Trump, Harris Fighting For Attention With Hostile Rhetoric (Worthy News Focus)
By Stefan J. Bos, Chief International Correspondent Worthy News
NEW YORK (Worthy News) – U.S. Republican presidential candidate Donald J. Trump and his Democratic rival Kamala Harris are fighting for attention in their final campaign sprint toward the November 5 presidential poll after holding competing rallies attended by tens of thousands of people.
Harris, the current vice president, and Trump, the former president seeking to return to the White House, have urged their supporters to come out and vote in speeches marked by increasingly hostile rhetoric.
While Harris is focused on “abortion rights” and Trump-bashing, including calling him “a fascist,” the former president warns of “the enemy from within” that he says is worse than foes like North Korea and an invasion of criminal migrants that he says Harris supports.
He delivered a similar message at his latest rally on Sunday in New York City, where some 20,000 people filled Madison Square Garden, the famed multi-purpose indoor arena, to capacity, and many thousands more were being turned away, according to law enforcement sources.
Trump repeated familiar lines about foreign policy and immigration, calling for the death penalty “for any migrant who kills a U.S. citizen” and saying that the day he takes office, “The migrant invasion of our country ends.”
The event included former professional wrestler Hulk Hogan, TV psychologist Dr. Phil McGraw, former Fox News broadcaster host Tucker Carlson, politicians such as House Speaker Mike Johnson and U.S. House Representatives Byron Donalds and Elise Stefanik, and an artist painting a picture of Trump hugging the Empire State Building.
That was all before Trump took the stage, running more than two hours late.
BETTER OFF?
After being introduced by his wife, Melania Trump, in a rare public appearance, the former president began by asking the same questions he’s asked at the start of every recent rally: “Are you better off now than you were four years ago?” The crowd responded with a resounding “No!”
“This election is a choice between whether we’ll have four more years of gross incompetence and failure or whether we’ll begin the greatest years in the history of our country,” he said.
Trump announced a new tax credit for caregivers. On Sunday, he also added a new proposal to his list of tax cuts aimed at winning over older adults and blue-collar workers. The list already includes vows to end taxes on Social Security benefits, tips, and overtime pay: a tax credit for family caregivers.
This comes after Harris has talked about the “sandwich generation” of adults caring for aging parents while raising their children. Harris has proposed federal funding to cover home care costs for older Americans.
Though their campaigns are ongoing, more than 41 million Americans already cast ballots in early in-person voting or via mail-in ballots by midday on Sunday, according to a tally by the Election Lab at the University of Florida.
The election outcome is closely watched by friends and foes, including Communist-run China, which fears massive import tariffs if Trump is elected.
Apparently fearing such an outcome, Chinese hackers targeted phones used by Trump and JD Vance, the New York Times newspaper reported Friday, citing people familiar with the matter.
INVESTIGATIONS ONGOING
Investigators were trying to determine what communication data may have been taken or observed.
Realizing the world was watching, Trump made it a point over the weekend to give one of the lengthiest interviews he’s done as a candidate, a three-hour talk with podcaster Joe Rogan.
He offered Rogan an extended version of what his critics viewed as facts-free hate speech that they claim Trump has delivered lately.
Trump reportedly left thousands of rallygoers in Traverse City, Michigan, waiting an extra three hours Friday night due to his additional time with Rogan.
He attacked Vice President Harris as someone who “couldn’t put two sentences together” in interviews and touted his own oratorical skills that regularly whirl through multiple diverging topics quickly.
“[The weave] comes back home for the right people. For the wrong people, it doesn’t come back home, and they end up in the wilderness, right?” he noticed.
On Rogan’s podcast, Trump stressed that there is an “enemy from within” that is worse for the country than foes like North Korea, where many Christians are known to have been tortured and even killed in labor camps.
NORTH KOREA
He said he had a good relationship with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, despite calling him earlier “little rocket man,” referring to his seizure and nuclear weapons program.
“We have a bigger problem, in my opinion, with the enemy from within, and it drives them crazy when I use that term,” he said. “But we have an enemy from within. We have people who are really bad, people that I really think want to make this country unsuccessful.”
In an attempt to counter what she views as “dangerous” Trump rhetoric, Kamala Harris was joined onstage by famed U.S. singer Beyoncé, congressman Colin Allred, musician Willie Nelson, actress Jessica Alba, Texas personalities, and “families impacted” by the state’s abortion ban in what her campaign is calling “their largest rally to date.”
Harris focused her remarks on the state’s abortion ban, which sparked a slew of abortion restrictions nationwide.
She recently told Christian “pro-life” students opposing abortion that they “were at the wrong rally” after they shouted “Jesus is Lord” and “Christ is King.”
Harris was joined on stage by Amanda and Josh Zurawski, a Texas couple who sued Texas, saying “Amanda was unable to access treatment for a life-threatening pregnancy complication.”
Critics have questioned Harris’s ability to form a clear vision for the United States beyond her pro-abortion views.
Polls predict a close race between Harris and Trump in an election that could impact conflict and peace issues worldwide, including wars in the Middle East and Ukraine, as well as a looking Taiwan-China conflict.