Fifteen days before the American presidential election, in a campaign with a tone that is becoming more virulent every day, Donald Trump was Monday in North Carolina, recently hit by a devastating hurricane, while her Democratic rival tried to convince moderate conservatives. The vice president is making a whirlwind tour of three key states, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin, in the east of the country. As for the former president, he arrived in North Carolina (southeast), where he again criticized the Biden administration's intervention to provide assistance to victims of this natural disaster. The American “Swing States”: Pennsylvania © AFP – Jonathan WALTER, Olivia BUGAULT, Sabrina BLANCHARD According to official figures released Monday, Kamala Harris' campaign team spent $270 million in September compared to just $78 million for the Trump camp. According to the New York Times, the vice president has raised more than $1 billion since she entered the campaign in July, after President Joe Biden withdrew, an unprecedented amount for a quarter of a campaign. But this financial advantage does not translate into electoral capital, according to the polls, which remain unable to separate the two candidates. – “Turning the page” – In the seven crucial states for the presidential election, the four already mentioned plus Arizona, Nevada and Georgia, the latest tallies published Monday by the New York Times continue to put the rivals neck and neck. The American “swing states”: Michigan © AFP – Jonathan WALTER, Olivia BUGAULT, Sabrina BLANCHARD The same thing happened in a poll conducted by the Washington Post among 5,000 voters in these same states during the first half of October: 47% intend to vote for Kamala Harris and 47% for Donald Trump. In this context, the Democratic candidate is seeking to rally moderate conservatives to her cause in the company of former Republican congresswoman Liz Cheney, a fierce opponent of Donald Trump. The latter explained that her support for the vice president had not been a “difficult choice to make”. “I know how quickly democracies can collapse,” she added. Speaking of her desire to “turn the page,” Kamala Harris said Monday that Mr. Trump's dominance of American politics since his surprise election in 2016 had led Americans to “turn against each other” and had “exhausted” the country. At the same time, from North Carolina, the Republican candidate explained that the Democrat was not “qualified to run” and even considered that she was “a threat to democracy”. “It is hard to believe that there are undecided voters”, he added. The American “Swing States”: Wisconsin © AFP – Jonathan WALTER, Olivia BUGAULT, Sabrina BLANCHARD The latter has gone up another notch in verbal violence in recent days. “You need to tell Kamala Harris that you've had enough. (…) You're a shitty vice president, the worst, you're fired. Get out of here,” he told his supporters in Pennsylvania on Saturday. The vice president, who celebrated her 60th birthday on Sunday, also toughened her tone against her rival, whose behavior she said “debases” the office of president. – Trump at McDonald's – The billionaire courted the working classes over the weekend, posing with workers in hard hats on Saturday and playing waiter at a McDonald's on Sunday. On Monday, the Republican candidate visited Asheville, a city hit hard by Hurricane Helene in late September. Piles of debris were visible behind him when he spoke. On the ground, “everything still looks like a war zone, I don't have a better word to describe” the situation, Shelley Hughes, a Swannanoa resident who supports the Republican, told AFP on Friday. Speaking from this small town ravaged by the hurricane, Donald Trump repeated his false accusations that the federal agency for natural disasters, FEMA, had spent its funds “on illegal immigrants”. Debris accumulated in the streets of Asheville several weeks after the passage of Hurricane Helene, October 20, 2024 in North Carolina © AFP – Jim WATSON Helene, the second deadliest hurricane to hit the continental United States in more than half a century, left at least 240 dead in the southeast of the country, including at least 124 in North Carolina North. bur-juj-aue-tib/ube All rights reserved. © (2024) Agence France-Presse
By Teilor Stone
Teilor Stone has been a reporter on the news desk since 2013. Before that she wrote about young adolescence and family dynamics for Styles and was the legal affairs correspondent for the Metro desk. Before joining Thesaxon , Teilor Stone worked as a staff writer at the Village Voice and a freelancer for Newsday, The Wall Street Journal, GQ and Mirabella. To get in touch, contact me through my teilor@nizhtimes.com 1-800-268-7116