By Katie Rogers, Michael Gold and Nicholas Nehamas
On Saturday, Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump traversed Southern states, presenting starkly differing economic messages aimed at voters in major battlegrounds and, in Trump’s case, firmly Democratic Virginia.
Following a week where controversies frequently overshadowed his closing statements, Trump visited North Carolina and Virginia, where he delivered meandering speeches attempting to shift the focus back to immigration, economic issues, and transgender topics.
Harris initiated her day at a rally in Atlanta, concentrating on her strategies to enhance the economy, an approach her team has deemed strategic in the closing days of this closely contested race.
During an event featuring food trucks and a performance by Georgia native rapper 2 Chainz, she declared that her foremost goal as president would be “to lower the cost of living for you” through tax reductions and initiatives like extending Medicare to help with home care expenses. She reiterated this message shortly after at a rally in Charlotte, North Carolina, asserting that Trump supports “billionaires and large corporations.”
In his speeches at an airport in Gastonia, North Carolina, as well as venues in Salem and Greensboro, Virginia, Trump seized on Friday’s labor statistics, which indicated that only 12,000 jobs had been added in the previous month.
“These figures are indicative of a depression, I regret to say,” he remarked in Gastonia, drastically misrepresenting the reality of a generally healthy economy while ignoring that the recent data were influenced by hurricanes and a labor strike.
Trump’s speeches consistently featured diversions filled with personal insults and occasional profanity alongside his job-focused comments. At his rally in Greensboro, he chuckled and seemed to approve when a supporter made a vulgar joke suggesting that Harris had once engaged in prostitution.
Harris’ final push in Georgia occurred just a day after the early voting period in the state concluded. Election officials reported that more than 4 million individuals had already voted, a striking number in a state where slightly under 5 million cast their votes in 2020 — and where fewer than 12,000 votes determined the outcome of that year’s election.
While onstage in Atlanta, Harris also addressed reproductive rights, telling attendees that Georgia, which enforces the most stringent abortion law of any battleground state, had “a Trump abortion ban.”
“I commit to pursuing common ground and sensible solutions to the challenges you encounter,” she stated. “I am not attempting to score political points. I am striving to achieve meaningful progress.”
Trump, as is his habit, presented an exaggerated and dire portrayal of the implications.
“If Kamala is reelected, every city in America will devolve into a filthy, unsafe refugee camp,” he asserted. “That is what is occurring.”
Trump plans to hold rallies in North Carolina daily until Election Day — a potentially protective strategy in a state he victoriously claimed in both 2020 and 2016. On Sunday, he will head to Kinston, a rural community in eastern North Carolina, and commence Monday with a rally in Raleigh.
In Gastonia, a town with a rough population of 80,000 situated about 20 miles west of Charlotte, Trump made a direct appeal to suburban women, asserting that he believed they specifically required protection “when they’re at home in suburbia,” while he presented exaggerated and fear-inducing images of an America overrun by undocumented immigrants. He reiterated comparisons of migrants crossing the border to Hannibal Lecter, the fictional cannibalistic serial killer from “The Silence of the Lambs.”
Despite his advisers urging him to concentrate on economic concerns, Trump has viewed fear-based strategies regarding immigration as a means to connect with persuadable female voters in swing states. Among the battlegrounds expected to impact the election, North Carolina is the only one that Trump won in both 2016 and 2020, securing a narrow victory over Joe Biden by 1.3 percentage points.
The Trump campaign also perceives an opportunity in inciting concerns about transgender women and girls participating in female sports, a group that represents a minuscule fraction of the population, as a tactic to attract women voters.
In Virginia, Trump invited onstage members of the Roanoke College women’s swim team who had protested the inclusion of a transgender athlete on their team. Trump has made criticism of transgender athletes a staple of his speeches, and the swimmers stood behind him wearing pink T-shirts displaying an image of a hot dog to symbolize genitalia, along with the message “Keep hot dogs out of women’s sports.”
Later, while lauding Elon Musk, Trump described the robotic arms that caught a SpaceX rocket booster as “similar to how you lift your beautiful baby, your lovely child, see?” He added: “In the past, I would have said, ‘like you lift your girlfriend.’ Now I avoid that expression. I say, ‘like you lift your child.’”
Amid a growing gender gap, with polls indicating that likely women voters favor Harris, Trump, who has contended with various sexual misconduct accusations and was caught on tape boasting about grabbing women, finds himself facing significant challenges.
In fact, as his campaign approaches its conclusion, Trump has opted to defend or engage in remarks that may alienate undecided voters.
He remains under fire for his violent rhetoric regarding former Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo.; comments he made concerning protecting women “whether they want it or not”; along with the backlash from racist jokes made by a comedian during his rally in New York.
Phoning into Fox News ahead of his rallies, Trump attempted to justify his positions on all three matters. He downplayed the severity of the comic referring to Puerto Rico as a “floating island of garbage,” calling him “just one comedian making a small joke early in the show when hardly anyone had even entered the venue, practically.”
“He mentioned Puerto Rico, and they made a big deal out of it,” Trump remarked.
