Donald Trump and Kamala Harris hit the campaign trail for the final Sunday in one of the closest US presidential races in recent memory.
The former president was attending events in Pennsylvania, North Carolina and Georgia, three closely fought swing states that could well determine the result in the coming days.
During a two-hour address on his first stop of the day, Trump gave a profane and conspiracy-laden speech in which he mused about reporters being shot and labeled Democrats as “demonic.”
Noting the ballistic glass placed in front of him at events after a gunman nearly assassinated him at a July rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, Trump talked about places where he saw openings.
“I have this piece of glass here,” he said. “But all we have really over here is the fake news. And to get me, somebody would have to shoot through the fake news. And I don’t mind that so much.”
His campaign later sought to clarify his meaning.
“President Trump was brilliantly talking about the two assassination attempts on his own life, including one that came within 1/4 of an inch from killing him, something that the media constantly talks and jokes about,” campaign spokesperson Steven Cheung said in a statement. “The President’s statement about protective glass placement has nothing to do with the media being harmed, or anything else.”
Trump also referred to John Bolton, his former national security adviser and now a strident critic, as a “dumb son of a b****.” And he repeated familiar and debunked theories about voter fraud, alleging that Democrats could only win by cheating.
“It’s a crooked country,” Trump said. “And we’re going to make it straight. We’re going to make it straight.”
Harris made her closing pitch for the US presidency at a historically Black church in another battleground state, Michigan.
“In just two days we have the power to decide the fate of our nation for generations to come,” Harris told parishioners at Greater Emmanuel Institutional Church of God in Christ in Detroit. “We must act. It’s not enough to only pray; not enough to just talk. We must act on the plans he has in store for us, and we must make them real through our works, in our daily choices, in services to our communities, in our democracy.”
Her campaign received a boost in Iowa on Saturday when a respected poll for the Des Moines Register newspaper put the Democrat three points ahead in a state Trump has won twice, although another poll put the Republican 10 points ahead.
Overall opinion polls continue to show the pair locked in a tight race, with Harris, 60, bolstered by strong support among women voters while former president Trump, 78, gains ground with Hispanic voters, particularly men.
Voters overall view both candidates unfavorably, according to Reuters/Ipsos polling, but that so far has not dissuaded them from casting ballots.
More than 76 million US citizens have already done so ahead of Tuesday’s Election Day, according to the University of Florida’s Election Lab, approaching half the total 160 million votes cast in 2020, in which US voter turnout was the highest in more than a century.
Control of the US Congress is also up for grabs on Tuesday, with Republicans favored to capture a majority in the Senate while Democrats are seen as having an even chance of flipping Republicans’ narrow majority in the House of Representatives. Presidents whose parties have not controlled both chambers have struggled to pass major new legislation over the past decade.
Trump was due to speak later on Sunday in Kinston, North Carolina, before ending his day with an evening rally in Macon, Georgia.
Of the seven US states seen as competitive, Georgia and North Carolina are the second-biggest prizes up for grabs on Tuesday, with each holding 16 of the 270 votes a candidate needs to win in the state-by-state Electoral College to secure the presidency. Pennsylvania offers 19 electors.
Election analysts believe Harris would need to win about 45 electoral votes in the seven swing states to win the White House, while Trump would need about 51, when accounting for the states they are forecast to win easily.
After her Detroit appearance, Harris was due to head to East Lansing, a college town in Michigan, an industrial state that is viewed as a must-win for the Democrat.
She faces skepticism from some of the state’s 200,000 Arab Americans who are frustrated Harris has not done more to help end the war in Gaza and scale back aid to Israel. Trump visited Dearborn, the heart of the Arab American community, on Friday and vowed to end the wars in the Middle East.
Harris, who has met behind closed doors with selected Arab American and Muslim leaders, will focus her energy on Black neighborhoods on Sunday.
Samah Noureddine, 44, a Lebanese American from Grosse Ile, a town near Detroit, said she voted for Joe Biden in 2020 but was casting a ballot for Jill Stein of the Green Party this year.
“I’m upset because Harris is funding the genocide and if we get Trump we’re going to suffer too,” she said. “I’m sick of both of them.”