By Andrea Shalal and Steve Holland
BROOKFIELD, Wisconsin/SWANNANOA, North Carolina (Reuters) -Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris and her Republican rival, Donald Trump, delivered radically completely different messages on the U.S. marketing campaign path on Monday as they sought to win over undecided voters within the two weeks earlier than Election Day.
Vice President Harris, campaigning alongside Republican former lawmaker Liz Cheney, tried to persuade conservative, suburban ladies in three Midwestern battleground states that former President Trump was a menace to abortion rights, nationwide safety and democracy.
Because the election attracts nearer, Harris has been sharpening her assaults on Trump’s health for workplace, typically calling him “unstable” or “unhinged” and questioning his temperament.
“In lots of, some ways Donald Trump is an unserious man, however the penalties of him being president of the USA are brutally severe,” Harris, 60, mentioned at an occasion in Malvern, Pennsylvania, one in every of seven battleground states anticipated to resolve the winner of the Nov. 5 election.
Trump, 78, steadily rejects any notion that he’s a menace to democracy, arguing it’s Democrats who’re the true menace due to the felony investigations he and his allies have confronted for his or her makes an attempt to overturn his 2020 election loss.
Whereas Harris was suggesting Trump was unfit for workplace, the previous president was questioning the Biden administration’s competence.
Throughout one in every of a number of stops on Monday in ultra-competitive North Carolina, Trump urged supporters within the hurricane-battered mountains to go to the polls regardless of the hardships they had been dealing with.
He additionally renewed his criticisms of the emergency administration company FEMA and sought to narrate to working-class supporters by praising his nonstop efforts on his personal behalf.
“I’ve achieved 52 days with no break day, which a number of these individuals would respect,” Trump mentioned at a lectern backed by rubble from huge floods that hit the world final month.
With opinion polls displaying an in depth race, the 2 candidates are selecting up the tempo, their frenzied marketing campaign schedules underlining the significance of small pockets of voters that might put both candidate excessive.
GOD AND CONSCIENCE
Trump ended his day at an evangelical Christian occasion in Harmony, North Carolina, telling a crowd he likes to suppose that throughout the failed assassination try towards him on July 13 in Butler, Pennsylvania, he was saved by being “knocked to the bottom by a supernatural hand.”
In his remarks, he averted utilizing a number of the off-color rhetoric he has been utilizing in current speeches. He mentioned as he seems again on his life, “I now acknowledge that it has been the hand of God main me to the place I’m at this time.”
Evangelical chief Franklin Graham supplied a prayer that Trump be elected.
“Rallies and constructive ballot numbers should not going to win this election,” Graham mentioned. “It may be God.”
Trump’s go to to North Carolina coincided with issues amongst his Republican allies that crippling injury from storm Helene will depress turnout within the battleground state’s conservative mountain areas.
The world hit hardest by Helene is deeply Republican. Trump gained about 62% of the vote in 2020 within the 25 counties declared to be a catastrophe space after Helene, whereas Biden gained about 51% within the the rest of the state, in accordance with a Reuters evaluation.
“Clearly, we wish them to vote however we wish them to reside and survive and be blissful and wholesome, as a result of that is actually a tragedy,” Trump mentioned at a marketing campaign cease in Swannanoa, inhabitants 5,300, after touring areas destroyed by the storm.
At an occasion with Harris in Royal Oak, Michigan, Cheney sought to provide Republicans who’re on the fence permission to assist the Democrat with out fear of reprisal.
“I actually have many Republicans who will say to me, ‘I can not be public.’ They do fear about a complete vary of issues, together with violence, however they’re going to do the precise factor,” Cheney mentioned. “And I might simply remind individuals, for those who’re in any respect involved, you possibly can vote your conscience and never ever should say a phrase to anyone.”
Later, in Brookfield, Wisconsin, Cheney described herself as “pro-life” however mentioned she was troubled by state abortion restrictions that had prevented ladies from getting the care they wanted.
Cheney and her father Dick Cheney, who was vice chairman beneath President George W. Bush and continues to be vilified by many Democrats for his protection of the U.S. invasion of Iraq, are staunch conservatives and two of essentially the most distinguished Republicans to have endorsed Harris.
In a submit on his Fact Social platform on Monday, Trump known as Liz Cheney “dumb as a rock” and a “struggle hawk.” He accused her of eager to go to struggle with “each Muslim nation recognized to mankind” identical to her father, who he known as “the person that ridiculously pushed Bush to go to struggle within the Center East.”