Donald Trump

Subterms

    More stories

    • 163 Shares189 Views

      in US Politics

      Harris and Trump tour key swing states as end of campaign draws close

      by

      Donald Trump and Kamala Harris battled to woo voters in the key swing states of Michigan and Wisconsin on Friday, as the presidential campaign enters its final stretch.Harris made several appearances in Wisconsin on Friday, including one that featured the musician Cardi B, while Trump visited both Michigan and Wisconsin.At his rally in Warren, Michigan, on Friday afternoon, Trump tried to energize his voters, delivering an address replete with his characteristic fear-mongering about immigrants and tangents including musings about his hair.He repeated his aggressive attack on Liz Cheney, one day after he first said the former Republican US representative should be under fire with rifles “shooting at her”.Harris meanwhile sought to draw a contrast, emphasizing at a rally in Wisconsin in the afternoon that she is looking to be a political consensus builder.“Here is my pledge to you. Here is my pledge to you as president. I pledge to seek common ground and commonsense solutions to the challenges you face,” Harris said. “I pledge to listen to those who will be impacted by the decisions I make. I will listen to experts. I will listen to the people who disagree with me. Because, you see, unlike Donald Trump, I don’t believe that people who disagree with me are the enemy.”“He wants to put them in jail,” Harris said, repeating a line she’s has frequently invoked of late. “I’ll give them a seat at the table.”During his appearance in Warren in the afternoon and in Milwaukee in the evening, Trump repeatedly stoked fears about immigrants. In Warren, he said: “every state is a border state” and falsely claim immigrants were being flown into the south-west.He repeated some of his most racist tropes, saying: “All of our jobs are are being taken by the migrants that come into our country illegally and many of those migrants happen to be criminals, and some of them happen to be murderers.”The former president tried to tie Harris to the most recent jobs report, which showed the US added just 12,000 jobs in October.And he again attacked Cheney, one day after he called her a “radical war hawk” in a conversation with Tucker Carlson and said she should face being under fire with rifles “shooting at her”.“Let’s put her with a rifle standing there with nine barrels shooting at her. Let’s see how she feels about it. You know, when the guns are trained on her face,” he said.On Friday, Trump’s comments were similar.“She’s tough one. But if you gave Liz Cheney a gun, put her into battle facing the other side with guns pointing at her. she wouldn’t have the courage or the strength or the stamina to even look the enemy in the eye,” Trump said.“That’s why I broke up with her,” Trump commented, prompting some laughs.There was time for reflection, too. “We’re gonna miss these rallies, aren’t we?” Trump asked the crowd at one juncture.At another point, he remarked: “I’m studying my hair. It looks not so good today … not a good hair day for me, ay ay ay.”At a rally for Harris in the evening, Cardi B said the vice-president had inspired her to vote. “I’ve been waiting for this moment my whole life”, the artist said.“I’m not giving Donald Trump a second chance,” Cardi B said. “I am not taking any chances with my future, and I damn sure ain’t taking no chances with the future of my children.“I’m with Kamala.”Harris praised Wisconsin’s motto, forward, and, addressed young voters at the rally: “Here’s what I love about you guys. You are rightly impatient for change. You are determined to live free from gun violence. You are going to take on the climate crisis. You are going to shape the world you inherit. I know that. I know that,” she said.She added: “And here’s the thing about our young leaders. None of this is theoretical for them. None of this is political for them. It’s their lived experience. It’s your lived experience, and I see your power, I see your power, and I am so proud of you.”Trump and Harris are neck-and-neck in swing state polling, and in Michigan, a Detroit Free Press survey shows her having a three-point lead.Republicans and Democrats, as well as their unofficial boosters, have pounced on the tight split. Harris’s camp is pushing hard to convince young voters, who overwhelmingly support the Democrats, to go out and vote.With mere days to go before the 5 November election, some Democrats in Michigan described being “freaked out” by the prospect of another Trump victory in this state. Biden won Michigan in 2020, but Trump defeated Hillary Clinton here in 2016. Relying on polls showing her far ahead, the Clinton campaign had prioritized campaigning in other states, neglecting key Democratic segments such as Black communities and auto workers in the state.Harris has spent more time on the ground in Michigan than in any other state with the exception of Pennsylvania. Harris and her running-mate, Tim Walz, have bounced around the state in an effort to attract Black voters, white suburban women, college students and factory workers.Last week, Barack Obama rapped with hip-hop legend Eminem at a rally in Detroit. Bernie Sanders, beloved by the Democratic left, tried to reassure young voters in the state that Harris is not just another corporate-minded Democrat.Trump, too, has upped his efforts to woo Michigan voters. On Friday, the former president stopped in Dearborn to court Arab-American voters, many of whom have been left deeply disappointed by Joe Biden’s handling of the Israel-Gaza conflict.Many of the city’s Muslim leaders declined to meet with Trump, including Dearborn’s mayor, Abdullah H Hammoud.“The architect of the Muslim Ban is making a campaign stop in Dearborn. People in this community know what Trump stands for – we suffered through it for years,” Hammoud, a Democrat, said on X. “I’ve refused a sit down with him although the requests keep pouring in. Trump will never be my president.”Hammoud, who is neither supporting Harris nor Trump in the race for president, also called fellow members of his party. “To the Dems – your unwillingness to stop funding & enabling a genocide created the space for Trump to infiltrate our communities. Remember that.”Meanwhile, Michigan residents have for months been bombarded by campaign ads, many of which feature exaggerated or blatantly false claims. With the state seeing $759m in political ad spending, Michigan ranks among the top for such disbursements in this election, per NPR. More

