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Trump, Harris return to campaign after acrimonious debate
The day after an acrimonious debate, in which Kamala Harris jostled Donald Trump and the Republican accused his rival of inaction, the two candidates for the American presidency are heading back to meet voters on Wednesday. In this race for the White House full of twists and turns, the Democratic candidate can now count on a major supporter: that of Taylor Swift, an artist with millions of followers, who praised her as a “gifted and strong leader”. The vice president and the former president are taking part separately on Wednesday in ceremonies honoring the victims of the September 11 attacks, notably in New York. Before setting off again to attack the six or seven key states that will decide the outcome of the presidential election on November 5 and in which the two candidates are neck and neck: North Carolina and Pennsylvania for her, Arizona and Nevada for him. – Trump pushed to his limits – Abortion, immigration, economy: on stage in Philadelphia, Kamala Harris and Donald Trump fiercely debated the main issues that concern Americans less than two months before the election. The 59-year-old vice president pushed the tempestuous septuagenarian to his limits, first by listing the distressing situations in which women living in states that have severely restricted the right to abortion have found themselves. Then by mocking the size of his campaign rallies and assuring that Russian President Vladimir Putin would “make short work” of Donald Trump. Visibly annoyed, the Republican counterattacked by accusing the vice president of having “copied” President Joe Biden’s economic program and of letting “millions of people flock to our country from prisons, mental institutions and insane asylums” abroad. But the Republican also multiplied the muddled statements and untruths, taking up the false accusation of his camp according to which migrants were eating pets in an American city. Under the stunned gaze of the two moderators of the ABC channel. – What impact? – “She pushed him towards the kind of speech illustrating the chaos that he brought to the political scene,” notes Julian Zelizer, professor at Princeton University while recalling that “it may not (make) move the polls much.” If these televised meetings are always high points of the electoral campaign, their impact on the vote is often limited. With one notable exception: the June debate between Joe Biden and Donald Trump, which had greatly precipitated the withdrawal of the Democratic president from the race — one of the biggest political upheavals in modern history. A new confrontation between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump before the November election is not to be excluded: the Democratic candidate challenged her Republican rival to debate a second time. An exchange between their running mates is planned for October 1, in New York.cjc/ev/pz
