Donald Trump began hurtling through four Maga rallies across three battleground states – and delivered a dark and dystopian speech about the supposed “migrant invasion” of murderers and drug dealers – while Kamala Harris put all her last chips on Pennsylvania in a frantic final day of campaigning from both candidates.
With the polls showing the contest essentially deadlocked between two vastly different political visions, both the ex-president and the vice-president were scrambling on Monday to drive home their message. Though early voting has smashed records across the country, there is still everything to play for in cajoling undecided and unengaged voters to the polls on election day.
Trump began in Raleigh, North Carolina, where he took to a sports arena on Monday morning to deliver what is likely to be one of his last speeches as a presidential candidate. In a 90-minute address dominated by his virulent stance on immigration, he announced that if elected he would impose a new round of tariffs against Mexico unless it stopped the passage of undocumented migrants across the southern border.
He threatened Claudia Sheinbaum, the newly ensconced Mexican president, that he would impose tariffs on all Mexican goods coming into the US. “I’m going to inform her on day one or sooner, that if they don’t stop this onslaught of criminals and drugs coming into our country, I’m going to immediately impose a 25% tariff on everything they send into” the US, he said.
In an impressive display of stamina for a 78-year-old, Trump was scheduled to stage four rallies by the end of the final day of campaigning. After Raleigh he began a pair of rallies in the supremely important battleground of Pennsylvania, in Reading and Pittsburgh.
During his address in Reading on Monday afternoon, Trump implored attenders to hit the polls on election day, saying “we have to turn out and vote tomorrow, we’re going to vote, vote, vote”.
“You built this country, I have to tell you, you’re going to save this country too because you know, if we win Pennsylvania – not me – if we win Pennsylvania, we win the whole ball of wax,” Trump said later.
Trump asked those in attendance: “Are you better off now than you were four years ago?” He then quickly swooped into promises of prosperity and invoked racist tropes about immigrants.
“With your vote tomorrow, I will end inflation. I will stop the invasion of criminals coming into this country, and I’ll bring back the American dream.”
He will close out his conversation with American voters with a late-night event in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
In contrast to Trump’s three-state dash, Harris was putting all her last chips on Pennsylvania. She started in Scranton, a quizzical location to kick off the final day given it is the birthplace of Joe Biden from whom she has tentatively been attempting to disassociate herself in recent days.
Next, she appeared in Allentown, a majority Latino city in the heart of the Lehigh valley, one of the most competitive parts of the state. Speaking in a college gymnasium, she was preceded by a series of speakers who appealed directly and bluntly to the area’s Puerto Rican population and asked them for their vote.
“I stand here proud of my longstanding commitment to Puerto Rico and her people and I will be a president for all Americans,” she said. Her Allentown rally was the first of three rallies in Pennsylvania on Monday, the only state she is visiting, underscoring its importance to her campaign.
Her comments came after almost all of the speakers directly appealed to Puerto Rican voters, highlighting the racist joke a comedian made at Trump’s Madison Square Garden rally in which he called Puerto Rico a floating “island of garbage”.
Harris did not mention Trump at all by name during her remarks, which lasted just under half an hour. But she did allude to ushering in a new era of politics, and she urged Pennsylvanians to make a plan to vote.
“We have the opportunity in this election to turn the page on a decade of politics that has been driven by fear and division – we’re done with that,” she said. “America is ready for a fresh start.”
Elizabeth Slaby, an 81-year-old, was the first person in line for the rally. She arrived at about 6am. She was a registered Republican for more than 50 years, but after the attack on the US Capitol, she changed her voter registration.
“I never thought I’d see a woman president and now I’m so, so excited,” she said.
Harris will make an appearance in Pittsburgh, before culminating her unexpected bid for the White House in Philadelphia. Her last word will be issued from the legendary steps of the Museum of Art, immortalised by Sylvester Stallone in the 1976 film Rocky, where she will be joined by a host of celebrities including Lady Gaga and Oprah Winfrey.
In the final hours of the race Trump has been showing signs of wear and tear. His voice is hoarse, he looks tired and his energy levels are relatively low.
“The voice is holding up, just about barely,” he told the Raleigh crowd.
Trump spent much of his Raleigh speech veering off his scripted remarks and embarking on long verbal rambles, which he has called his “weave” and claimed is a sign of his “genius”. His peregrinations included the anti-climb panels he ordered to build his border wall, his wife Melania’s bestselling book, Elon Musk’s rocket launches, the grass that was growing on Nasa runways before he came along, and air conditioning and steam baths for dogs.
Trump denigrated leading Democrats, starting with his presidential rival. He called Harris “low-IQ” and in a bizarre riff imagined her “turning, tossing, sweating” in her sleep.
He also called Nancy Pelosi, the former speaker of the US House, “crazy as a bedbug”, Barack Obama the “great divider”, and said he was waiting to “hit back” against the former first lady Michelle Obama after she had criticised him.
But the thrust of his closing argument was focused on immigration, and the supposed 21 million unauthorised migrants – “many of them murderers” – whom he claimed had been let into the US by the Biden administration. Even for a presidential candidate who has centered his campaign in anti-immigrant rhetoric, his closing remarks were dire.
“They’re killing people. They’re killing people at will,” he said, giving gruesome details of specific murders committed by undocumented migrants. “They just walk right into our country and they kill people.”
Trump’s Raleigh stop marked his final appearance in North Carolina, a critical battleground state that he needs to win if he is to have a clear shot on returning to the White House. Though Democrats have won the presidential race here only twice since Jimmy Carter in 1976 (the other time being Barack Obama in 2008), Harris is running neck and neck against Trump.
The Guardian poll tracker shows Trump ahead by just one point – well within the margin of error.
In tune with the rest of the country, North Carolinians have been voting early in historic numbers. More than 4 million have already cast their ballots, substantially more than in 2020 and 2016, with the party alignment roughly evenly split between Republicans, Democrats and unaffiliated voters.
As part of his last push to secure victory on election day, Trump repeated the lie that the Biden administration and the federal disaster agency Fema had done nothing to help stricken families in western North Carolina following Hurricane Helene. Even that falsehood was tied to immigration.
“Fema did a horrible job,” Trump said. “The administration, they’re still not there. You know why? Because they’ve spent all their money on bringing in murderers. They spent all their money on bringing in illegal migrants.”
In fact, Fema’s budget for housing undocumented migrants is ringfenced and has no impact on the agency’s work dealing with disasters. Fema is channeling millions of dollars of federal money to the hurricane-hit region.
Read more of the Guardian’s 2024 US election coverage:
US election 2024 live updates: latest polls, results and news
How the electoral college works
Lessons from the key swing states
What’s at stake in this election