    • 113 Shares129 Views

      in US Politics

      Threats, racism, misogyny: Trump’s disturbing final week of campaigning

      by

      There was racism and misogyny by the bucketload. There was a firing squad death threat to a former congresswoman. And there was the extraordinary sight of a Republican candidate for president of the United States playing dress-up as a sanitation worker in the cab of a garbage truck.Donald Trump’s final full week on the campaign trail was as unedifying as it was bizarre.With his vitriolic rants and threats of violent revenge against political enemies increasing in intensity, it was hard to set aside Democratic rival Kamala Harris’s closing argument that the former president is “unstable and unhinged”.The former president’s extremist promise to unleash the military against those he considers “the enemy from within” – he named leading Democrats including ex-speaker Nancy Pelosi and Congressman Adam Schiff among them – was unprecedented.And yet it was swiftly eclipsed by this week’s other developments.It will be up to voters next week to decide whether any of it ultimately matters, at least in terms of who occupies the White House for the next four years. But history will record the waning days of the 2024 presidential campaign to be like no previous election, with one candidate leaning so heavily into an agenda of hate and menace, and his acolytes attempting variously to deny, distract from or clean up his remarks.The carousel began spinning on Sunday when Trump hosted a rally at New York’s Madison Square Garden, where 85 years earlier American Nazis wearing swastikas had gathered months ahead of the outbreak of the second world war. Before Trump even took the stage there was controversy when a comedian, Tony Hinchcliffe, delivered a line that was to become the dominant theme of the following days.“There’s literally a floating island of garbage in the middle of the ocean right now. I think it’s called Puerto Rico,” he said, failing to elicit laughs from an audience of 20,000.The backlash was immediate and ferocious. Republicans joined Democrats in condemning the racist “joke”, while Trump embarked on a mission to try to turn the situation to his advantage.There was no apology, of course. Though, at a rally in Allentown, Pennsylvania, on Tuesday, Trump insisted “nobody loves our Latino community and our Puerto Rican community more than I do”, and that the Madison Square Garden event, notable for its deluge of anger, profanity and racism directed at immigrants and Democrats by a succession of speakers, was “a love fest”, and that “the love was unbelievable”.Pennsylvania’s 472,000 Puerto Ricans, many of whom recall Trump withholding disaster relief funds and patronizingly tossing paper towels at desperate citizens after Hurricane Maria devastated the island in 2017, saw it differently.View image in fullscreen“This is not the first time that our Puerto Rican community feels disrespected,” Philadelphia voter Yemele Ayala, told the Guardian. “We’re not taking that lightly.”Joe Biden became caught in the maelstrom the same day when a comment he made about “garbage” was construed by the Trump camp as an attack on their candidate’s supporters. What the president intended to say was still under scrutiny on Friday as it emerged the White House had altered the official transcript of his remarks.But the episode also gave rise to the stunt that would provide the defining image of the week, and probably its most ludicrous: Trump in a DayGlo safety vest, demanding of reporters, “Do you like my garbage truck?” before the vehicle emblazoned with his campaign logo was driven in circles around a Wisconsin parking lot in an apparent attempt to show it would be its passenger “taking out the trash” on 5 November, and not his Democratic opponent.Other examples of Trump’s bitter disdain for those who stand up to him, as well as his flagrant misogyny, came to the fore as the week wore on.In Green Bay, Wisconsin, on Wednesday night, addressing reproductive rights, he attempted to portray himself as a “protector” of women, despite dozens of claims of sexual assault against him, and a judge’s ruling adjudicating him a rapist.“Well, I’m going to do it, whether the women like it or not. I’m going to protect them,” he said, drawing an instant rebuke from Harris.The vice-president, meanwhile, became Trump’s target in an interview with Tucker Carlson, the rightwing extremist and disgraced former Fox News host, in Glendale, Arizona, on Thursday night. Harris, he insisted, was “a low-IQ individual”, and “dumb as a rock”, as he repeated previous slurs against his opponent.The biggest talking point from the Carlson interview, however, was Trump declaring the Republican former congresswoman Liz Cheney a “radical war hawk” and saying he would like to see multiple guns pointed at her.“Let’s put her with a rifle standing there with nine barrels shooting at her, OK? Let’s see how she feels about it. You know, when the guns are trained on her face,” Trump said of a politician who has campaigned with and for Harris. Arizona’s Democratic attorney general, Kris Mayes, said on Friday she was investigating the comments to see if they amounted to a death threat.In response to Trump, Cheney warned the public of the dangers of a dictatorship and said he “wants to be a tyrant”. Not for the first time this week, his representatives spent much of the day insisting to the media that Trump’s meaning was different from what he said.Trump’s post to his Truth Social network later in the day repeated the same criticisms of Cheney but, conspicuously, omitted any reference to weapons being pointed at her.Harris will make her own closing pitches over the weekend, but left no doubt about her position on Trump’s behavior as she addressed reporters in Madison, Wisconsin, on Friday afternoon.“Anyone who uses that kind of violent rhetoric is clearly disqualified and unqualified to be president,” she said.“Donald Trump is someone who considers his political opponents the enemy, is permanently out for revenge, and is increasingly unstable and unhinged.” More

    • 175 Shares139 Views

      in US Politics

      US election live: Harris says Trump’s violent rhetoric about Liz Cheney ‘must be disqualifying’

