Harris’s official vice-presidential Air Force Two and Trump’s personal jet sharing the airport tarmac in Charlotte, North Carolina.
Both held rallies in North Carolina, while Harris also spoke to supporters in Georgia, another of the seven swing states seen as the keys to victory in an otherwise dead-even nationwide contest. Trump also added in a stop in Virginia.
The rounds of high-stakes speeches before thousands of people at each stop will continue Sunday when Harris holds multiple events in the swing state of Michigan and Trump rallies with supporters in Georgia, North Carolina and Pennsylvania.
With less than three days left before last polls close, Trump, 78, and Harris, 60, are scrapping for a tiny number of undecided voters and, crucially, trying to energize their bases to get out and vote.
For Harris, a key electorate is women voters — partly because of her own historic role, but mostly due to widespread fury over the ruling by Trump-appointed justices on the Supreme Court to overturn Roe v Wade, ending a decades-long constitutional right to abortion.
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“Donald Trump’s not done. He will ban abortion nationwide. He wants to restrict access to birth control, put IVF treatments at risk and… force states to monitor women’s pregnancies,” Harris said in Atlanta, Georgia.
She painted Trump as “increasingly unstable, obsessed with revenge” and “out for unchecked power.”
“We have an opportunity in this election to finally turn the page on a decade of Donald Trump who spends full time trying to keep us divided and afraid of each other,” she said.
Trump’s rhetoric has become ever-darker as Election Day approaches.
In Gastonia, North Carolina, he conjured an apocalyptic vision where Harris would spark “a 1929-style economic depression” and “World War III.”
And he doubled down on his central campaign message that illegal immigration is swamping the country with violent criminals, telling women voters that he would protect them.
“When you’re home, in your house alone, and you have this monster that got out of prison, he’s got, you know, six charges of murdering six different people, I think you’d rather have Trump,” he said.
The candidates’ frantic schedules will run right into Monday, culminating with late-night rallies — in Grand Rapids, Michigan, for Trump and Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, for Harris.
Trump has worked hard to appeal to men, appearing on podcasts with martial artists, spending time in barbershops and meeting with crypto entrepreneurs. With Harris getting a surge in support from women, some predict a dramatic gender gap in the results.
Thousands demonstrated Saturday in central Washington for the Women’s March.
Sheridan Steelman, a 74-year-old part-time English teacher, said she’d previously been on the sidelines but was voting now for Harris.
“There’s too much at stake,” she said, noting her worries over reproductive health issues but also “being ignored and silenced.”
Earlier, Trump lashed out at a Democratic TV ad depicting wives of his supporters secretly voting for Harris.
“Can you imagine a wife not telling her husband who she’s voting for?” he asked on Fox News.
With Trump refusing to say whether he would accept a loss, businesses in the US capital have begun boarding up storefronts as city authorities warn of a “fluid, unpredictable security environment.”
Trump is already alleging fraud and cheating in swing states such as Pennsylvania, laying the groundwork for what could be more unrest, following the violence that erupted at the US Capitol in the wake of the 2020 vote.
Reported by AFP
