Sawt Falasteen - Harris blasts Trump after racist rally rhetoric

As they entered the final week of one of the closest US presidential elections in history, Democrat Harris crisscrossed Michigan while Republican Trump headed to Georgia, another of the decisive swing states.

More than 44 million Americans have already cast ballots in early voting -- including outgoing Democratic President Joe Biden, who voted on Monday after waiting in a long line near his hometown of Wilmington, Delaware.

Tensions are soaring in a race that polls suggest is too close to call, fueled by fears that former president Trump could again refuse to recognize a defeat, as he did in 2020, and by his harsh rhetoric threatening migrants and political opponents.

Concerns increased after a fire reportedly consumed hundreds of early ballots cast in a supposedly secure drop-off box in a highly competitive district in northwestern Washington state. Arson was reportedly suspected in another ballot box fire hours earlier in Portland, Oregon.

And Trump has faced renewed outrage after one of the warm-up speakers at his huge Sunday rally in New York's Madison Square Garden called Puerto Rico "a floating island of garbage."

- 'Dividing our country' -

"Last night, Donald Trump's event in Madison Square Garden really highlighted a point that I've been making throughout this campaign," Harris told reporters as she headed for Michigan on Air Force Two.

"He is focused and actually fixated on his grievances, on himself, and on dividing our country. And it is not in any way something that will strengthen the American family, the American worker."

The former president's campaign said the comments on Puerto Rico did "not reflect the views of President Trump."

Residents in the US territory cannot vote in presidential elections, but those within the United States proper -- which includes about 450,000 Puerto Ricans in the crucial battleground state of Pennsylvania -- can.

However, the speaker, comedian Tony Hinchcliffe, was unrepentant, writing on social media that critics "have no sense of humor" -- a comment reposted by Trump's son and advisor Don Trump Jr.

Hinchcliffe also mocked a Black man by referring to a watermelon -- a deep-rooted racist stereotype in the United States -- and made fun of Latinos' birth control.

Other speakers used openly sexist and racist rhetoric to mock Harris sexually and called her the "anti-Christ."

Trump meanwhile used the event -- likened by Democrats to an infamous 1939 rally of American fascists in the same venue -- to lash out on familiar topics including undocumented migrants and domestic opponents whom he again branded the "enemy from within."

- Swing state battle -

As the clock ticks down, the challenge for Harris and Trump is both to energize core supporters and pull in the tiny number of persuadable voters who might still tip the balance -- especially in the seven swing states where polls suggest they are running neck-and-neck.

Harris, who spent Sunday in must-win Pennsylvania, was holding three events in Michigan, while Trump was to hold two in Georgia -- a pattern set to be repeated around the country's other battlegrounds for the next seven days.

"He's just the best for the economy right now," said Cesar Viera, 18, who was attending the Trump rally in Atlanta, wearing a US flag across his shoulders.

Viera added that he did not find the comments at the Madison Square Garden rally offensive. "I'm Latino too and I'm voting for Trump."

At her first event in Michigan Harris stopped at a semiconductor factory, reflecting the Democrat's need to appeal to blue-collar voters and promise recovery in America's post-industrial "Rust Belt."

On Tuesday in Washington, Harris will deliver what her campaign calls a "closing argument" from the same spot near the White House where then president Trump stoked his supporters on January 6, 2021, to launch a violent assault on the US Capitol.

Fears of a repeat of the chaos four years ago hangs over the whole 2024 election. According to a CNN poll out Monday, only 30 percent of Americans think Trump would concede defeat, while 73 percent think Harris would accept a loss.

R.Shaban--SF-PST