      by

      Kamala Harris spoke of Donald Trump’s violent rhetoric about Liz Cheney in which he suggested Cheney be shot with “guns trained on her face”.Harris said:
      “He has increased his violent rhetoric, Donald Trump has, about political opponents and in great detail suggested rifles should be trained on former representative Liz Cheney. This must be disqualifying.”
      Hailing Cheney as a “courageous” and “incredible American”, Harris added:
      “I will tell you, I know Liz Cheney well enough to know that she is tough, she is incredibly courageous, and has shown herself to be a true patriot at a very difficult time in our country …
      We see this kind of rhetoric that is violent in nature, where we see this kind of spirit coming from Donald Trump that is so laden with the desire for revenge and retribution … I think that Liz Cheney is courageous and that we will always make sure that we are all fighting against and speaking out against any form of political violence.”
      Trump is now criticizing “Shawn Fain or whatever the hell his name is,” the president of the United Auto Workers, who is campaigning or Kamala Harris. The crowd boos.Trump says he can’t sleep easily and that he’s “always tossing and turning” thinking about China and the “Russia hoax” and how to make money for the American people.“I don’t feel like a senior. Does anybody feel like a senior?” Trump, 78, says, to some cheers. “I feel better – I think I’m sharper and better now than I was 25, 30 years ago. I do, I swear. I’ll let you know when I don’t.”Trump gives an update on sales of “Dark Maga” merchandise: Trump was talking about Elon Musk, and what role the billionaire will play in cutting government spending in a Trump administration. “You know where he is right now? He’s campaigning in Pennsylvania for Donald Trump. How cool is that,” Trump said.At one rally, Musk appeared and wore a “Dark Maga” black hat, Trump said, that the Republican candidate hadn’t even been aware his campaign made. That hat hadn’t sold well, maybe two hats, Trump said, until Musk wore it. Then the campaign sales of those hats took off.“They sold 71,000 black hats, can you believe it?” Trump says. “You make money with money, that’s how it is.”“But now that very low-IQ person who wants to be – have we ever had a low-IQ president before?” Trump asks of Kamala Harris.“It’s like your high school football team playing … what’s a good team today … oh, the Detroit Lions,” Trump tells his Michigan audience. He tells them Kamala Harris wouldn’t have been able to figure out which local sports team to reference.In a post on Truth Social, Trump appeared to be trying to walk back his comments about how Liz Cheney, one of his most prominent Republican critics, should face having rifles “shooting at her”.His comments yesterday have been widely condemned, including by Cheney and Kamala Harris, and are also under investigation by Arizona’s attorney general.“She’s a radical war hawk,” Trump said of Liz Cheney at an event in Arizona. Then said: “Let’s put her with a rifle standing there with nine barrels shooting at her. Let’s see how she feels about it. You know, when the guns are trained on her face.”“We love everybody right?” Trump says. He drops his voice. “No, we don’t.”Then Trump launches into an attack on Kamala Harris’s message of unity, a central part of her approach.