Harris crisscrosses Wisconsin, Trump leans on Musk

Nineteen days to convince: Kamala Harris is launched on Thursday in a marathon tour in Wisconsin, facing an increasingly offensive Donald Trump and ardently supported by Elon Musk.

The Democrat, a candidate for the White House for less than three months, has set her sights on this state in the Great Lakes region, with a particular focus on young voters.

The vice president, who replaced Joe Biden at short notice in the race, first took part in an economics course at a university in Milwaukee, to detail her project for the world's leading power — to which the press did not have access.

– “All Americans” –

Before holding a campaign rally on the other side of the state, during which the candidate pledged to be a “president for all Americans, regardless of their political party, where they live, or how they get their news.”

Kamala Harris, who has been making repeated appeals to moderate Republicans, gave her first interview to Fox News, the conservatives' favorite channel, on Wednesday.

Kamala Harris in La Crosse, Wisconsin, on October 17, 2024 © AFP – Craig Lassig

The show was watched by more than 7.1 million viewers. A record for a political interview during this campaign, according to the channel.

The Democratic candidate will participate Thursday evening in a new campaign event in Wisconsin, a crucial state for the November 5 election.

Known as the “dairy of America”, Wisconsin is in fact one of the six or seven states that should decide the outcome of the American presidential election, organized by indirect universal suffrage.

Kamala Harris and her Republican rival are currently neck and neck, according to the polls — to be taken with a pinch of salt of course.

The state of six million inhabitants is of particular importance to the Democrats, who had passed on it in 2016, handing the keys to the White House to Donald Trump.

– Musk in Pennsylvania –

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The former president is not neglecting Wisconsin either: it was there that he was crowned in mid-July by his party as the Republican candidate for the election. This large convention with fanfare was organized just a few days after the first assassination attempt against him.

Like his Democratic rival, the septuagenarian is crisscrossing the country three weeks before an election that is as undecided as it is tense. He also multiplies interviews and meetings, punctuated by declarations of rare violence.

At a public meeting on Tuesday, he repeated some of his most virulent attacks on migrants, assuring that prisons and mental asylums “around the world” were emptying inside the United States.

This week, Donald Trump also called on Kamala Harris to take a “cognitive test”, suggested that Joe Biden — whom he portrays as an old man in decline — should get back into the race, and engaged in particularly mocking imitations of the French president, Emmanuel Macron, and the former German chancellor Angela Merkel.

Elon Musk (r) speaks at a rally for former US President Donald Trump on October 5, 2024 in Butler, Pennsylvania © AFP – Jim WATSON

In a podcast broadcast on Thursday, the billionaire, known for having bullied American allies during his term, also assured that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, whose country was invaded by Russia on February 24, 2022, “should never have” let this war begin.

In the middle of the evening, Donald Trump will participate in a charity gala dinner and will give a new interview, this time to a Catholic television channel.

In his new campaign for the White House, the former president is also relying on the support of Elon Musk. The richest man on the planet, in addition to financing the Republican's campaign, held his first public meeting with voters on Thursday, in the also highly coveted state of Pennsylvania.

On stage in front of a huge American flag, the Tesla owner explained that he was there because “Pennsylvania is crucial to the future of the world.”

“I cannot stress enough that Pennsylvania will decide the fate of America and, with the fate of America, the fate of Western civilization,” he added.

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