US presidential candidates Donald Trump and Kamala Harris again took their campaign to battleground states on Friday, as a racial row over Haitian migrants intensified with the Republican leader promising “mass deportations”.
Trump, 78, was scheduled to hold a rally in Nevada on Friday, where his campaign says he will focus on voters’ economic concerns, including inflation.
Harris was heading to Pennsylvania — potentially one of the most crucial swing states that decide the winner in close presidential elections — after giving a strong performance in Tuesday’s televised debate against Trump.
Opinion polls suggest there is a near tie just seven weeks before election day.
Stung by the broad consensus that Democrat Harris won Tuesday’s debate, including among some prominent Republicans, Trump has doubled down on harsh rhetoric about illegal immigration — the issue that is the core of his campaign.
In a speech from his luxury golf course near Los Angeles, Trump accused “communist” Harris of “allowing illegal aliens to cross our border.”
He targeted the small city of Springfield, Ohio, saying Haitian immigrants there were “destroying their lifestyle.”
“We’re going to have a mass deportation from Springfield, Ohio,” he said. “We’re going to have the largest deportation in the history of our country.”
Springfield is at the center of a conspiracy theory spread by Republicans and Trump’s campaign claiming that Haitians are eating local residents’ pets.
On Friday, Springfield officials evacuated schools for a second day amid unspecified threats linked to rising tensions.
Wills Dorsainvil, head of the local Haitian community centre, told AFP that the FBI was investigating threatening phone calls the organisation had received.
Trump amplified the false story about the pets in extensive remarks Thursday, where he claimed even park swans were being killed by Haitians — and said at a rally that “young American girls are being raped, sodomized and murdered by ruthless criminal aliens.”
President Joe Biden, who dropped out of his own re-election campaign to support Harris, intervened on Friday, saying Trump must stop inflaming tensions, and that there is “no place for it in America.”
– Far-right parties –
There was also growing controversy over the presence of far-right conspiracy theorist Laura Loomer in Trump’s entourage.
She accompanied him to the debate on Tuesday and even accompanied him to Ground Zero on the anniversary of the September 11 attacks — despite his claims that the deadliest terrorist attack in US history was an “insider plot.”
“I don’t control Laura, Laura says what she wants,” Trump told reporters in Los Angeles.
“Laura has been my supporter,” he said, adding that he had never heard her spread 9/11 conspiracy theories.
Loomer has also faced criticism from hard-right Republicans for her comment that Harris, whose mother was Indian, would make the White House “smell like curry.”
As Election Day on November 5 approaches, Trump is being forced to refocus his campaign on Harris rather than Biden, as the 81-year-old Biden was seen as unlikely to win by his own Democratic Party.
Trump’s troubles continue to surface, including his televised comments on the golf course on Friday.
He has spoken defensively about polls that he claimed show him far ahead, and has again insisted that he dominated Harris in debates. He has also rejected her challenge to hold another debate.
On Thursday, Trump was in the state of Arizona, while Harris held two rallies in North Carolina, a battleground state.
– ‘turn the page’ –
Harris, 59, has largely refrained from directly responding to Trump’s personal attacks, and has presented herself as a new generation of leader who will end the constant drama and division that has characterized Trump’s presidency and post-presidential career.
When Trump raised the false story about migrants eating pets in the debate, he responded by shaking his head in disbelief.
On Thursday, Harris told rally attendees in North Carolina, “It’s time to turn the page.”
Despite raising a massive amount of donations and running neck-and-neck with Trump in the polls, Harris stressed again Thursday that she still has a lot of work to do.
He said, “We know that our race will be very tough till the end. We are weak. We must be clear about this.”
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)