“What about her, she’s always talking about, ‘You know I want to bring the country together, Trump is Hitler, ah, excuse me I shouldn’t have said that,’” Trump says, in a voice imitating Harris.He goes on with the imitation. “‘We want to get together as a country,’ ‘They’re all racists, they’re all this, they’re all that, but we want to have peace, and we want to get along.’”Trump tells his supporters that “the fake news” won’t even report on the bad jobs numbers. If you’re curious how just how false that claim is, you can Google it:Trump is now discussing the underwhelming economic numbers for last month.“This is not good news for them,” he says, of Harris and the Democrats. “How would you like to have an election in four days?”Some experts agree with Trump on this one:“You know, there are those that say that if we don’t win this election you may never have another election in this country … with these radical left lunatics that we’re dealing with,” Trump says.As you recall, Trump himself actually sparked this conversation over whether there might not be elections in the future, because of what he said to Christian voters earlier this year:Trump is now talking about the 2020 Democratic primary, talking about how early Kamala Harris dropped out and revisiting his rude nicknames for various Democratic presidential candidates from the previous election cycle, including Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren.“This will be America’s new golden age,” Trump pledges. “Every problem facing us can be solved, and it’s going to be solved quickly.”Abortion rights advocates are mourning the loss of Nevaeh Crain, an 18-year-old pregnant teenager from Texas who died in October 2023 after three emergency room visits as she sought care for intense abdominal pain.ProPublica’s reporting on Crain, who would have turned 20 today, underscored the potentially fatal threat posed by abortion bans, argued Mini Timmaraju, president and CEO of Reproductive Freedom for All.“Pregnancy should not be a death sentence. Nevaeh Crain should be here, celebrating her 20th birthday today,” Timmaraju said in a statement.Timmaraju placed the blame for abortion bans on the shoulders of Republican politicians like Donald Trump and Ted Cruz, the incumbent senator who is facing a tough re-election fight against Democrat Collin Allred in Texas.“This has to stop,” she said. “And our best chance to do that is to vote for reproductive freedom, from vice-president Harris to Colin Allred and all the way down the ticket, so we can restore the right to abortion and end these bans.”“It seems so poignant,” Trump says, of the question he keeps asking, “Are you better off now than you were four years ago?” The crowd roars: “No!”“We’re going to miss these rallies aren’t we?” Trump says onstage in Michigan, but promises his supporters that when he is back in the White House, the spirit of the rallies will continue in a different form.His supporters will someday look back and realize, “there was something very, very, special about what we all did together,” Trump says, speaking of his rallies. He also speculates about few people future presidential candidates will draw to their rallies.“This has been the thrill of a lifetime for me, and for you, and for everybody,” Trump says.The White House pool report has an amusing detail from Janesville for the punctuation nerds: Someone behind Harris on the stage was holding a “,la” sign (comma “la”), which is the proper pronunciation of her name. More

