Donald Trump, Kamala Harris enter final week of tense US election
Kamala Harris criss-crosses Michigan on Monday while Donald Trump heads to Georgia – another of the decisive swing states in one of the closest US elections in history – after presiding over a dark mega-rally aimed at whipping up his right-wing base.
With only a week until the November 5 election day, more than 41 million Americans have cast ballots in early voting – including outgoing Democratic President Joe Biden, who voted on Monday after waiting in a long line in his home town of Wilmington, Delaware.
Tensions are soaring in a race that polls suggest is too close to call, fuelled by fears Trump could again refuse to recognise a defeat, as he did in 2020. The Republican continues to claim he was cheated and his rhetoric has become increasingly infused with violence and threats.
Concerns increased after ABC News reported a fire consumed hundreds of early ballots cast in a supposedly secure drop-off box in Vancouver, Washington, part of a highly competitive district. Arson was reportedly suspected in another ballot box fire hours earlier in Portland, Oregon.
Meanwhile, Trump faced outrage after one of the warm-up speakers at his Sunday rally in New York’s Madison Square Garden called majority-Hispanic Puerto Rico “a floating island of garbage”.
The former President’s campaign said this “does not reflect the views of President Trump”.
However, the speaker, comedian Tony Hinchcliffe, was unrepentant, writing on social media that critics “have no sense of humour” – a comment reposted by Trump’s son and adviser, Don Trump jnr.
Harris, 60, called Trump “increasingly unstable and unhinged” in an interview with CBS News. She later told reporters Trump “fans the fuel of hate”.
As the clock ticks down, the challenge for Harris and Trump is both to energise core supporters and pull in the tiny number of persuadable voters who might still tip the balance – especially in the seven swing states where polls suggest they are running neck and neck.
Harris, who spent Sunday in must-win Pennsylvania, was holding three events in Michigan, while Trump was to hold two in Georgia – a pattern set to be repeated around the country’s other battlegrounds for the next seven days.
On Tuesday in Washington, Harris will deliver what her campaign calls a “closing argument”, in a nod to her career as a prosecutor.
The Democrat will speak from the same spot near the White House where then-President Trump stoked his supporters on January 6, 2021, to launch a violent assault on Congress in an attempt to stop certification of his re-election loss to Biden.
Trump – the oldest presidential nominee yet and also the first to have been convicted of crimes – used a packed Madison Square Garden for his closing pitch on Sunday.
The campaign celebrated the event in the legendary arena as a show of force and energy.
‘Joy’?
“PURE JOY”, posted senior Trump immigration adviser Stephen Miller on X.
But much of the event – likened by Democrats to an infamous 1939 rally of American fascists in the same venue – was not joyous.
Trump lashed out at the “enemy from within”, which he described as an “amorphous group” that includes the Democratic Party leadership.
His allies unleashed crude, sometimes openly racist rhetoric to mock Harris sexually, make fun of Hispanics’ birth control, parody Jews and Palestinians, and poke fun at a black man by referring to a watermelon – a deep-rooted racist stereotype in the United States.
“RACIST RALLY” read the front-page headline on the New York Daily News tabloid.
The row over the comedian’s crude joke came as Puerto Rican superstar rapper Bad Bunny endorsed Harris.
Residents in the US territory cannot vote in presidential elections, but those within the United States proper – which includes about 450,000 Puerto Ricans in Pennsylvania – can.
Hanging over the entire election is concern that the aftermath will be as chaotic – and perilous – as in 2020. According to a CNN poll out Monday, only 30% of Americans think Trump would concede defeat, while 73% think Harris would accept a loss.