Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump and his Democratic rival Kamala Harris accused each other of deepening the discord of a deeply polarised nation as the US presidential campaign entered its final week.
The republican former president donned an orange reflective safety vest and climbed into the passenger seat of a garbage truck in Green Bay, Wisconsin, to call attention to an earlier comment by US President Joe Biden that he said revealed the disdain democratic leaders feel towards Mr Trump’s supporters.
Taking questions as he sat in the truck, Mr Trump said the US president “should be ashamed of himself” and that Ms Harris was guilty by association. Trump supporters “are not garbage,” the former president said.
Mr Trump, however, distanced himself from the comedian at his Madison Square Garden rally, Tony Hinchcliffe, who triggered this week’s political firestorm by saying Puerto Rico is “a floating island of garbage.”
“I don’t know who he is…I know nothing about him,” said Mr Trump, adding, “I love Puerto Rico and Puerto Rico loves me.”
Vice President Harris, meanwhile, urged voters in North Carolina to “turn the page” on Mr Trump, who she said was focused on his own grievances, rather than Americans’ needs.
“If he is elected, on Day One Donald Trump will walk into that office with an enemies list. When I am elected, I will walkin with a to-do list,” she said.
The race has tightened in its final weeks, and a Reuters/Ipsos poll showed Ms Harris leading the republican by just 44% to 43% among registered voters nationally, well within the poll’s margin of error.
Other opinion polls show tight margins in the seven battleground states that will decide the 5 November election.
Tensions are running high. Election workers in competitive states are bracing for violence, and authorities in Florida arrested a man for menacing voters with a machete.
Polarisation in America has fostered distrust. According to a March Reuters/Ipsos poll, some 38% of republicans said they viewed the Democratic Party as an “imminent threat” to the US, while 41% of democrats said that of republicans.
The campaign to focus on the issue won a victory when the US Supreme Court reinstated Virginia’s decision to purge from its voter rolls 1,600 people who state officials concluded may not be citizens, a claim that Biden’s administration disputed.
Biden’s ‘garbage’ gaffe
Mr Biden’s Tuesday comment, in which he appeared to describe one or some Trump supporters as “garbage,” undercut Ms Harris’s pitch to work with those who disagree with her and move past the bitter divisions that define U.S. politics.
The US president, an 81-year-old incumbent who ended his re-election bid in July after a disastrous debate performance against Mr Trump, has a history of misspeaking.
Mr Biden said he was referring to racist comments made by a single speaker at a Trump rally, while the republican accused Mr Biden of referring to all those who support him.
“We’re ‘garbage.’ And I call you the heart and soul of America,” Mr Trump said.