Donald Trump and Kamala Harris closed out the tumultuous 2024 marketing campaign with competing rallies throughout Pennsylvania, providing contrasting visions – and moods – within the ultimate hours earlier than polls opened in an election each candidates have forged as an existential combat for America’s future.
In Philadelphia, Harris ended a frenetic sprint throughout the state on the artwork museum steps made well-known within the movie Rocky – “a tribute to those who start as the underdog and climb to victory” – the place tens of hundreds of supporters gathered for the star-studded occasion. Since her sudden ascent 107 days in the past, Harris has instructed Democrats that she and her working mate, Tim Walz, are the “clear underdogs” in what polls recommend is an exceedingly shut race in opposition to Trump.
“Momentum is on our side,” she declared to roars from the gang.
Earlier within the day, Harris rallied in Allentown, Scranton and Pittsburgh. She additionally made stops in Studying to go to a Puerto Rican restaurant with Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and to be a part of a canvas for her personal presidential marketing campaign. “I wanted to go door-knocking!” Harris instructed the household who got here to the door, surprised to see the vice-president on their porch.
Trump, against this, appeared hoarse and exhausted at instances, as he barnstormed the battleground states, holding rallies in Raleigh, North Carolina, two in Pennsylvania and a late-evening occasion in Grand Rapids, Michigan – the place he ended his two earlier presidential campaigns. His viewers bleary-eyed because the Village Individuals’s YMCA performed, Trump exited the stage of his finale occasion at 2.10 am.
His remarks have been darkish and dystopian, rife with warnings that forged migrants as harmful criminals and private assaults on quite a few high-profile Democratic girls. He has continued to boast about his crowd sizes, however studies recommend a few of his ultimate occasions have been suffering from empty seats and early departures from viewers members throughout his prolonged, meandering speeches.
“Tonight, then, we finish, as we started, with optimism with energy, with joy,” mentioned Harris, who was launched by Oprah Winfrey in Philadelphia. Behind her, the steps have been illuminated blue and a big “President for All” banner was displayed. All of it matched the temper of Harris’s constructive closing argument, an try and shift the main target away from the menace posed by the ex-president, whom she didn’t point out by title in her remarks or her ultimate advert.
Girl Gaga and Ricky Martin carried out on the occasion, whereas Oprah Winfrey introduced on stage 10 first-time voters to share their purpose for supporting Harris. Winfrey maybe offered the starkest warning of the evening, suggesting a second Trump presidency be the tip of free and honest elections in the US.
“If we don’t show up tomorrow, it is entirely possible that we will not have the opportunity to ever cast a ballot again.”
Because the Harris marketing campaign and its surrogates have continued to attraction to feminine voters, Trump revived acquainted insults in opposition to notable girls, generally with violent language.
In North Carolina, he attacked former first woman Michelle Obama, saying: “She hit me the other day. I was going to say to my people, am I allowed to hit her now? They said, take it easy, sir.” He additionally recommended the Democratic congresswoman Nancy Pelosi ought to have been jailed for ripping up a replica of his 2020 State of the Union tackle: “She’s a bad, sick woman, she’s crazy as a bedbug.”
And Trump repeated his line that Harris is a “low-IQ individual”, adopted by an incoherent tangent seemingly imagining her struggling to sleep: “I don’t want to have her say, you know, I had an idea last night while I was sleeping, turning, tossing, sweating …” he mentioned, with out ending the sentence.
Trump leaned into his taunts as he continues to face scrutiny over his latest remark suggesting that Liz Cheney, the previous GOP congresswoman and a Harris supporter, ought to face rifles “shooting at her”. Showing on ABC’s The View on Monday, Cheney mentioned, “Women are going to save the day” on Tuesday.
In North Carolina, Trump additionally threatened the newly elected president of Mexico, Claudia Sheinbaum, suggesting he would impose tariffs on all Mexican items “if they don’t stop this onslaught of criminals and drugs” – a part of his commerce proposals that economists have warned might considerably elevate prices for US shoppers.
At across the similar time, Harris was rallying in Allentown, roughly 40 miles away, critiquing Trumpism with out instantly naming her opponent: “America is ready for a new way forward, where we see our fellow American not as an enemy but as a neighbour. We are ready for a president who understands that the true measure of the strength of the leader is not based on who you beat down. It is based on who you lift up.”
Later, Trump’s working mate, JD Vance, earned loud applause at a rally in Georgia, when he attacked Harris by citing Joe Biden’s latest gaffe, by which he appeared to name Trump supporters “garbage”.
“In two days, we are going to take out the trash in Washington DC, and the trash is named is Kamala Harris,” mentioned the Ohio senator, in a comment that was condemned by Democrats and pundits.
The back-and-forth trash speaking originated with a comic’s racist joke at Trump’s latest New York rally, calling Puerto Rico a “floating island of garbage”, a remark that many Harris surrogates cited on Monday whereas interesting to Puerto Rican voters in Pennsylvania. “When is enough enough?” the rapper Fats Joe, who’s Puerto Rican, mentioned in Philadelphia, imploring his fellow Latinos to again the vice-president.
By his night rally in Pittsburgh, Trump returned to his crowd dimension obsession, making false claims about low turnout at Harris’s close by rally that hadn’t but begun. He then mocked Beyoncé, who rallied for Harris in Texas: “Everyone’s expecting a couple songs and there were no songs. There was no happiness.” He added, “We don’t need a star. I never had a star.”
By custom, the primary election day ballots have been forged in New Hampshire’s tiny Dixville Notch, simply after midnight on Tuesday. The city’s six voters break up their ballots evenly between Trump and Harris, a tie that appeared to replicate the state of the razor’s edge race.
The Eleventh-hour scramble to prove voters comes as Trump continues to make false claims about voter fraud, elevating fears about how he may problem the outcomes if Harris wins. In a name with reporters on Monday, the Harris marketing campaign mentioned it was ready to fight any efforts by Trump to discredit the end result.
“We have hundreds of lawyers across the country ready to protect election results against any challenge that Trump might bring,” mentioned Dana Remus, a senior marketing campaign adviser and outdoors counsel. “This will not be the fastest process, but the law and the facts are on our side.”
Authorized challenges have been designed to undermine religion within the electoral course of, she added: “Keep in mind that the volume of cases does not equate to a volume of legitimate concerns. In fact, it just shows how desperate they’re becoming.”
There are additionally rising fears that political violence will escalate on election day and past, as misinformation and conspiracy theories are anticipated to unfold whereas counting is beneath means. Election officers in a single Nevada county mentioned on Monday that threats have change into so extreme that polling locations have put in “panic buttons” to mechanically name 911 in emergencies.
At Trump’s Pittsburgh rally, Michael Barringer, a 55-year-old coalminer, expressed his disdain for undocumented immigrants in explaining his assist for Trump: “You’ve got millions and millions of illegal aliens crossing the border. They don’t speak English. They don’t say a pledge allegiance to the flag. They freeload off of us. I’m all for legal immigration, but not coming across the border illegally, taking American jobs.”
Elizabeth Slaby, 81, was the primary in line at Harris’s Allentown rally, arriving hours forward of its begin, at about 6am. A registered Republican for greater than 50 years, Slaby mentioned she modified her registration after the January 6 assault: “I never thought I’d see a woman president and now I’m so, so excited.”
Sam Levine contributed reporting from Allentown.
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