In the final, frenetic days of the 2024 campaign, Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Trump are crisscrossing the country, keeping up a dizzying schedule of rallies, public appearances and media interviews as they make their final pitch to voters in critical swing states.
Trump is campaigning aggressively in North Carolina, with three weekend rallies in the state, where elections officials have scrambled to ensure voters are able to cast their ballots in counties devastated by Hurricane Helene in September.
Harris, after rallies in Atlanta and in Charlotte, N.C., on Saturday, is set to spend Sunday in Michigan, a “blue wall” state where Trump eked out a victory in 2016 before narrowly losing to Joe Biden four years later.
Harris is scheduled to appear in and around Detroit on Sunday before an evening rally at Michigan State University in East Lansing.
Controversial remarks by Trump — who said in Wisconsin last week that, “whether the women like it or not,” he would protect them — reverberated throughout the weekend, as did a bizarre moment during a Friday night rally in Milwaukee in which the former president ranted about microphone problems.
“Did you hear what Donny Trump said the other day?” the rapper Cardi B said onstage at a Friday rally for Harris, who also was in Milwaukee.
“He said he’s gonna protect women whether they like it or not,” Cardi B said, adding that “protection for women, especially if we’re talking about maternal and mental health care, isn’t telling them what to do with their bodies. It’s supporting them and giving them the care they need for what they choose to do with their bodies.”
During that event at the Wisconsin State Fair Expo Center, Milwaukee Mayor Cavalier Johnson told attendees that “our community, we are literally, quite literally, the crossroads of this election,” underscoring the campaigns’ focus on the Badger State and its 10 electoral votes.
“You know what’s going on across town right now,” he added in reference to Trump’s rally seven miles away at Fiserv Forum, home of the NBA’s Milwaukee Bucks.
A few minutes into Trump’s speech there, the crowd began chanting, “Fix the mic!”
Trump, irritated, pulled the microphone from its stand and held it close to his face. He grew angrier when the crowd again shouted that they could not hear him.
“Do you wanna see me knock the hell out of the people backstage?” Trump asked the crowd, which cheered in approval.
As he complained about the low height of microphone stands at some of his events, Trump stooped over the stand, rubbing his hand up and down it, and bobbing his head with his mouth agape as the audience laughed.
“Way too low,” he said, pushing the microphone stand away.
The moment was widely mocked on social media by users who said Trump was pantomiming oral sex.
Harris’ campaign tweeted a video of the moment along with a single question mark.
During the Milwaukee rally, Trump also highlighted October’s jobs report.
The Labor Department reported Friday that U.S. employers added 12,000 jobs in October, hampered by a pair of hurricanes — Milton and Helene — and a strike at Boeing. The unemployment rate of 4.1% reflects an overall healthier economy.
Trump told his supporters he did not believe the storms were a factor.
“This is like a depression,” he said. “And there’s nothing, no event — I think they’re trying to blame it on the hurricane. No, that was, you know, a little, a relatively small area. No, not the hurricane. Not the hurricane. They’re the hurricane.”
On Saturday morning, Trump called in to “Fox & Friends,” where he called the jobs report “a gift” to his campaign.”
Normally, politicians refrain from gloating over economic numbers perceived to be poor, and instead express sympathy for Americans who are struggling financially.
Trump, though, said: “I finally got a gift.”
“I’m running against two people that just put out the worst job numbers, which is a big deal, the biggest deal economically, the biggest thing that happened,” he said.
During a rally Saturday in Gastonia, N.C., Trump repeated his false claims that the Federal Emergency Management Agency shortchanged hurricane victims by using money meant for disaster relief on undocumented immigrants.
And he repeated his comments about protecting women.
“I’m gonna protect our women,” he said. “I got into so much trouble, you saw that.”
“I think the women love me because they know, you know what, if they don’t have me, they got millions of people pouring through and coming up through the suburbs.”
He painted a dark, damsel-in-distress picture of women being attacked in their homes by criminal migrants.
“I believe that women have to be protected, men have to be, children, everybody — but women have to be protected when they’re at home in suburbia,” he said.
The former president also promised a prominent role for Robert F. Kennedy Jr., an anti-vaccine crusader who has advanced conspiracy theories. In recent appearances supporting Trump, Kennedy has said he wants to get rid of “the toxins” in Americans’ food.
“We will make America healthy again,” Trump said. “RFK Jr.’s gonna be in charge of that.”
North Carolina’s 16 electoral votes are a coveted prize in the tight presidential race. Republicans have carried the state in 12 of the last 14 presidential elections, with Democrats Jimmy Carter winning there in 1976 and Barack Obama winning in 2008 before losing to Republican Mitt Romney four years later.
In 2020, Trump beat Biden there by just over 1% of the vote.
He told supporters there Saturday: “We win this state, we’re gonna win the whole ballgame.”
Harris, speaking in Atlanta on Saturday, highlighted her economic plans, saying that her priority in the White House would be bringing down the cost of living.
Trump, she said, would enter office “stewing over an enemies list,” and she said she would walk in “with my to-do list,” including implementing a federal ban on price gouging on groceries.
Harris said Trump is “increasingly unstable, obsessed with revenge, consumed with grievance, and the man is out for unchecked power.”
“In less than 90 days,” she said, “is it gonna be him or me in the Oval Office?”
The crowd responded: “You!”
