Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris and her Republican opponent, Donald Trumpdelivered starkly different messages on the campaign trail in the US on Monday as they tried to win over undecided voters in the two weeks leading up to Election Day.
Vice President Harris, campaigning alongside former Republican Rep. Liz Cheney, sought to convince conservative suburban women in three Midwestern battleground states that former President Trump was a threat to abortion rightsnational security and democracy.
As the election approaches, Harris has stepped up her attacks on Trump’s fitness for office, often calling him “unstable” or “volatile” and questioning his temperament.
“In many, many ways, Donald Trump is a frivolous man, but the consequences of him being president of the United States are brutally serious,” Harris, 60, said at an event in Malvern, Pennsylvania, one of seven battleground states. which are expected to decide the winner of Elections on November 5.
Trump, 78, has often dismissed any notion that he is a threat to democracy, arguing that Democrats are the real threat because of the criminal investigations he and his allies face for trying to overturn his 2020 election loss.
While Harris suggested Trump was unfit for office, the former president questioned the competence of the Biden administration.
During one of several stops Monday in highly competitive North Carolina, Trump urged supporters in the hurricane-struck mountains to go to the polls despite the odds they face.
He also renewed his criticism of the emergency management agency FEMA and sought to connect with working-class supporters by praising its continued efforts on his behalf.
“I’ve gone 52 days without a day off, which a lot of these people would respect,” Trump said at a podium backed by rubble from the massive floods that hit the area last month.
With opinion polls showing a close race, the two candidates are picking up the pace and their frenetic campaign schedules underscore the importance of the small groups of voters that could propel either candidate over the top.
GOD AND CONSCIENCE
Trump ended his day at an evangelical Christian event in Concord, North Carolina, by telling the crowd that he likes to think that during the failed assassination attempt on him on July 13 in Butler, Pennsylvania, he was saved by being “brought to the ground by a supernatural hand.”
In his remarks, he avoided using some of the foul-mouthed rhetoric he has used in recent speeches. He said when he looks back on his life, “I now realize that the hand of God brought me to where I am today.”
Evangelical leader Franklin Graham prayed for Trump to be elected.
“Rallies and positive poll results are not going to win this election,” Graham said. “It will be God.”
Trump’s visit to North Carolina coincided with concerns among his Republican allies that crippling damage from Hurricane Helena would lower voter turnout in the battleground state’s conservative mountain regions.
The area hardest hit by Helene is heavily Republican. Trump won about 62 percent of the vote in 2020 in the 25 counties declared a disaster area after Helin, while Biden won about 51 percent in the rest of the state, according to a Reuters analysis.
“Obviously we want them to vote, but we want them to live and survive and be happy and healthy because this is really a tragedy,” Trump said at a campaign stop in Swannanoa, population 5,300, after touring areas devastated by the storm.
At an event with Harris in Royal Oak, Michigan, Cheney tried to give Republicans on the fence permission to support the Democrat without fear of reprisal.
“There are certainly a lot of Republicans who will tell me, ‘I can’t be public.’ They’re really worried about a whole range of things, including violence, but they’re going to do the right thing,” Cheney said. “And I would just remind people that if you’re at all concerned, you can vote your conscience and never have to say a word to anybody.”
Later in Brookfield, Wisconsin, Cheney described herself as “pro-life” but said she was troubled by state abortion restrictions that have prevented women from getting the care they need.
Cheney and her father, Dick Cheney, who was vice president under President George W. Bush and is still reviled by many Democrats for his defense of the US invasion of Iraq, are staunch conservatives and two of the most prominent Republican supporters of Harris.
In a post on his Truth Social platform on Monday, Trump called Liz Cheney “dumb as a rock” and a “war hawk.” He accused her of wanting to go to war with “every Muslim country known to mankind,” just like her father, whom he called “the man who ridiculously pushed Bush to go to war in the Middle East.”
