Biden worries that the vote will not be 'peaceful', one month before the presidential election

Photo: Andrew Harnik Getty Images via Agence France-Presse “The things that Trump has said and the things he said last time when he didn’t like the outcome of the election were very dangerous,” US President Joe Biden warned during an impromptu exchange with reporters in the White House press briefing room.

Camille Camdessus – Agence France-Presse in Washington

Published at 17:52 Updated at 21:07

• United States

A month before the US presidential election, Joe Biden expressed concern on Friday about the risk that the vote would not be “peaceful” because of the behavior of Republican candidate Donald Trump.

“The things that Trump said and the things he said last time when he didn't like the outcome of the election were very dangerous,” warned the American president.

“I'm worried about what they're going to do” when the vote comes, he said in an impromptu exchange with reporters.

As the November 5 election between Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris and former Republican leader Donald Trump approaches, illustrations of an American society on edge are everywhere.

Election centers in the most contested counties, targets of heightened tensions four years ago, have been transformed into fortresses, protected by wrought-iron fences and metal detectors.

The certification of the presidential results at the Capitol, the scene of an attack by rampaging Trumpists on January 6, 2021, will this time be surrounded by the highest level of security possible for an event official.

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“Cheat like hell”

The fear is that, once again, the vote will be so close that it will take not hours, but days to declare a winner.

Donald Trump, who has never acknowledged his defeat in 2020, has already laid the first foundations for a new challenge, accusing the Democrats of “cheating like hell” on Friday during a public meeting with voters.

The Republican candidate also blamed the second assassination attempt on him on the “rhetoric” of his opponents, while the Democrats accuse him, on the contrary, of being the instigator of a sometimes unbreathable political climate.

The septuagenarian Republican will also return on Saturday to the scene of the first assassination attempt, where he narrowly escaped in July to the bullets of a shooter, in the town of Butler in Pennsylvania, for a new campaign meeting.

He will be accompanied by a distinguished guest: Elon Musk, the richest man in the world, owner of X, Tesla, and SpaceX.

Before that, Donald Trump was in Georgia on Friday, a state hit hard by Hurricane Helene, which left more than 200 dead in the United States. During this trip, he criticized the White House for having “terribly” managed this crisis. And accused, without evidence, the Biden administration of having diverted funds from the federal agency for responding to natural disasters to redistribute them to migrants.

Obama supports Harris

Kamala Harris was in Michigan, a key state in the Great Lakes region and a symbol of industrial decline in the United States since the 1980s.

The Democratic candidate began her trip in the big city of Detroit, the cradle of the American automobile industry, where she wants to strengthen her image as a pro-union candidate.

The working-class electorate was traditionally favorable to the Democrats, but Donald Trump has managed to attract the favor of many of its members since his entry on the political scene.

To try to slow down this exodus, Kamala Harris will be able to benefit in the coming weeks from a strong support in the person of Barack Obama. Always very popular, the first black president in the history of the United States will go on the ground in several key states until the election on November 5, the Democratic vice-president's campaign team announced Friday.

In Michigan, Kamala Harris also stopped in Flint, infamous for having experienced a huge lead contamination scandal in drinking water.

“You know better than anyone Flint, access to clean water should be a right for everyone,” assured the vice president to cheers from the crowd.