    • 163 Shares199 Views

      in US Politics

      US judge returns lawsuit against Elon Musk’s $1m voter scheme to state court

      by

      A federal judge on Friday denied an attempt by America Pac – the political action committee founded by Elon Musk to support Donald Trump’s campaign for a second presidency – to move to federal court a civil suit brought by the Philadelphia district attorney over a daily $1m prize draw for registered voters.The lawyers for Musk and his America Pac had argued that the lawsuit, which is seeking to halt the sweepstakes in the battleground state of Pennsylvania, needed to be resolved in federal court as it referenced the 5 November presidential election.But the presiding US district judge Gerald Pappert disagreed with that contention in a five-page opinion, writing that the motivations of the Philadelphia district attorney, Larry Krasner, were irrelevant – and that his office had the power to bring the case in state court.“Having now considered the parties’ submissions, the court grants the motion and remands the case back to the Court of Common Pleas,” it said.The civil suit that names both Musk and America Pac alleges that a petition asking registered voters in battleground states to submit their address, phone number and emails in exchange for $47, as well as to enter a daily $1m prize draw, was a lottery scheme that was illegal under state law.The petition has separately attracted scrutiny from the US justice department, which warned America Pac that the lottery violated federal law as it in effect amounts to paying people to register to vote. But the civil suit was the first legal action taken to stop the scheme.As the petition asks people to pledge their support to the US constitution’s first and second amendments – big causes for Republicans – it is widely seen by election law experts as illegally encouraging Trump supporters to register to vote in swing states. In a close election, turnout by voters for the former president could tip the result.

      Don’t miss important US election coverage. Get our free app and sign up for election alerts
      The suit also accuses Musk and America Pac of violating state consumer protection laws by deploying deceptive or misleading statements. For instance, Krasner contends that winners are not random, as advertised, because multiple winners have been people who showed up at Trump rallies.Musk’s defenders say it is simply a contest open to registered voters. In theory, they say, Democrats registered to vote in battleground states can complete the petition and have a chance to win the $1m lottery.The petition is perhaps the most public of the various strategies employed by America Pac to bolster Trump’s candidacy. The Super Pac now leads the crucial get-out-the-vote operation on behalf of the Trump campaign as Musk searches for more ways to help the former president return to the Oval Office.The ground game effort has suffered from some setbacks. The Guardian has previously reported that tens of thousands of Trump voters might not be reached after America Pac’s internal systems flagged that 20 to 25% of door knocks reported in Arizona and Nevada may have been fraudulent. More

