Sawt Falasteen - Trump tours storm damage, Harris woos moderates as US vote looms

With just two weeks until Election Day, the Republican former president and his Democratic opponent are on a blitz through the battlegrounds that will decide the outcome as polls show an unnervingly tight campaign.

Trump, who notched his narrowest victory in North Carolina when he lost to Joe Biden in 2020, toured storm-damaged parts of hard-hit Asheville ahead of a rally scheduled in Greenville and a "faith leaders meeting" in Concord.

Officials in the state were forced to issue hurricane response fact-checks after Trump and his backers pushed what Biden called "an onslaught of lies" about confiscated property, neglected Republican areas and funds diverted to migrants.

The 78-year-old doubled down on the conspiracy theories in Asheville, accusing the administration and Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) of redirecting disaster funds to bring in undocumented immigrants and bolster Democratic votes.

"So I think it's a disgrace what happened with FEMA, what's happened with their rescue effort. Their rescue effort was almost nonexistent," Trump said, flanked by local officials who did not challenge the claims.

Both Harris and Trump are fighting to lock down a few thousand wavering voters in key districts as they bid to edge ahead in the race.

Harris's campaign brought in and spent more than $200 million in September -- more than three times as much as Trump, who is out on bail in two criminal cases and awaiting sentencing in a third over allegations of 2020 election-related misconduct.

Despite the vice president's campaign spending, opinion polls suggest the race has been functionally tied since late August.

- 'Souls to the polls' -

The vice president kicked off the week campaigning with former Republican congresswoman Liz Cheney in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin -- Rust Belt states that were in Trump's column in 2016 but crucial to Biden's victory four years later.

Cheney and her father Dick Cheney, a long-time Democratic bete noir and the vice president under George W. Bush, were once considered fixtures in the Republican firmament but have been ostracized since it was taken over by Trump.

Harris said Trump's dominance in US politics since his shock 2016 election had led Americans to "point the finger at one another" and left the country "exhausted."

But Trump predicted in a social media post that Arab voters upset by the Biden administration's handling of the Israel-Hamas conflict would be turned off by Harris's association with a "war hawk."

The vice president celebrated her 60th birthday Sunday in church -- part of a "souls to the polls" push to turn out Black voters in Georgia -- as Trump's running mate J.D. Vance called her "the candidate of anti-Christian and anti-Catholic bigotry."

"Our strength is not based on who we beat down, as some would try to suggest. Our strength is based on who we lift up," Harris said in an attack on the Trump-Vance campaign's rhetoric.

Trump, in particular, has been criticized for a tumultuous few weeks that have featured rambling monologues and threats about weaponizing the military against Democrats he calls "the enemy from within."

- Musk's $1 million giveaway -

He was facing questions Monday about crude remarks he made at the weekend in Pennsylvania, where he alluded to late golfer Arnold Palmer's "unbelievable" penis and called Harris a "shit vice president."

Trump also manned the fryer at a McDonald's in the Philadelphia suburbs, repeating his unsubstantiated claim that Harris "lied" about working for the fast-food giant in her college years.

Trump, a genuine Big Mac fan, dented his man-of-the people chutzpah by dodging a question on whether he supported an increase in the minimum wage, and the event turned out to be staged in any case, with no real customers present.

As the pair make their closing arguments, a major new Washington Post-Schar School poll of registered voters found support even at 47 percent for each candidate. Harris had a one-point lead among likely voters.

Pro-Trump tech mogul Elon Musk has weighed heavily on the election, pouring $75 million into his political committee, turning his social media company X into a bullhorn for the Republican and stumping for him in Pennsylvania.

But the state's Democratic governor, Josh Shapiro, suggested authorities could investigate Musk's promise at a weekend rally to award a $1 million prize daily until Election Day to a person who has signed an online petition "supporting the US Constitution."

E.Aziz--SF-PST