Trump and Harris make their final pitch

In the final, frenetic days of the 2024 campaign, Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Trump are crisscrossing the country, keeping up a dizzying schedule of rallies, public appearances and media interviews as they make their final pitch to voters in critical swing states.

Trump is campaigning aggressively in North Carolina, with three weekend rallies in the state, where election officials have worked to ensure voters could cast their vote in counties devastated by Hurricane Helene in September.

After rallies in Atlanta and Charlotte, N.C., on Saturday, Harris will spend Sunday in Michigan, a “blue wall” state where Trump won in 2016 before narrowly losing to Joe Biden four years later.

Harris will appear in and around Detroit on Sunday before an evening rally at Michigan State University in East Lansing.

Controversial comments from Trump – who said last week in Wisconsin that he would protect them “whether the women like it or not” — reverberated throughout the weekend, as did a bizarre moment at a Friday night rally in Milwaukee where the former president ranted about microphone problems.

“Did you hear what Donny Trump said the other day?” rapper Cardi B said onstage at a Friday rally for Harris, who was also in Milwaukee.

“He said he’s going to protect women whether they like it or not,” Cardi B said, adding that “protections for women, especially when we’re talking about maternal and mental health care, don’t tell them what to do with their body have to do. . It supports them and gives them the care they need for what they want to do with their bodies.”

At that event at the Wisconsin State Fair Expo Center, Milwaukee Mayor Cavalier Johnson told attendees that “our community, we literally, quite literally, are the crossroads of this election,” refocusing the campaigns on the Badger State and underlined his 10 electoral votes. .

“You know what’s going on in the city right now,” he added, referring to Trump’s rally seven miles away at the Fiserv Forum, home of the NBA’s Milwaukee Bucks.

A few minutes after Trump’s speech, the crowd began chanting, “Fix the microphone!”

Trump irritably pulled the microphone off its stand and held it close to his face. He became angrier when the crowd shouted again that they could not hear him.

“Do you want to see me beat the shit out of people backstage?” Trump asked the crowd, who cheered in approval.

While complaining about the low height of the microphone stands at some of his events, Trump leaned over the stands, rubbed his hand up and down and bobbed his head with his mouth open as the audience laughed.

“Way too low,” he said, pushing the microphone stand away.

The moment was widely mocked social media by users who said Trump pantomimed oral sex.

Harris’ campaign tweeted a video of the moment along with a single question mark.

During the rally in Milwaukee, Trump also highlighted the October jobs report.

The Labor Department reported Friday that U.S. employers added 12,000 jobs in October, hampered by a pair of hurricanes — Milton and Helene — and a strike at Boeing. The 4.1% unemployment rate reflects an overall healthier economy.

Trump told his supporters he did not believe the storms were a factor.

“This looks like depression,” he said. ‘And there is nothing, no event. I think they’re trying to blame it on the hurricane. No, that was, you know, kind of, a relatively small area. No, not the hurricane. Not the hurricane. They are the hurricane.”

On Saturday morning, Trump called into “Fox & Friends,” where he called the jobs report “a gift” to his campaign.

Normally, politicians refrain from rejoicing over economic figures that are considered poor, and instead express sympathy for Americans who are struggling financially.

However, Trump said, “I finally got a gift.”

“I’m running against two people who just put out the worst jobs numbers, which is a big problem, the biggest problem economically, the biggest thing that’s happened,” he said.

At a rally Saturday in Gastonia, N.C., Trump repeated his false claims that the Federal Emergency Management Agency short-changed hurricane victims by using money intended for disaster relief for undocumented immigrants.

And he reiterated his comments on protecting women.

“I’m going to protect our women,” he said. “I got into so much trouble, you saw that.”

“I think the women love me because they know, you know what, if they don’t have me, there’s millions of people flooding through the suburbs.”

He painted a dark, damsel-in-distress picture of women being attacked in their homes by criminal migrants.

“I believe women need to be protected, men need to be protected, children, everyone – but women need to be protected when they’re at home in the suburbs,” he said.

The former president also promised a prominent role for Robert F. Kennedy Jr., an anti-vaccine crusader who has pushed conspiracy theories. In recent appearances in support of Trump, Kennedy has said he wants to get rid of “the toxins” in American food.

“We will make America whole again,” Trump said. “RFK Jr. will be in charge of that.”

North Carolina’s sixteen electoral votes are a coveted prize in the exciting presidential race. Republicans have won the state in 12 of the last 14 presidential elections, with Democrats winning Jimmy Carter in 1976 and Barack Obama in 2008 before losing to Republican Mitt Romney four years later.

In 2020, Trump defeated Biden there with just over 1% of the vote.

He told supporters on Saturday: “We’re going to win this state, we’re going to win the whole ball game.”

Harris, speaking in Atlanta highlighted her economic plans on Saturday and said her priority in the White House would be lowering the cost of living.

Trump, she said, would come into office “by considering a list of enemies,” and she said she would come in “with my to-do list,” including enacting a federal ban on grocery price gouging.

Harris said Trump is “increasingly unstable, obsessed with revenge, consumed with resentment, and the man is bent on unchecked power.”

“In 90 days,” she said, “will he or I be in the Oval Office?”

The crowd responded, “You!”