WASHINGTON: On Wednesday, rivals for the White House, Donald Trump and Kamala Harris, began a frantic week of election campaigning. The Democrat had to distance herself from remarks made by President Joe Biden that appeared to describe Trump supporters as “garbage.”
Harris concentrated once more on two of seven battleground states that could decide who wins the closest election in modern US history, traveling first to North Carolina and then to Pennsylvania.
Trump, a Republican, was in North Carolina on Wednesday as well. He was in the town of Rocky Mount, which is about an hour’s drive from Harris’s rally in Raleigh. After that, he will travel to Wisconsin, where he will appear alongside Brett Favre, an American sports star.
If he loses, Trump is likely to reject the election result. The Republican candidate has already used isolated irregularities discovered by election officials to bolster his claims of widespread “cheating.”
On Wednesday, Harris had hoped to be basking in the glow of a speech she gave outside the White House to tens of thousands of people in which she warned her rival that she was unstable and eager for unrestrained power.
The president reacted to a warm-up speaker at a Trump rally who referred to the island of Puerto Rico as “a floating island of garbage” in an off-color joke that risked alienating Latino voters. Instead, she was fending off questions about Biden’s apparent gaffe when she traveled to North Carolina and then Pennsylvania, focusing again on two of seven battleground states.
Before the White House attempted to clarify that Biden was referring to Trump’s rhetoric rather than his supporters, he stated, “The only garbage I see floating out there are his supporters.”
Harris, Biden’s vice president, stated, “Let me be clear, I strongly disagree with any criticism of people based on who they vote for.”
“Unstable, obsessed”: Harris had delivered a powerful closing argument in a symbolic setting in Washington. She spoke at the exact location where Trump sparked a crowd that attacked the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, in a violent attempt to keep him in power despite his defeat to Biden in the 2020 election.
Harris stated, “This is someone who is unstable, obsessed with retribution, consumed by resentment, and out for unchecked power.”
However, the vice president also offered a positive outlook on the nation’s future, with the White House illuminated behind her. “To the flag-waving supporters, Harris stated, “Each of you has the power to turn the page and begin writing the next chapter in the most extraordinary story ever told.”
On Wednesday, Trump took to social media to reiterate his claims of widespread voter fraud, making it appear as though he was preparing for a second performance centered on the unproven claim that he lost to Biden in 2020.
In the crucial battleground state of Pennsylvania, where he had previously made similar remarks on Tuesday evening, he denounced what he described as “cheating” at “large-scale levels never seen before.”
