New York (AFP) – Republican Donald Trump led a headline-grabbing New York rally on Sunday with nonstop attacks on Kamala Harris, but Democrats sought to capitalize on crude insults from some of his allies’ opening speeches. Trump took to the stage at the iconic 20,000-seat Madison Square Garden arena to deliver a closing message in the exceedingly tight race for the White House that reaches its apogee on November 5.
“You’ve destroyed our country. We’re not going to take it anymore, Kamala,” the 78-year-old told roaring supporters wearing trademark red “Make America Great Again” hats. Several speakers drew cheers with their own barbs against Harris as well as Puerto Rico and Latinos at the rally in the Democratic stronghold city. Comedian Tony Hinchcliffe took aim at birthrates among Latinos and called the Caribbean US territory Puerto Rico “a floating island of garbage”.
Harris, 60, seized on the attacks as she competes with the ex-president to win over Puerto Rican communities in the tight battleground states expected to decide the election. “Puerto Ricans deserve a president who sees and invests in (their) strength,” Harris said in a clip published on social media alongside Hinchcliffe’s comments. Pennsylvania Senator John Fetterman, a Democrat, noted the state is home to almost half a million Puerto Ricans and nearly three quarters are able to vote.
Ricky Martin, the Puerto Rican superstar with 18.6 million followers on Instagram, quickly shared a video of Harris’s appeal to Puerto Rican voters, along with a clip of Hinchcliffe’s remarks. “This is what they think of us,” Martin wrote in Spanish. “Vote for @kamalaharris.” Puerto Rican singer Bad Bunny also showed support for the vice president by sharing one of her videos to his 45.6 million followers on Instagram.
Trump’s rally at “The World’s Most Famous Arena” included a surprise appearance by his wife Melania and backers such as billionaire Elon Musk, who has personally hit the campaign trail for the ex-president. However, the venue also hosted a far-right, pro-Hitler rally in 1939, complete with eagles, Nazi insignia and salutes — an association that has generated darker headlines. Professional wrestling legend Hulk Hogan, who also spoke at the Republican convention in July, rejected criticisms of the rally: “I don’t see any Nazis in here.”
Other speeches also drew concern and criticism, including from Stephen Miller, one of Trump’s most hard-right advisors. “America is for Americans and Americans only,” he shouted into the microphone, after pledging a crackdown on cartels and “criminal migrants”. Meanwhile, former Fox News host Tucker Carlson took a mocking shot at Harris’s background, calling her “a Samoan Malaysian low I.Q. former California prosecutor”.
Harris, meanwhile, charged through a packed day of campaigning in must-win Pennsylvania’s largest city, including stops at a Black church, a barbershop and a Puerto Rican restaurant. With barely a week to go, she was leaving nothing to chance in Philadelphia, where she must run up her vote tally to win the battleground state. “We must not wake up the day after the election and have any regrets,” she told a rally in Philadelphia.
Sunday’s visit was the vice president’s 14th trip to Pennsylvania since she jumped to the top of the ticket after President Joe Biden’s shock withdrawal in July. “This is the closest and the best opportunity we have to have a female in office who happens to be a Black female,” Myrda Scott, from Philadelphia, told AFP at one of Harris’s rallies in the city. Harris rolled up to Philly Cuts barber shop in the largely Black neighborhood of West Philadelphia to meet residents, before ducking into the African-American-themed Hakim’s Bookstore & Gift Shop.
“She’s boots to the ground,” 43-year-old African-American woman Myrda Scott, who runs a financial firm, told AFP as she awaited Harris at a youth basketball rec center rally. On Tuesday, Harris will hold a major rally in Washington near the White House in the park where Trump fired up his supporters before they stormed the US Capitol to try to overturn the 2020 election result.
© 2024 AFP
