By Darren Lyn
HOUSTON, US (AA) - US Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump hit the campaign trail in the crucial battleground state of Wisconsin on Wednesday, with Harris leading Trump by a razor thin margin in the polls.
According to the polling tracker 538, which takes the average of all the major presidential polls in the United States, Harris, the Democratic nominee, has 48.2% of the vote in Wisconsin versus Trump, the Republican nominee, who has 47.4%. With margins of error between 3% and 5%, both candidates are in a virtual dead heat with less than one week until the Nov. 5 election.
Trump held a rally in the city of Green Bay wearing a bright orange and yellow garbage truck worker vest and made light of last Sunday's rally in New York, where one of his guest speakers, comedian Tony Hinchcliffe, made racist and derogatory remarks about Puerto Ricans, calling the American territory of Puerto Rico a "floating island of garbage."
Trump has denied being racist against Puerto Ricans and spun the negative controversy into an attack against Harris and President Joe Biden.
"And I have to begin by saying 250 million Americans are not garbage," Trump told the crowd. "Speaking on a call for (Harris's) campaign last night, crooked Joe Biden finally said what he and Kamala really think of our supporters: he called them garbage."
Trump continued his theme of garbage by placing America's problems on Harris and Biden.
"They treat you like garbage, they treat our whole country like garbage, with open borders, with all of the horrible things they've done to hurt our country. Inflation that should have never happened, allowing Russia to go into Ukraine, October 7th in Israel (referring to the Hamas attack which killed nearly 1,200 people). All of these things would have never happened if you had a different president," Trump said, as he pointed to himself.
"My supporters are far higher quality than crooked Joe or lyin' Kamala," he continued. "My response to Joe and Kamala is very simple: you can't lead America if you don't love Americans. You can't be president if you hate the American people, which I believe they do."
In the capital city of Madison, Harris pulled no punches against Trump at her campaign rally, painting him as a threat to the United States who focuses on divisiveness.
"We have an opportunity in this election to turn the page on a decade of Donald Trump trying to keep us divided and afraid of each other," she said. "That is who he is. But Madison, that is not who we are. Folks are exhausted and want him to stop pointing fingers. It is time that we start locking arms together as a people who rise and fall together."
Harris also focused her attack on Trump regarding abortion and reproductive rights, which is one of the key issues in the 2024 election. The vice president placed the blame on Trump for choosing three conservative Republican Supreme Court justices during his first term in the White House with the sole purpose of overturning Roe v. Wade, the federal law legalizing abortion more than 50 years ago. Individual states now have their own laws restricting abortion, which Harris said takes away a woman's right to choose. She emphasized that the government should not be telling women what to do with their bodies.
"Now in America, one in three women lives in a state with a Trump abortion ban, many with no exceptions, even to rape and incest, which is immoral," she said. "And look, Donald Trump's not done. He would ban abortion nationwide. Yes, even here in Wisconsin, and he would restrict access to birth control, put IVF (in vitro fertilization) treatments at risk, and force states -- listen to this -- force states to monitor women's pregnancies."
The campaign rhetoric is expected to heat up between Trump and Harris in the waning days before the election, with both candidates focusing on Wisconsin and the six other key swing states of Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina and Pennsylvania, where they are running neck-and-neck in the polls.