    • 113 Shares99 Views

      in US Politics

      Offensive Halloween parade float depicts shackled Harris being dragged

      by

      A Pittsburgh-area Halloween parade’s depiction of Kamala Harris in chains and being dragged by a vehicle displaying Donald Trump’s name is being condemned as racist – and has prompted an apology from the event organizer.Photos of Wednesday night’s parade in Westmoreland county, Pennsylvania, that circulated widely across social media show a person dressed as the Democratic vice-president shackled and walking behind a golf cart-like vehicle. The vehicle – a float in a Halloween parade organized by the Mount Pleasant volunteer fire department – is decorated with American flags and Trump campaign signs carrying people dressed in what appear to be Secret Service agent costumes, along with a mounted rifle.Social media was quick to express disgust at the float’s display, which came less than a week before the presidential election between Harris and the Republican former president comes to a head on 5 November.The NAACP was among those to say the float was racist. A statement from Daylon A Davis, the president of the NAACP’s Pittsburgh branch, said: “This appalling portrayal goes beyond the realm of Halloween satire or free expression; it is a harmful symbol that evokes a painful history of violence, oppression, and racism that Black and Brown communities have long endured here in America.”Harris is of Jamaican and Indian descent.Nearly 24 hours after the parade, the Mount Pleasant volunteer fire department issued a statement apologizing on Facebook for allowing the offensive float.“We do not share in the values represented by those participants, and we understand how it may have hurt or offended members of our community,” the statement said.The post did not elaborate on the process of getting approved for the parade, leaving questions about how the float was allowed to roll.On a CBS News segment, Mount Pleasant’s mayor, Diane Bailey, denounced the portrayal of Harris.“I was appalled, angered, upset,” the Democratic mayor said on Thursday. “This does not belong in this parade or in this town.”Bailey added that the fire department must change its process for allowing floats.“They’ve never taken applications in the past,” Bailey said. “They’ve never vetted anyone who wanted to come to the parade.”Michelle Milan McFall, the chairperson of Westmoreland county’s Democratic party, added that the float in question rolled during what she said may be the US’s “most contentious election”.On the campaign trail, Trump has repeatedly threatened to imprison his opponents. He has also been targeted by two assassination attempts, according to authorities.“It’s vile. It’s heartbreaking. It’s concerning. And I think it’s also got an element of danger,” Milan McFall told ABC affiliate WTAE. “Again, we’re living in this climate where people aren’t just thinking about hatred and feeling it in their guts and bones. They’re acting on it.” More

    • 175 Shares169 Views

      in US Politics

      Liz Cheney calls Trump would-be tyrant as he imagines ‘guns trained on her face’

      by

      Donald Trump has called former congresswoman Liz Cheney a radical war hawk and said she should face being under fire with rifles “shooting at her” – prompting the anti-Trump Republican to warn the public against dictatorship and a presidential candidate who “wants to be a tyrant”.Cheney recently endorsed Kamala Harris and has campaigned with her, trying to persuade Republicans who don’t want Trump to win another term in the White House in this election to vote for the Democratic ticket of the US vice-president and her running mate, Tim Walz.Harris on Friday said Trump’s violent rhetoric about Cheney “must be disqualifying” ahead of the 5 November presidential election. Meanwhile, the Arizona attorney general, Kris Mayes, on Friday said her office had opened a “death threat investigation” surrounding Trump’s comments about Cheney.While still in office, Cheney co-chaired the bipartisan special House committee that investigated Trump’s conduct on January 6, when extremist supporters of his stormed the US Capitol to try, in vain, to stop the certification of Joe Biden’s electoral victory over him. She lost her Wyoming seat in 2022 as Trump supporters turned against her. Trump has called for her to be jailed for investigating him.Trump was in Arizona on Thursday evening, doing a sit-down talk with the conservative broadcaster Tucker Carlson, and he brought up Cheney in the context of her father, Dick Cheney, the former vice-president who was a hawkish architect of the US invasion of Iraq in 2003 during the George W Bush administration. Trump has been critical of that war and has also criticized the current US president, Joe Biden, for becoming involved in Ukraine’s struggling defense against the invasion by Russia.“She’s a radical war hawk,” he said of Liz Cheney. Then said: “Let’s put her with a rifle standing there with nine barrels shooting at her. Let’s see how she feels about it. You know, when the guns are trained on her face.”Early on Friday, Cheney issued a stinging response on X.“This is how dictators destroy free nations. They threaten those who speak against them with death. We cannot entrust our country and our freedom to a petty, vindictive, cruel, unstable man who wants to be a tyrant. #Womenwillnotbesilenced #VoteKamala,” she posted.Trump made his comments on Thursday about Cheney after complaining that Democratic criticism of his campaign had fueled what according to authorities were two failed assassination attempts against him.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionMayes told Arizona’s 12News it was not yet clear whether Trump’s comment amounted to protected free speech or a criminal threat.“That’s the question, whether it did cross the line. It’s deeply troubling,” Mayes said, according to Reuters. “It is the kind of thing that riles people up and that makes our situation in Arizona and other states more dangerous.”Cheney has said she has never voted for a Democrat before but will do so “proudly” for Harris in this election to ensure Trump never holds a position of public trust again. Her father will join her in casting his ballot for Harris. More

