LATROBE: Kamala Harris and Donald Trump invited star power to the campaign trail on Saturday, as they took shots at each other's endurance and urged early voting in battleground states key to the ever-tightening US presidential race. At rallies in Detroit and Atlanta, Harris brought out pop stars Lizzo and Usher respectively to warm up her crowds, while painting her rival Trump as exhausted and unhinged.
The Republican running for a second go in the White House countered those accusations with a marathon speech in Pennsylvania, as billionaire Elon Musk campaigned for him elsewhere in the state. Both candidates are fighting on every front to seal up voters' support in a race that polls suggest is effectively tied with fewer than three weeks to Election Day.
Harris told voters in Detroit that her opponent's platform is "self-consuming" while repeating vows to invest in the working and middle classes. "We stand for the idea that the true measure of the strength of a leader is not based on who you beat down, it's on who you lift up," said Harris.
Later in Atlanta, Harris accused Trump of "ducking debates and cancelling interviews because of exhaustion". "When he does answer a question or speak at a rally -- have you noticed he tends to go off script and ramble, and generally, for the life of him, cannot finish a thought?" she said. "He's called it the weave. But we here we will call it nonsense."
Trump began his more than 90-minute rally with a lengthy monologue on the late golfer Arnold Palmer, for whom the regional airport in Latrobe, where the Republican appeared, is named.
He then launched into his routine, meandering speech that includes attacking migrants, personally denigrating Harris and repeating false claims about the 2020 election.
At rally in Las Vegas, former US president Barack Obama took aim at Trump, comparing him to a grandfather whose bizarre behaviour would spark worry after his rambling speeches and a strange dance party.
"So you would be worried if your grandpa started acting like this. You would,... right? You'd like, call up your brother,... be like, have you seen grandpa lately? What we gonna do? "But this is coming from somebody who wants unchecked power, wants the most powerful office on Earth, with the nuclear codes and all that," said Obama. Both candidates are spending their final campaign days in pivotal battleground states where early voting is already underway. — AFP
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