Kamala Harris said Tuesday that America is “absolutely” ready to elect its first woman president but downplayed her historic bid, saying she simply wants to turn the page for a nation “exhausted” by Donald Trump.
With two weeks to Election Day, Harris and Trump are saturating swing states with rallies and taking to the airwaves and podcasts on the hunt for an advantage in a race that polls suggest is effectively tied.
Speaking on the national NBC network, Harris responded “absolutely” when asked if America was ready to elect its first woman — but also noted her candidacy was about “turning the page.”
“People are exhausted with Donald Trump and his approach, because it’s all about himself,” she said.
Trump, speaking to supporters in North Carolina, pitched a very different message.
“This election is a choice between whether we will have four more years of incompetence, failure and disaster, or whether we’ll begin the four greatest years in the history of our country,” he said to cheers.
He repeatedly called Harris and her running mate Tim Walz stupid during the rally.
‘Lock him up’
The race is overshadowed by extraordinary tensions and fears of violence or a refusal by Trump to recognize the results if he loses, as he continues to do over his 2020 loss to Joe Biden.
Harris told NBC that her campaign was “of course” ready for a scenario where Trump prematurely claims victory during a vote-counting process that could take days to complete.
Biden, who has been an infrequent presence in Harris’s campaign, took a shot at Trump Tuesday by re-wording the ex-president’s notorious anti-Hillary Clinton chant of “Lock her up”.
On a visit to New Hampshire, Biden told a small crowd that “we got to lock” Trump up –- adding quickly, “politically lock him up.”
With Trump facing multiple pending criminal charges as he competes against Harris to succeed Biden, the White House has been very careful not to weigh in on the Republican’s legal problems.
The Trump campaign responded that Biden and Harris had a “plan all along… to politically persecute their opponent.”
About 18 million Americans have already voted by mail or in person — representing more than 10 percent of the total in 2020.
Some polls appear to be giving the Republican, who at 78 is the oldest nominee from a major party in US history, a slight edge recently — but all within the margin of error.
Whatever the result, US voters will make history on November 5: they will either elect the country’s first woman president, or they will put the first convicted felon into the White House.
Early voters
Harris, 60, is also deploying two of her party’s most popular emissaries onto the campaign trail: Barack and Michelle Obama.
The former president, speaking at a rally in Madison on Tuesday, rolled back the years with fiery attacks on Trump.
“Don’t boo, vote!” he implored people after his jibes.
Laster in the day, Rapper Eminem upped the star factor when he introduced Obama at a major Harris campaign event in Detroit, drawing a rapped reply from the ex-president.
“I don’t usually get nervous, but I was feeling some kinda way following Eminem,” Obama said before launching into a recitation of the lyrics to the rapper’s hit “Lose Yourself”.
At the same time, Trump has increasingly repeated conspiracy theories on the campaign trail, often taking aim at migrants and his political opponents.
While speaking to Latino leaders Tuesday in Florida he said: “As president, you have tremendous — it’s called extreme power. You have extreme power.”
“You can, just by the fact, you say, ‘Close the border,’ and the border’s closed,” he added.
The Harris campaign has begun to hammer at his mental and physical fitness to occupy the Oval Office while trying to woo moderate Republican voters.
One of Trump’s top aides as president, former Marine general John Kelly, confirmed Tuesday to The New York Times previous reports that he considered the Republican to be a fascist.
“Certainly the former president is in the far-right area, he’s certainly an authoritarian, admires people who are dictators — he has said that. So he certainly falls into the general definition of fascist, for sure.”
Joe Rogan, host of one of the most listened to podcasts in America, said his interview with Trump is due out Friday.
Non-traditional media, including podcasts, have played a key role in the campaign in targeting specific audiences like young women and Black men.