With just days to go before his first – and likely only – debate against Kamala Harris, former US president Donald Trump aired familiar grievances about everything from his indictments to efforts to keep him off the ballot as he campaigned in a staunchly Republican part of battleground state Wisconsin.
Speaking at an outdoor rally at Central Wisconsin Airport, Mr Trump claimed: “The Harris-Biden DoJ (Department of Justice) is trying to throw me in jail – they want me in jail – for the crime of exposing their corruption.”
There is no evidence that either President Biden or vice president Ms Harris have had any influence over decisions by the justice department or local jurisdictions to indict Mr Trump.
The former president was speaking a day after appearing in court for an appeal against a decision that found him liable for sexual abuse – returning attention to his many indictments and criminal conviction.
After his appearance, Mr Trump delivered a lengthy statement to news cameras in which he brought up a string of past allegations of other acts of sexual misconduct – at times in graphic language – potentially reminding voters of incidents that were little-known or forgotten.
Hours later, a Manhattan judge announced that the sentencing in his hush money case had been postponed until after the November election, granting the presidential candidate a hard-won reprieve.
The sentencing had previously been scheduled for September 18, about seven weeks before election day.
At the rally, Mr Trump again criticised Ms Harris in dark and ominous language, claiming that if the woman he calls “Comrade Kamala Harris gets four more years, we will be living in a full-blown Banana Republic ruled by anarchy”.
A BEAUTIFUL AFTERNOON IN WISCONSIN, THANK YOU! #MAGA2024 pic.twitter.com/yFBD5tc1Jj
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 7, 2024
He also railed against the Biden administration’s border policies, calling the Democrats’ approach “suicidal”.
Both Ms Harris and Mr Trump have been frequent visitors to Wisconsin this year, a state where four of the past six presidential elections have been decided by less than a percentage point.
Several polls of Wisconsin voters conducted after President Joe Biden withdrew showed Ms Harris and Mr Trump in a close race.
The crowd in Mosinee was greeted by a big screen video of Mr Trump urging attendees to check their voter registration and make a plan for voting.
Speaking from behind bullet-proof glass following an attempt on his life in July, Mr Trump said: “If we swamp them, they can’t cheat” – continuing to raise unfounded concerns about voter fraud, which is extremely rare.
Democrats consider Wisconsin to be one of the must-win “blue wall” states. Mr Biden, who was in Wisconsin on Thursday, won the state in 2020 by just under 21,000 votes. Mr Trump carried it by a slightly larger margin, nearly 23,000 votes, in 2016.
As Mr Trump was campaigning, Harris took a short break from debate prep on Saturday to stop at Penzeys Spices in Pittsburgh’s Strip District, where she bought a number of seasoning mixes.
One customer saw the Democratic nominee and began openly weeping as Harris hugged her and said: “We’re going to be fine. We’re all in this together.”
Harris said she was honoured to have endorsements from two major Republicans: former Vice President Dick Cheney and his daughter, Liz Cheney, the former Wyoming congresswoman.
“People are exhausted, about the division and the attempts to kind of divide us as Americans,” she said, adding that her main message at the debate would be that the country wants to be united.
“It’s time to turn the page on the divisiveness,” she said. “It’s time to bring our country together, to chart a new way forward.”