    • 150 Shares109 Views

      in US Politics

      Must-win Pennsylvania still bafflingly close as Harris and Trump fight for edge

      by

      Kamala Harris stood before a cheering crowd of hundreds of her supporters in Philadelphia and promised that she would deliver in Pennsylvania, a battleground state considered a must-win in the electoral college.“Nine days left in one of the most consequential elections of our lifetime, and we know this is going to be a tight race until the very end,” the vice-president told supporters in Philadelphia last weekend. “And make no mistake: we will win.”And yet, just a day earlier at a rally in State College, Donald Trump declared: “We’re going to pull this off. It’ll be the greatest victory in the history of our country for all of us – not for me, for all of us.”The contradictory comments reflect a neck-and-neck race in Pennsylvania that is hurtling toward the finish line with no clear frontrunner. The victor of Pennsylvania and its 19 electoral votes, the most of any battleground state, will probably win the electoral college and determine the trajectory of the country for the next four years.View image in fullscreenJoe Biden won Pennsylvania by just 1.2 points in 2020, four years after Trump carried the state by 0.7 points. According to the Guardian’s polling tracker, Trump currently holds a lead of less than one point over Harris in the state.Conversations with voters in Pennsylvania underscore how close the election is, often to the bafflement of both Democrats and Republicans. And the outcome could perhaps shift with an unexpected turns of events, such as Trump’s rally at Madison Square Garden in New York last weekend. It was there that a comedian took the stage before Trump and insulted Puerto Rico, calling it an “island of garbage”. As pundits were quick to note afterwards, Pennsylvania is home to more than 470,000 Puerto Ricans.For Democrats, the focus is on firing up voters in Pennsylvania cities such as Philadelphia and Scranton and their immediate suburbs, home to many women and college-educated voters they view as amenable to their message of protecting democracy and abortion. Republicans are more focused on winning white working-class voters and a growing number of young men of color, by attacking Harris over the president’s immigration policies and the high inflation of his early presidency.This dynamic is exemplified by Lackawanna county, which includes Scranton. Hillary Clinton won it in 2016 by 3.4 points, but she decisively lost most of its neighboring counties, as white working-class voters flocked to Trump.Four years later, Biden won Lackawanna county by 8.4 points, though Trump’s persistent strength with working-class voters in the neighboring counties helped him keep the race in Pennsylvania close.The outcome here will depend, as it always does, on turnout, and Democrats are counting on a robust ground game to help them deliver a win. The culinary union Unite Here, for instance endorsed Harris in August and has knocked on more than 1m doors in Pennsylvania this election cycle, with a goal of surpassing 1.25m by 5 November.Jaime Hunt, a 22-year-old organizer with Unite Here, walked through South Philadelphia on a recent sunny Saturday, asking voters whether they planned to vote by mail, and encouraging them to fill out their ballots on the spot if they had already received them.View image in fullscreenThe canvassing efforts of Unite Here and other pro-Harris groups could make a critical difference in Pennsylvania. In 2020, Biden narrowly defeated Trump in the state by roughly 80,000 votes, in part by maximizing his advantage in Philadelphia and its surrounding suburbs. This year, based on her many conversations with voters, Hunt is confident in Harris’s chances.“There is also a lot of – a good number – of Republicans who are voting for her. A lot of people are switching,” Hunt said. “I think it’s going to be her who wins.”Daniel Levin, a regional organizing director for the youth voting group NextGen America, has spent months on Philadelphia’s college campuses getting thousands of students registered to vote, and now helping them make a plan to vote for Harris and other Democrats.Despite concerns over whether young voters will support Harris, particularly because of widespread outrage over the Biden administration’s response to the war in Gaza, Levin predicted high youth turnout in Philadelphia. On a recent Friday, he convinced a young voter at Temple University to support Harris after explaining how her policies could benefit low-income residents of the city.