As the 2024 campaign neared its final week Saturday, both major parties’ U.S. presidential candidates were in key state Michigan, with Democrat Kamala Harris rallying with former first lady Michelle Obama and Republican Donald Trump returning to Detroit. Trump’s campaign, meanwhile, finished final preparations for a rally Sunday at Madison Square Garden.
At Harris’ rally, Obama challenged men to support the vice president’s bid to be America’s first female president, warning that women’s lives would be at risk if Trump returned to the White House.
The former first lady described the assault on abortion rights as the harbinger of dangerous limitations on health care for women. Some men may be tempted to vote for Trump because of their anger at the slow pace of progress, Obama said, but “your rage does not exist in a vacuum.”
“If we don’t get this election right, your wife, your daughter, your mother, we as women will become collateral damage to your rage,” Obama said. “So are you as men prepared to look into the eyes of the women and children you love and tell them you supported this assault on our safety?”
The rally in Kalamazoo was Obama’s first appearance on the campaign trail since she spoke at the Democratic National Convention over the summer.
Her voice vibrating with emotion, Obama talked about the struggle for women to understand and care for their own bodies, whether it’s their menstrual cycles or menopause. And she spoke about the dangers of childbirth, when a split-second decision can mean the difference between life and death for a mother and her baby.
“I am asking y’all from the core of my being to take our lives seriously,” Obama pleaded.
Harris took the stage after Obama and promised the crowd that she would keep their interests in mind — unlike Trump, who she accused of only being interested in himself.
“There is a yearning in our country for a president who sees the people, not just looking in the mirror all the time, but sees the people, who gets you and who will fight for you,” she said.
The rally followed Harris’ visit to a local doctor’s office in Portage to talk with health care providers and medical students about the impact of abortion restrictions. One of them said they have patients visiting from other parts of the country where there are strict limitations on abortion, and another said she’s worried that people won’t want to practice in important areas of medicine because of fears about government intrusion.
While Harris was with Michelle Obama in Michigan, President Joe Biden visited the Laborers’ International Union of North America in Pittsburgh. He mentioned that Harris once walked a picket line with the United Auto Workers — “she has a backbone like a ramrod” — while Trump has undermined organized labor.
“He views unions as getting in the way of the accumulation of wealth for individuals,” Biden said. “It’s in labor’s interest to defeat Donald Trump, more than any other race you’ve been in.”
Biden’s remarks to the mostly male audience referenced the gender divide that has been a consistent feature of this year’s presidential race.
Speaking on Trump, Biden said, “I’m just gonna say straight up, he’s a loser as a man.”
He also said women deserve more opportunities than they’ve received in the past.
“They can do anything any man can do, including be president of the United States of America,” Biden said.
TRUMP DENIGRATES DETROIT
Trump further criticized Detroit while appealing for votes Saturday in a suburb of the largest city in Michigan.
“I think Detroit and some of our areas makes us a developing nation,” the former president told supporters in Novi. He said people want him to say Detroit is “great,” but he thinks it “needs help.”
The Republican nominee for the White House had told an economic group in Detroit earlier this month that the “whole country will end up being like Detroit” if Harris wins the presidency. That comment drew harsh criticism from Democrats who praised the city for its recent drop in crime and growing population.
Trump later headed to Pennsylvania, another crucial swing state, where he appealed to young voters by promising them better conditions as they start their careers.
In the final stretch of the campaign, the candidates have made frequent visits to Michigan, a state Trump won in 2016 but Biden carried four years later.
During his Michigan rally, Trump spotlighted local Muslim and Arab American leaders who joined him onstage. These voters “could turn the election one way or the other,” Trump said, adding that he was banking on “overwhelming support” from those voters in Michigan.
“When President Trump was president, it was peace,” said one of those leaders, Mayor Bill Bazzi of Dearborn Heights. “We didn’t have any issues. There was no wars.”
A Trump ally, Republican Rep. Darrell Issa of California, the grandson of Lebanese immigrants, told reporters that Trump was winning over support from more Arab Americans and has cultivated relationships with leaders in the Middle East that would bring more stability to the region.
