Harris, Trump seek election-battle advantage

(COMBO) Donald Trump (L) and Kamala Harris (R) during the 2024 US elections debate.
Photo courtesy of AFP
Kamala Harris and rival Donald Trump campaigned in battleground states Sunday seeking 11th-hour advantages in a deadlocked White House race, as new polling shows the vice president underperforming among some traditional Democratic voter demographics.
Harris was in North Carolina, a state hard-hit by a hurricane two weeks ago that devastated several communities and left more than 235 people dead across the US Southeast, as she seeks to counter Trump’s claims that federal agencies have done little to help storm victims.
“Moments of crisis, I believe, do have a way of revealing the heroes among us,” she said during a speech at a church in Greenville, a North Carolina city where African-American students staged the historic 1960 sit-in at a segregated lunch counter in a fight for civil rights.
Without naming the former president, Harris then called out those who had been “lying about people who are working hard to help folks in need, spreading disinformation.”
Trump heavily focused on the key election issue of migration at a rally in Arizona, promising in an often meandering 92-minute speech that he would hire 10,000 new US border guards if reelected.
The Republican earlier used a Fox News interview to float the idea of using military force against Americans he described as “the enemy from within.”
“We have some sick people, radical left lunatics,” he said, without specifying whom he had in mind. “And it should be very easily handled by — if necessary, by National Guard or, if really necessary, by the military.”
Federal law generally bars use of the military for civilian law enforcement, though there are limited exceptions.
Meanwhile, police said a man in possession of a shotgun and a loaded handgun was arrested on Saturday near a Trump rally in California.
The Secret Service said the former president, who has been targeted in two assassination attempts since July, was not in any danger during the incident.
