Donald Trump at a meeting on the campus of the Georgia Institute of Technology, in Atlanta, October 28, 2024 (AFP / CHRISTIAN MONTERROSA)
Donald Trump claimed Monday to be “the opposite of a Nazi” after several days of controversy surrounding the potentially authoritarian leanings of the Republican candidate for the White House.
One week before a particularly uncertain election between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump, the latter is under fire for old statements he allegedly made and after a meeting in New York marked by racist remarks.
“Kamala (Harris)'s new line is that everyone who doesn't vote for her is a Nazi. We are Nazis,” Donald Trump told his supporters during a rally in Atlanta in the key state of Georgia. .
“I am not a Nazi, I am the opposite of a Nazi,” he then insisted.
Last week, John Kelly, his former chief of staff at the White House, estimated that his ex-boss met the definition of a fascist, an accusation echoed by Democratic candidate Kamala Harris.
Donald and Melania Trump in New York on October 27, 2024 (AFP / ANGELA WEISS)
According to John Kelly, the ex-president also said that Adolf Hitler had “done good things”.
On Sunday, it was his meeting at Madison Square Garden in New York which created controversy, after the statements of a comedian everywhere denounced as racist. Puerto Rico, a US territory in the Caribbean, is “a floating island of garbage in the middle of the ocean”, said Tony Hinchcliffe.
“This joke does not reflect the opinion of the president” Trump, said one of his spokespersons.
In contrast, Kamala Harris immediately exploited the controversy, promising in a video to “chart a new and happy path” for Puerto Rico.
– “The best for the economy” –
The vice-president and her running mate Tim Walz will travel this week to all of the seven key, most contested states.
US Vice President Kamala Harris speaks during a meeting in Ann Arbor, Michigan (north), October 28, 2024 (AFP / Drew ANGERER)
The 60-year-old candidate began Monday in Michigan, with a trip focused on the manufacturing sector in this state, cradle of the automobile industry.
“So much is at stake in this election, and it’s not 2016 or 2020,” she told supporters.
“We can all see that Donald Trump is even more unstable and more unbalanced, and now he wants unchecked power, and this time there will be no one to stop him,” the vice president added.
In recent days, tension has risen further, fueled by the fear that former President Donald Trump will once again refuse to recognize his defeat, as in 2020, in the event of a victory for the opposing camp.
And if he were to win, he promised a major program to expel migrants and attack “enemies from within”.
Kamala Harris traveling to a factory in Michigan, October 28, 2024 (AFP / JEFF KOWALSKY)
But it's something else that Cesar Viera, 18, who lives north of Atlanta and who will vote for the Republican for the first presidential election of his life, remembers. And this because “he is quite simply the best for our economy”, he tells AFP.
He watched the meeting at Madison Square Garden the day before and saw nothing racist or hurtful: “I'm Latino and I vote for Trump,” he added, American flag around his shoulders.
Donald Trump hopes to reconquer Georgia, a state in the “Bible Belt” that he lost by some 11,000 votes in 2020.
A stone's throw from the ex-president's meeting, two large signs call to vote for Kamala Harris.
Tucker Spires, a 20-year-old student and future engineer, has already slipped his ballot into the ballot box for the Democrat. “Trump is simply a despicable person,” he says, sipping an energy drink.
More than 47 million Americans, like him, have already voted early for this election which promises to be the closest in the modern history of the United States.
– “Final indictment” –
At the national level, polls still give Kamala Harris, who would become the first black woman president of the United States, and Donald Trump, candidate for the White House for the third time, neck and neck.
Joe Biden as he leaves the voting booth in New Castle, Delaware, October 28, 2024 (AFP / ANDREW CABALLERO-REYNOLDS)
Illustration of the ambient tensions, two metal electoral boxes, containing hundreds of ballots cast in advance, were the target of arson Monday in Washington and Oregon, bordering states in the northwest of the country.
Kamala Harris said Monday she was ready to take a cognitive assessment, calling on her 78-year-old rival to “take the same” exam.
The latter, who has made the defense of the right to abortion one of her campaign priorities, will probably include this theme in the “final indictment” that she plans to deliver on Tuesday against Donald Trump, in a speech near the House White.
This is where Donald Trump addressed his supporters on January 6, 2021, before they attacked the Capitol.