In lengthy remarks to supporters, Trump went after Harris and the media and promoted immigration and energy policies that are campaign staples. For example, he said immigrants are “taking the Black population jobs and they’re taking the Hispanic jobs.” Government data shows that immigrant labor contributes to economic growth and provides promotional opportunities for native-born workers.
Later Saturday, Trump traveled to State College, Pa., the home of Penn State University. He told a crowd that included more young people than usual that under his leadership, they will “inherit the freest, strongest and most powerful nation on Earth.”
“If you vote for me, I will ensure that you begin your careers, young people, in a roaring economy at a time of unprecedented peace and prosperity,” he said.
He repeatedly praised the university’s national championship-winning wrestling team, inviting several of its athletes onstage to shake his hand.
In both campaign stops Saturday, Trump called attention to how an influx of Haitian migrants have affected Springfield, Ohio. He stopped short of repeating debunked claims about immigrants eating pets, a narrative that had drawn pushback from members of both parties and prompted bomb threats on some schools and government buildings.
Trump took the stage an hour and 40 minutes after he was originally billed to speak. An hour into his remarks, the crowd had become noticeably bare in the back of the arena, especially as the kickoff of Sunday night’s Penn State game at Wisconsin neared.
TRUMP DENIES STATEMENTS
Trump gave a rebuttal Friday to two quotations attributed to him by The Atlantic magazine, which accused him of disparaging fallen veterans and of making a racist remark about a murdered Mexican American soldier.
During a campaign stop in Texas, Trump vehemently denied being opposed to paying for the funeral of Spc. Vanessa Guillén, a Fort Hood soldier who was murdered in 2020, when Trump was president, because of the cost. He was joined at the event in Austin, Texas, by some of Guillén’s relatives.
Natalie Khawam, the family’s lawyer, said they were invited by Trump to join him on his plane before his speech, and they met him there.
“We truly appreciate his ongoing kindness and his steadfast support for our military and their families,” Khawam said in a statement.
MADISON SQUARE GARDEN RALLY
Trump’s rally Sunday at Madison Square Garden follows a long line of political events at the storied New York City arena.
After the 1892 Democratic National Convention met in Chicago and nominated Grover Cleveland — then out of office after serving from 1885 to 1889 — he accepted the nomination with a speech at Madison Square Garden — the second one — in his home state of New York.
Cleveland then defeated Republican Benjamin Harrison, becoming the 24th and 22nd president and making him the only U.S. president to have served two nonconsecutive terms. Trump hopes to become the second.
On Feb. 20, 1939, more than 20,000 people attended a rally at the Garden organized by the German American Bund, a pro-Nazi group that hung swastikas alongside a huge portrait of George Washington.
A Democratic Party fundraiser and John F. Kennedy birthday celebration, with Marilyn Monroe wearing a skintight dress to serenade the president, was held at the Garden on May 19, 1962.
It had been the hottest May Day in New York City history, with temperatures rising to 99 degrees. “Heat waves still rose in the Garden when, after a sultry rendition of ‘Happy Birthday’ by Marilyn Monroe, the president remarked: ‘I can now retire from politics,'” the AP reported.
George Wallace, the former and future governor of Alabama, gave a speech during his 1968 presidential race as the candidate of the American Independent Party, featuring a “Stand Up for America” pitch for the kind of populist nationalism that defines Trump’s “Make America Great Again” movement.
When protesters interrupted the Garden rally, Wallace asked why Democratic and Republican leaders “kowtow to these anarchists.”
“We don’t have riots in Alabama. They start a riot down there, first one of ’em to pick up a brick gets a bullet in the brain, that’s all,” Wallace said.
Information for this article was contributed by Darlene Superville, Aamer Madhani, Chris Megerian, Michelle L. Price, Ali Swenson, Karen Matthews and Rhonda Shafner of The Associated Press and by Neil Vigdor and Simon J. Levien of The New York Times.
Former first lady Michelle Obama speaks at a campaign rally for democratic presidential nominee Vice President Kamala Harris at the Wings Event Center, in Kalamazoo, Mich., Saturday, Oct. 26, 2024. (AP Photo/Paul Sancya)
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Publish date : 2024-10-26 22:00:00
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