Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump made their final appeals to voters on Monday (November 4, 2024) at nearly the same time in the same part of Pennsylvania, and focused on the state that was theirs during the final full day. Can make or break your chances. Presidential campaign.
In Pittsburgh, Mr Trump delivered what his campaign aides described as his closing argument after his previous attempt – a mass rally at Madison Square Garden in New York – was derailed by rude and racist jokes. He has also dismissed the message with lies about voter fraud and calls for violence.
“Over the past four years, Americans have suffered one devastating failure, betrayal and humiliation after another,” the Republican nominee said, sounding raspy and energetic after speaking for hours each day.
He further said, “We do not have to compromise with weakness, incompetence, decline and decay.” “With your vote tomorrow, we can solve every single problem facing our country and take America, and indeed the world, to new heights of glory.”
The crowd cheered when the Republican nominee said the country should tell Ms. Harris, “You’re fired,” a refrain of hers from the reality television show “The Apprentice,” which made her a nationally recognized star. Made it.
Mr Trump debuted in North Carolina on Monday (November 4, 2024), and is scheduled to hold his last rally of the election in Grand Rapids, Michigan, where he concluded his 2016 and 2020 campaigns.
Democratic nominee Ms Harris is spending the entire day of Monday (November 4, 2024) in Pennsylvania, and was visiting Pittsburgh while Mr Trump was speaking there. She is holding her final rally in Philadelphia this evening.
“This is it,” Ms. Harris said in front of Cary Furnaces in Pittsburgh, a historic steel facility that nods to the city’s industrial heritage. “Tomorrow is election day, and the momentum is in our favor.”
“We have to finish strong,” he said. “Make no mistakes, we will win.”
With 19 Electoral College votes, the state is the biggest prize of any battleground state. A Trump victory there would break the Democrats’ “blue wall” and make it harder for Ms Harris to win the 270 votes needed.
“If we win Pennsylvania, we will win the whole thing,” Mr Trump said during an event in Reading in the southeast corner of the state.
Both candidates visited the area, which is home to thousands of Latinos, including a large Puerto Rican population. Ms. Harris and her allies have repeatedly attacked Mr. Trump for a comedian’s dig at Puerto Rico during the former president’s Madison Square Garden event. Tony Hinchcliffe, comedian, called Puerto Rico a “floating island of garbage”.
“It was absurd,” said German Vega, a Dominican American who lives in Reading and became a U.S. citizen in 2015. “It upset a lot of people – even many Republicans. “It was not right, and I think Mr. Trump should have apologized to Latinos.”
But Emilio Feliciano, 43, was waiting outside Reading’s Sanchez Arena for a chance to take a photo of Mr Trump’s motorcade. He rejected the comments made about Puerto Rico, despite his family being Puerto Rican, saying that he cares about the economy and that is why he will vote for Mr. Trump.
“Will the border be secure? Are you going to keep crime down? That’s what I care about,” he said.
“I am proud to be here for our long-term commitment to Puerto Rico and its people,” Ms. Harris told the crowd.
“And I will be president for all Americans,” she said, “with the momentum on our side.” can you Feel It?”
Meanwhile, Mr Trump remained tight-lipped about his proposed action on immigration. He called to the stage Patty Morin, the mother of 37-year-old Rachel Morin, who was found dead a day after she went missing while hiking. Authorities say the suspect in her death, Victor Antonio Martínez Hernández, entered the U.S. illegally after allegedly killing a woman in his home country of El Salvador.
About 77 million Americans have voted early. A victory for either side would be unprecedented.
Mr Trump’s victory would make him the first sitting president to be charged and convicted of a felony following a hush-money trial in New York. He would get the power to drop other federal investigations pending against him. Mr Trump will become only the second president in history to win consecutive White House terms, following Grover Cleveland in the late 19th century.
Ms Harris is vying to become the first woman, the first Black woman and the first person of South Asian descent to reach the Oval Office – four years after breaking similar barriers to national office by becoming President Joe Biden’s second in command.
Moving forward from Monday (November 4, 2024), Ms Harris has mostly stopped mentioning Mr Trump by name, instead referring to him as “the other guy”. She is promising to solve problems and build consensus.
Ms. Harris campaign chairwoman Jen O’Malley Dillon said in a call with reporters that Mr. Trump’s name was intentionally not mentioned because voters “want to see a hopeful, optimistic, patriotic vision for the future in their leader.”
Ms. Harris also offered some insight into her personal formation as a politician, which she doesn’t often disclose. In Scranton, she talked at length about once running for San Francisco District Attorney in 2002 and described how she “campaigned with my ironing board.”
“I’ll walk to the front of the grocery store, and I’ll set up my ironing board because, you see, an ironing board actually makes a great standing desk,” the vice president said, recalling that she How she used to tape posters outside, fill the top with flyers and “require people to talk to me on the way in and out.”
In Allentown, Ms. Harris rallied with the rapper Fat Joe. After Mr Trump’s rally ended he made his own trip to Reading, visiting a Puerto Rican restaurant, the Old San Juan Café, with Ocasio-Cortez. Fat Joe, whose real name is Joseph Cartagena, and Ocasio-Cortez are both of Puerto Rican heritage.
As the Vice President’s motorcade moved forward, supporters chanted “Si se puede” and “Kamala”. Once inside, Ms. Harris struck up a conversation with some of the diners, even saying “gracias” and a mix of Spanish words. The Vice President later ordered cassava, yellow rice and pork and said, “I’m very hungry” as she said she was too busy campaigning to make time for many meals.
Ms Harris later did some campaigning of her own, staying at two houses in Reading with campaign volunteers.
“It’s the day before the election and I just wanted to come over and say I hope to get your vote,” she said at a home.
The woman replied, “You’ve already got my vote” and said her husband would cast his vote the next day.
Standing in line for Ms. Harris’s Allentown rally, Ron Kessler, 54, an Air Force veteran and Republican-turned-Democrat, said he planned to vote for only the second time in his life. Mr. Kessler said that, for a long time, he did not vote thinking that the country would “vote for the right candidate.”
But “now that I have grown up and become wiser, I believe it is important, it is my civic duty. And it is important that I vote for myself and I vote for democracy and the country.”
published – November 05, 2024 10:29 am IST