LITITZ, Pa. — Two days before the election, Donald Trump gave a speech full of bad language and conspiracy theories. He talked about reporters being shot and said he “shouldn’t have left” the White House after losing to Joe Biden in 2020.
On Sunday, the former president said things that were nothing like the speeches he usually gives in the last few days of a campaign. He constantly questioned the validity of the vote and brought up old complaints about being prosecuted for trying to overturn his loss four years ago. Trump stepped up his verbal attacks on the American media and a “grossly incompetent” national leadership. At one point, he changed the subject of his Pennsylvania gathering to violence against reporters.
The GOP candidate for president talked about the bulletproof glass that was put in front of him at events after a gunman tried to kill him at a gathering in Butler, Pennsylvania, in July. He also talked about where he thought that protection was weak.
He said, “I have this piece of glass here.” “But here, all we have is fake news,” Someone would have to shoot through the fake news to get me. That doesn’t bother me too much.
It was the second time in the past few days that Trump has talked about guns being pointed at people he sees as enemies. The first time was when he said that former Republican critic and Rep. Liz Cheney wouldn’t support foreign wars if she had “nine barrels shooting at her.”
It’s clear from what he said that Trump is still spreading lies about elections and saying that he can only lose to Democrat Kamala Harris if he is cheated, even though polls show that the race is very close.
Some of his supporters, like former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon, have told him to claim victory early on Tuesday, even though it’s still too early to tell. That’s what Trump did four years ago. It was the first step in a fight against the election results that led to the uprising at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021.
Later, his team tried to make it clear what he meant when he talked about the media.
A spokesperson for Trump’s campaign, Steven Cheung, said in a statement, “President Trump was brilliantly talking about the two attempts on his life, including one that came within 1/4 of an inch of killing him. This is something that the media constantly talks about and makes fun of.” “What the president said about putting up protective glass has nothing to do with what happened with the media or anything else.”
Harris, meanwhile, told a church in Michigan on Sunday that God has a “divine plan strong enough to heal division” for the United States.
With almost no time left in the campaign, the two main candidates had very different points of view. Harris said that voters can reject “chaos, fear, and hate.”
Her attention was on Michigan, and she started the day with a group of about one hundred people at the Greater Emmanuel Institutional Church of God in Christ in Detroit. It marked the fourth consecutive Sunday that Harris, who is Baptist, has spoken to a Black congregation, a reflection of how critical Black voters are across multiple battleground states.
“I see faith in action in remarkable ways,” she said in remarks that quoted the Old Testament prophet Jeremiah. “I see a country ready to move on from hate and division and get things back on track.” As I move, I meet people from “red states” and “blue states” who are ready to change the course of history for the better.
She never mentioned Trump, though she’s certain to return to her more conventional partisan speech in stops later Sunday. But Harris did tell her friendly audience that “there are those who seek to deepen division, sow hate, spread fear and cause chaos.” The election and “this moment in our nation,” she continued, “has to be about so much more than partisan politics. It must be about the good work we can do together.”
Harris finished her remarks in about 11 minutes — starting and ending during Trump’s roughly 90-minute speech at a chilly outdoor rally in Pennsylvania.
In his talking style, which he calls “the weave,” Trump often jumps from one subject to another. But outside the Lancaster airport, he went on long tangents and hardly mentioned his usual points on the economy, immigration and rote criticisms of Harris.
Trump also referred to John Bolton, his former national security adviser and now a strident critic, as a “dumb son of a b—.” And he repeated familiar and debunked theories about voter fraud, alleging that Democrats could only win by cheating. Public polls indicate a tight and competitive race across the battleground states that will determine the Electoral College outcome.
“It’s a crooked country,” Trump said. “And we’re going to make it straight. We’re going to make it straight.”
Harris pushed back at Trump’s characterizations of U.S. elections, telling reporters after the church service that Trump’s comments are “meant to distract from the fact that we have and support free and fair elections in our country.” Those “good systems” were in place in 2020, Harris said, and “he lost.”
The vice president said she trusts the upcoming vote tally and urged voters, “in particular people who have not yet voted to not fall for this tactic, which I think includes, suggesting to people that if they vote, their vote won’t matter.”
Separately, the vice president tacitly acknowledged the significant population of Arab Americans in Michigan, and that community’s voters who are angry at the Biden administration for its continuation of the U.S. alliance with Israel amid the Netanyahu government’s war against Hamas in Gaza.
“I have been very clear that the level of death of innocent Palestinians is unconscionable,” Harris told reporters Sunday after the church service. “We need to end the war, and we need to get the hostages out. And as president of the United States, I will do everything in my power to achieve that end.”
Trump, for his part, acknowledged that he was sidestepping his usual approach with his conspiratorial speech. He repeatedly mentioned how he disregarded the advice of his aides, telling their side of the story in a mocking voice and insisting that he had to talk about election fraud.
Co-campaign manager Susie Wiles, long credited with bringing order to Trump’s often-chaotic political operation, watched the former president silently from off stage.
Trump at one point suggested that he wouldn’t deliver this version of his speech again: “I hope you’ve enjoyed this,” he said, “because I’m only doing this one time.”