“This is the place to be optimistic that we’re going to get a huge turnout,” Levin said. “And I think we will this year. I really think we will in Philadelphia, and we need to to carry [Pennsylvania].”In contrast to the broad network of pro-Harris groups working to turn out left-leaning voters, the Trump campaign’s comparatively meager ground operation in battleground states such as Pennsylvania has stoked concern among his allies. Trump and the Republican National Committee have instead directed more of their attention to combating alleged voter fraud, most recently highlighting concerns about potentially fraudulent registrations in Lancaster county.Despite Trump’s inattention to his turnout operation, he has managed to keep the race in Pennsylvania highly competitive, and his most ardent supporters seem as motivated as ever to cast their ballots for him.“I’ve never in my life seen a movement like this,” said John Spatig Jr, 46, who attended a rally by Trump in Allentown and lives in Northampton county, one of the biggest bellwethers in the state. He said the top issue for him was the government response for the Covid-19 pandemic and vaccine mandates.“How is the government going to guarantee me that there will never be a lockdown?” he said.View image in fullscreenMarilynn Raymond, 77, a retired bookkeeper from Reading, said at Trump’s rally in Allentown on Tuesday that she didn’t believe the polls showing a close race.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“All the crowds that Trump has done through the whole election far outweigh Kamala,” she said. “I think he’s way ahead.”As this campaigning season nears its close, Pennsylvania voters seem to be approaching election day with a mix of fatigue, excitement and fear.The fatigue was on display as Hunt made her rounds through South Philadelphia, with one resident responding to her knock by yelling through the door: “No one is home!”Both parties have already poured hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of campaign ads into Pennsylvania, and Philadelphia especially. The Philadelphia-based ABC affiliate WPVI completely sold out of ad inventory through election day by 24 October.Alex Pearlman, a comedian from the Philadelphia suburbs with a large following on TikTok, met with Tim Walz before a rally in Scranton, and he said he urged the Democratic vice-presidential nominee to keep voters energized for the final stretch.View image in fullscreen“Everybody’s tired,” Pearlman said. “Everyone’s been pretty set, the entire time. I think most people were holding their breath just to see who the candidates were going to be after the primaries. So now that we’re at this point, almost everyone has kind of made up their mind.”That dynamic has forced Harris and Trump to fight over an ever-diminishing number of undecided voters as they race toward election day. According to an Emerson College survey conducted in late October, only 3% of likely Pennsylvania voters were still undecided. And yet, that 3% could make all the difference, given that the state has been decided by roughly one point in the past two presidential elections.The narrow margins have triggered frustration and confusion among Democrats and Republicans in Pennsylvania. How, they ask, could the race for president still be this close?“[Harris] is going to win it, but I don’t believe the polls. I can’t believe that we’re 50-50 tied,” said Kathy Andrews, a 64-year-old voter from Philadelphia who attended Harris’s rally there. “I am giving a lot of credit to the American people, that everyone has a modicum of common sense.”Morgan Pastner Jaffe, a 32-year-old voter from West Chester, said the possibility of Trump’s victory makes her feel “very scared for the future – for women, for people of color and all different religions as well”.“She has to win or we’re screwed,” Jaffe said at Harris’s rally.With the race still a toss-up, the Trump campaign, wary of alienating a critical voting bloc, has tried to distance itself from the comedian who made the comment about Puerto Rico at Madison Square Garden.Rich Patti, 71, said at Trump’s Allentown rally that he didn’t think those remarks would hurt Trump’s chances with Latino voters.“They’re the backbone of our country and the backbones are hurting right now,” he said. “They work hard, they want the same thing. They want to be able to pay their bills, live well.”People of Puerto Rican descent in the state have suggested otherwise. “I was absolutely frustrated, I was angry – but I was not surprised,” Philadelphia councilmember Quetcy Lozada told the Guardian.The high stakes of the election are on display throughout Pennsylvania. Of the many signs adorning lawns and lamp-posts in Philadelphia, some eschew the traditional “Harris-Walz 2024” for slogans such as: “Defend Choice!” and “Defend Democracy!”“I don’t think you can walk around the city of Philadelphia and not know how important it is to people,” said Shane Ringressy, Pennsylvania organizing director for NextGen. “So I will say that Philadelphia itself, including all the young people in the city, definitely seem like they’re ready to fight and do their part.” More