Donald Trump, targeted by a second alleged assassination attempt on Sunday, returned to the campaign on Tuesday accusing Kamala Harris of inciting violence against him, at a time when the Democratic candidate appears to be regaining some momentum in the polls.
The vice president, who is traveling in Pennsylvania while her opponent is expected in Michigan — two key states for the December 5 election — called the former president “to tell him directly that she was happy that he is safe and sound,” a White House official said.
The conversation was “cordial and brief,” according to the same source.
“I told him what I had already said publicly: there is no place for violence in our country. […] “We can and should have healthy debates, discussions and disagreements but without resorting to violence,” the 59-year-old Democrat later reported during an interview in Philadelphia with three reporters from the National Association of Black Journalists (NABJ).
For Donald Trump, the suspect arrested Sunday in Florida for the alleged assassination attempt against him, “adheres to the speech of Biden and Harris and acts accordingly.”
“Because of this rhetoric from the communist left, bullets are flying and it’s only going to get worse,” said the 78-year-old Republican.
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Flint
The billionaire is scheduled to attend a public meeting on Tuesday in Flint, a city left devastated by the auto industry crisis and infamous for a massive lead-contamination scandal in its drinking water.
Donald Trump and Kamala Harris travel the six or seven swing statesthe swing states, while the Democrat appears to be enjoying a slight ascendancy in the polls since the debate on September 10, during which she generally dominated her opponent.
“If we look at the polls conducted after the debate and those conducted before, the momentum in favor of Harris is clear,” wrote a specialist on Tuesday at the site Five Thirty Eight, which aggregates and analyzes numerous opinion polls, although he noted that this trend was precarious.
The same site also notes that, for the first time since July 2021, Kamala Harris has garnered as many favorable as unfavorable opinions (46.6%), while negative opinions largely dominated until recently.
The candidate, already supported by star Taylor Swift, received the support of an immensely popular pop artist, Billie Eilish, on Tuesday.
The singer, in a message to her 119 million Instagram followers, which quickly garnered more than a million likes, said she would vote for the Democrat and her running mate Tim Walz “because they are fighting to protect our reproductive freedom, our planet and our democracy.”
In her interview in Philadelphia, Kamala Harris condemned Donald Trump’s role in spreading false information about Haitian migrants eating dogs and cats in the small town of Springfield, Ohio.
“Scandal”
“It’s an absolute outrage,” she said of the turmoil in the city, which has been plagued by bomb threats and public closures. “You can’t be entrusted with the responsibility of being president of the United States when you’re participating in this kind of hateful rhetoric.”
The Democrat, who has made defending abortion rights one of the main focuses of her campaign, also deplored the “tragic” fate of a 28-year-old woman who died in hospital in Georgia after doctors refused her treatment because of a law banning voluntary terminations of pregnancy.
According to the media ProPublica, this is the first death officially declared “preventable” since the Supreme Court, shaped by Donald Trump, ended in 2022 a jurisprudence that protected the right to abortion throughout the country.
The tension surrounding this already extraordinary campaign rose another notch on Sunday.
Donald Trump had already survived an assassination attempt in July, when a gunman opened fire during a rally in Pennsylvania.
He was on the course of his golf club in Florida on Sunday afternoon when several Secret Service agents “opened fire on an armed man” who was standing near the edge of the course.
The man was later identified as Ryan Routh.
The 58-year-old American, who was armed with a sniper rifle and video recording equipment but who, according to the police, did not shoot Donald Trump, fled before being arrested a little later.