After boasting about the economy and raising fears over immigration, US President Donald Trump has been facing pushback from his predecessor Barack Obama, who took an increasingly prominent role in the final weekend of campaigning before the US midterm elections, in which Republican control of the US Congress is threatened.
With rallies taking place in Montana and Florida, a state he had already visited on Wednesday, Trump was keeping up his relentless campaign schedule before tomorrow’s ballot, which has become a referendum on his utterly unconventional presidency.
The campaigning comes one week after a shooter, who allegedly hated immigrants and Jews, killed 11 people at a synagogue in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and after a fanatical Trump supporter was arrested in Florida on charges of mailing homemade bombs to more than a dozen Trump opponents, including Obama.
Photo: AFP
Trump’s critics say he has helped create an atmosphere in which the two attackers felt comfortable to carry out their crimes.
“A Republican Congress means more jobs and less crime. A Democratic Congress means more crime and less jobs, very simple. I like that. Nothing like simplicity,” Trump told supporters in Belgrade, Montana.
Trump said his Republicans were in a good position ahead of the elections, particularly with new employment figures showing the US economy booming.
However, polls pointed to the Democrats capturing at least the US House of Representatives, threatening Trump with the specter of an opposition finally able to block policies and dig into his highly opaque personal finances.
In the last stages of the campaign, Trump is dueling with Obama, who returned to the public eye at a Florida rally on Friday. Obama was yesterday set to campaign again in his adopted hometown of Chicago, Illinois, as well as in Indiana, where the seat of US Senator Joe Donnelly is in danger.
Obama explained his re-emergence at a rally in support of Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams, who is seeking to be the first black female governor of any US state.
“I’m here for one simple reason: to ask you to vote,” he said. “The consequences of any of us staying home are profound, because America is at a crossroads... The character of our country is on the ballot.”
On the one hand, Trump has been touting the US as a land of plenty with jobs for all, on the other he has stirred fear and loathing.
“Democrats are openly encouraging millions of illegal aliens to break our laws, violate our sovereignty, overrun our borders and destroy our nation in so many ways,” Trump said at a rally in Pensacola, Florida, that lasted about 80 minutes.
“We got the reports from the countries, we got the reports from Mexico, you have a lot of bad people coming into our country and we’re letting them come into our country,” he added, with Air Force One parked on the tarmac near the stage.
Newsweek reported that it had obtained documents which showed that intelligence officials did not anticipate high involvement of criminal gangs among the migrants and that the administration expects only a minority of those in the caravan would actually reach the border.
Obama said Trump’s deployment of troops to the border with Mexico was a “political stunt” serving to “get folks angry and ginned up.”
“There’s just constant fearmongering to distract from the record,” Obama added.
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