WASHINGTON: White House rivals Donald Trump and Kamala Harris launched a frantic last week of election campaigning on Wednesday, with the Democrat having to distance herself from comments by President Joe Biden that appeared to label Trump supporters “garbage.”

Harris traveled to North Carolina and onward to Pennsylvania, focusing again on two of seven battleground states that could determine who wins the closest election in modern US history.

Republican Trump was also in North Carolina on Wednesday — in the town of Rocky Mount, about an hour’s drive from Harris’s Raleigh rally — and will then head to Wisconsin, where he will appear alongside US sports star Brett Favre.

Trump is expected to reject the election result if he loses, with the Republican already seizing on isolated irregularities caught by election officials to amplify his claims of widespread “cheating.”

On Wednesday, Harris had hoped to be basking in the afterglow of a speech attended by tens of thousands outside the White House, where she warned her rival was unstable and itching for unbridled power.

Democrat candidate travels to North Carolina and onward to Pennsylvania, focusing again on two of seven battleground states

Instead, she was fending off questions about Biden’s apparent gaffe when the president reacted to a warm-up speaker at a Trump rally referring to the island of Puerto Rico as “a floating island of garbage” in an off-color joke that risked alienating Latino voters.

“The only garbage I see floating out there is his supporters,” Biden said, before the White House sought to clarify that he was referring to Trump’s rhetoric, not to his supporters.

“Let me be clear, I strongly disagree with any criticism of people based on who they vote for,” said Harris, Biden’s vice president.

‘Unstable, obsessed’

In Washington, Harris had given a powerful closing argument speech in a symbolic setting. She spoke at the very spot where Trump stirred up a mob that went on to attack the US Capitol on Jan 6, 2021 in a violent attempt to keep him in power even though he lost the 2020 election to Biden.

“This is someone who is unstable, obsessed with revenge, consumed with grievance and out for unchecked power,” Harris said.

But the vice president also gave an optimistic vision of the United States’ future, with the White House lit up behind her. “Each of you has the power to turn the page, and start writing the next chapter in the most extraordinary story ever told,” Harris told flag-waving supporters.

On Wednesday, Trump took to social media to repeat his claims of widespread voter fraud, appearing to set the stage for a repeat performance around the unfounded claim that his 2020 loss to Biden was rigged.

He denounced what he said was “cheating” at “large-scale levels never seen before” in the key battleground state of Pennsylvania, where he had made similar comments on Tuesday evening.

Published in Dawn, October 31st, 2024