Vice President Kamala Harris courted voters critical of the Gaza war, while former President Donald Trump intensified his inflammatory rhetoric with a controversial comment about journalists being shot.
Both candidates are focusing on key swing states as they make last-minute appeals to undecided voters before Election Day.
With under 36 hours remaining before polls open, Trump projected confidence, predicting a “landslide,” while Harris energized a crowd at Michigan State University, declaring, “we have momentum—it’s on our side.”
The 2024 race remains razor-thin in several critical states, with early voting numbers already surpassing 77.6 million, nearly half of the total votes cast in 2020.
Harris, spent Sunday in Michigan, a must-win state for Democrats. In her appeal, she acknowledged the concerns of the state’s sizable Arab-American population, numbering about 200,000, who have expressed dissatisfaction with the US response to the Israel-Hamas conflict.
“As president, I will do everything in my power to end the war in Gaza,” she assured the crowd, noting the presence of community leaders.
Reflecting on the conflict, she added,
“I want to say this year has been difficult, given the scale of death and destruction in Gaza, given the civilian casualties and displacement in Lebanon. It is devastating.”
The rest of her address focused on voter mobilization.
“We got two days to get this done,” she urged. “Let’s spend the next two days so that we have no regrets.”
Meanwhile, Trump, 78, held rallies across Pennsylvania, North Carolina, and Georgia—key battleground states that could determine the election outcome due to the Electoral College system. He again suggested he may contest a potential defeat, while adopting increasingly hostile language, this time commenting to supporters that he “wouldn’t mind” if journalists were shot.
Calling Democrats “demonic,” Trump warned his supporters in Lititz, Pennsylvania, “you would be stupid” if they didn’t vote. Despite no evidence of widespread election fraud, he alleged,
“Democrats in Pennsylvania are fighting so hard to steal this damn thing.”
During his nearly 90-minute speech, he alluded to a previous assassination attempt, suggesting that a bullet would have to go through the crowd of reporters to reach him, adding,
“To get me, somebody would have to shoot through the fake news—and I don’t mind that so much,” which was met with laughter from the crowd.
Trump’s escalating rhetoric included a reflection on his contested 2020 loss, remarking that he “shouldn’t have left” the White House. He has hinted that he might once again refuse to concede if he loses the current election. At another rally in Kinston, North Carolina, he told supporters,
“we’re going to have on Tuesday a landslide that’s too big to rig.”
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