Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris and her rival, former President Donald Trump, have held duelling rallies only a few miles apart in the city of Milwaukee – the conclusion to a day of events that served as one of the last pushes for support before the November 5 election.
Milwaukee, the largest city in Wisconsin, is vote-rich territory for Democrats, but Republicans are focused on the surrounding conservative suburbs. Trump won the state in 2016 but lost in 2020.
“We know who Donald Trump is,” Harris said on Friday evening. “This is not someone who is thinking about how to make your life better. This is someone who is increasingly unstable, obsessed with revenge. He is consumed with grievance, and the man is out for unchecked power.”
Less than 10 miles away in a different part of the city, Trump said: “My response to Joe and Kamala is very simple: You can’t lead America if you don’t love America, and you can’t be the president if you hate the American people.”
Democrats know they must turn out voters in Milwaukee, also home to the state’s largest Black population. Harris is hoping to replicate, and exceed, turnout from 2020 in the city, which voted 79 percent for Biden that year.
Harris’s campaign warmed up the youthful crowd with appearances from music artists GloRilla, Flo Milli, MC Lyte, The Isley Brothers and DJ Gemini Gilly.
Also supporting Harris was rapper Rapper Cardi B. “Did you hear what Donny Trump said the other day?” she said, referring to Trump’s promise to protect women “whether they like it or not”.
“Donny, don’t,” she said. “Please.”
Need to turn the page
Harris’s message, as it has increasingly been at all her rallies, is that Americans are exhausted with Trump’s negative presence in the political scene and that it is time to move forward.
“We have an opportunity to finally turn the page on a decade of Donald Trump trying to keep us divided and afraid of each other. We are done with it, we are exhausted with it, we are turning the page,” she said.
Harris also emphasised the need to find common ground and compromise in the country’s deeply divided politics.
“Unlike Donald Trump, I don’t believe people who disagree with me are the enemy,” she said.
“He wants to put them in jail. I will give them a seat at the table.”
Everybody wants a job
Trump told his supporters he had asked his staff not to speculate about who might work for him when he wins.
“I don’t want to talk about any people. First, I want to win. We don’t want to talk about people. Don’t tell me about people. Everybody wants a job,” he said
“Remember this – there was a moment where they were saying, ‘Oh, nobody wants to work for Trump. He’s too difficult’. Let me tell you a little secret: They died to work for us. You know why? Because they all want to be this glamour deal. They want to be in this beautiful administration.”
Trump’s rallies have taken on a note of nostalgia in the last week before the election, and Friday was no exception.
At an afternoon rally in Warren, Michigan, he told supporters that he felt “energised” from the campaign trail.
“This has been a thrill of a lifetime for me and for you and everybody,” he said.
Earlier on Friday, Harris had left Las Vegas for Wisconsin, where she spoke at a union hall in Janesville, then held an event in Little Chute, before her third stop in the Milwaukee neighbourhood of West Allis.