Donald Trump began hurtling through four Maga rallies across three battleground states – and delivered a dark and dystopian speech about the “migrant invasion” of murderers and drug dealers – while Kamala Harris put all her last chips on Pennsylvania in a frantic final day of campaigning from both candidates.
With the polls showing the contest essentially deadlocked between two vastly different political visions, both the ex-president and the vice-president were scrambling on Monday to drive home their message. Though early voting has already smashed all records across the country, there is still everything to play for in cajoling undecided and unengaged voters to the polls on election day.
Trump began in Raleigh, North Carolina, where he took to a sports arena on Monday morning to deliver what is likely to be one of his last speeches as a presidential candidate. In a 90-minute address dominated by his virulent stance on immigration, he announced that if elected he would impose a new raft of tariffs against Mexico unless it stopped the passage of undocumented migrants across the southern border.
He threatened Claudia Sheinbaum, the newly ensconced Mexican president, that he would impose tariffs on all Mexican goods coming into the US. “I’m going to inform her on day one or sooner, that if they don’t stop this onslaught of criminals and drugs coming into our country, I’m going to immediately impose a 25% tariff on everything they send into” the US, he said.
In an impressive display of stamina for a 78-year-old, Trump was scheduled to stage four rallies by the end of the final day of campaigning. After Raleigh he is set to address two back-to-back rallies in the supremely important battleground of Pennsylvania, in Reading and Pittsburgh.
He will close out his conversation with American voters with a late-night event in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
In contrast to Trump’s three-state dash, Harris was putting all her last chips on Pennsylvania. She will start in Scranton, a quizzical location to kick off the final day given it is the birthplace of Joe Biden from whom she has tentatively been attempting to disassociate herself in recent days.
Then she will make an appearance in Allenstown and Pittsburgh, before culminating her unexpected bid for the White House in Philadelphia. Her last word will be issued from the legendary steps of the Museum of Art, immortalised by Sylvester Stallone in the 1976 film Rocky, where she will be joined by a host of celebrities including Lady Gaga and Oprah Winfrey.
In the final hours of the race Trump has been showing signs of wear and tear. His voice is hoarse, he looks tired, and his energy levels are relatively low.
“The voice is holding up, just about barely,” he told the Raleigh crowd.
Trump spent much of his Raleigh speech veering off his scripted remarks and embarking on long verbal rambles, which he called his “weave” and claimed was a sign of his “genius”. His peregrinations included the anti-climb panels he ordered to build his border wall, his wife Melania Trump’s bestselling book, Elon Musk’s rocket launches, the grass that was growing on Nasa runways before he came along, and air conditioning and steam baths for dogs.
Trump denigrated leading Democrats, starting with his presidential rival. He called Harris “low IQ” and who in a bizarre riff imagined her “turning, tossing, sweating” in her sleep.
He also called Nancy Pelosi, the former speaker of the US House, “crazy as a bed bug”, Barack Obama the “great divider”, and said he was waiting to “hit back” against the former first lady Michelle Obama after she had criticised him.
But the thrust of his closing argument was focused on immigration, and the supposed 21 million unauthorised migrants – “many of them murderers” – whom he claimed had been let into the US by the Biden administration. Even for a presidential candidate who has centered his campaign in anti-immigrant rhetoric, his closing remarks were dire.
“They’re killing people. They’re killing people at will,” he said, giving gruesome details of specific murders committed by undocumented migrants. “They just walk right into our country and they kill people.”
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Trump’s Raleigh stop marked his final appearance in North Carolina, a critical battleground state that he needs to win if he is to have a clear shot on returning to the White House. Though Democrats have only won the presidential race here twice since Jimmy Carter in 1976 (the other time being Barack Obama in 2008), Harris is running neck-and-neck against Trump.
The Guardian poll tracker shows Trump ahead by just one point – well within the margin of error.
In tune with the rest of the country, North Carolinians have been voting early in historic numbers. More than 4 million have already cast their ballots, substantially more than in 2020 and 2016, with the party alignment roughly evenly split between Republicans, Democrats and unaffiliated voters.
As part of his last push to secure victory on election day, Trump repeated the lie that the Biden administration and the federal disaster agency Fema had done nothing to help stricken families in western North Carolina following Hurricane Helene. Even that falsehood was tied to immigration.
“Fema did a horrible job,” Trump said. “The administration, they’re still not there. You know why? Because they’ve spent all their money on bringing in murderers, they spent all their money on bringing in illegal migrants.”
In fact, Fema’s budget for housing undocumented migrants is ringfenced and has no impact on the agency’s work dealing with disasters. Fema is channeling millions of dollars of federal money to the hurricane-hit region.
Read more of the Guardian’s 2024 US election coverage