Donald Trump told supporters Monday that he is “not a Nazi,” using a rally in the final week of a bitter race for the White House to refute accusations of authoritarianism, including from a former top adviser who called him a fascist.
As he and his rival Kamala Harris, the current vice president, entered the home stretch of one of the closest American elections in modern times, each candidate and their teams have ramped up the political rhetoric, inflaming an already tense campaign.
Democrat Harris, who has accused Trump of stoking divisions, toured Michigan on Monday as the Republican visited Georgia, another swing state, where she said critics accuse him of being a modern-day “Hitler.”
“The latest line from Kamala and her campaign is that everyone who doesn't vote for her is a Nazi,” Trump said at a boisterous rally in Atlanta.
“I'm not a Nazi. I'm the opposite of a Nazi.”
The comments come a day after Trump held a major rally at New York's famed Madison Square Garden that was widely condemned for racist comments his allies made during the event.
They also follow the recent publication of a New York Times interview in which Trump's longest-serving White House chief of staff, retired Gen. John Kelly, said the Republican fits the definition of a fascist, something Harris said she agreed with last week .
Kelly also said that Trump had commented that “Hitler did some good things too” and that he “wanted generals like Adolf Hitler had.”
'Dividing our country'
Tensions are rising in a race that polls suggest is too close, fueled by fears that former President Trump could again refuse to concede defeat, as in 2020, and by his harsh rhetoric threatening immigrants and their families. political opponents.
On Monday, a fire allegedly consumed hundreds of early ballots cast in a supposedly secure drop box in a competitive district in northwest Washington state.
Another ballot box was damaged hours earlier in Portland, Oregon, where police said in a statement that an “intentional act” of fire sought to “affect the electoral process.”
Trump has faced renewed outrage after one of the warm-up speakers at his Sunday rally in New York called the US territory of Puerto Rico “a floating island of garbage.”
Harris, who is seeking to become the country's first female president, criticized “that nonsense last night at Madison Square Garden” as she spoke to reporters before boarding Air Force Two on Monday.
“He's focused and really obsessed with his grievances, with himself, and with dividing our country. And it's in no way something that's going to strengthen the American family, the American worker.”
Later, in Ann Arbor, Michigan, at a rally with his running mate Tim Walz and a crowd of about 20,000, he described how “a lot is at stake” on November 5.
“Donald Trump is even more unstable and more unhinged, and now he wants unchecked power.”
His campaign said Puerto Rico's comments “do not reflect the views of President Trump.”
Island residents cannot vote in presidential elections, but those within the United States proper, which includes some 450,000 Puerto Ricans in the crucial battleground of Pennsylvania, can.
A top Harris surrogate, former President Barack Obama, was in Philadelphia on Monday rallying supporters and attacking Trump allies for “bringing out and peddling the most racist, sexist and bigoted stereotypes.”
He also appealed to Pennsylvania voters with Puerto Rican ties, saying: “If someone does not see them as fellow citizens with equal rights to opportunity, to the pursuit of happiness and to the American dream, they should not vote for them.”
'Disgusting'
Trump used Sunday's event, compared by Democrats to an infamous 1939 rally by American fascists at the same location, to lash out at familiar issues, including undocumented immigrants and domestic opponents whom he again called the “enemy within.”
And in Atlanta, he repeated his attacks on Harris, calling her a “hater” and saying former first lady Michelle Obama was “nasty” for criticizing him.
More than 47 million Americans have already cast their ballots in early voting, including outgoing President Joe Biden, who voted Monday near his hometown of Wilmington, Delaware.
As the clock ticks, the challenge for Harris and Trump is both to energize their core supporters and attract the small number of persuadable voters who could still tip the balance, especially in the seven swing states where polls put them neck-and-neck. .
On Tuesday, Harris will deliver what her campaign calls a “closing argument” from the same spot near the White House where then-President Trump whipped up his supporters on Jan. 6, 2021, to launch a violent assault on the U.S. Capitol.
