US Election 2024 – Voice of America (VOA News)

Former President Donald Trump ran through a list of grievances against Vice President Kamala Harris and other topics on Saturday during an event aimed at tying his Democratic opponent to illegal border crossings.

A day after Harris spoke about immigration at the U.S.-Mexico border, Trump spoke about immigration to a crowd in Prairie du Chien, Wisconsin. He accused Harris of committing crimes against migrants after they entered the U.S. illegally and claimed she was responsible for “erasing our border.”

“I will rid Wisconsin of the mass migrant invasion,” he said. “We will liberate the country.”

Trump hopes frustration over illegal immigration will translate into votes in Wisconsin and other key swing states. The Republican candidate has denounced people crossing the U.S.-Mexico border as “poisoning the blood of the country” and vowed to carry out the largest deportation operation in American history if elected. And polls show that Americans believe Trump would do a better job handling immigration than Harris.

Trump moved from topic to topic so quickly that it was sometimes difficult to keep track of what he meant. He spoke about the two assassination attempts against him and blamed U.S. intelligence for his inability to hold a large outdoor rally instead of a smaller indoor event. But he also spoke out about climate change, about Harris’ father, about how his beach body was better than President Joe Biden’s and about a fly that buzzed near him.

“I wonder where the fly came from,” he said. “Two years ago I wouldn’t have had a fly up here. You are changing rapidly. But we can’t take it any longer. We can’t take it any longer.”

Trump repeatedly brought up Harris’ Friday event in Douglas, Arizona, where she announced a push to further restrict asylum applications beyond Biden’s executive order announced earlier this year. Harris condemned Trump’s handling of the border while the president rejected a bipartisan border package earlier this year, saying Trump “prefers to address a problem rather than solve a problem.”

“I had to sit there and listen,” Trump said last night, drawing cheers. “And who does it? Fox News. They should not be allowed to state it. These are all lies. Everything she says is lies.”

The Republican candidate also escalated his personal attacks against Harris, calling her “mentally impaired” and a “disaster.”

Trump pretended not to understand what Harris meant when she said he was responsible for taking the children away from their parents. Under his administration, border officials separated children from their parents at the U.S.-Mexico border. A policy that was condemned worldwide as inhumane and that Trump himself ended under pressure from his own party.

At a rally in San Francisco, Harris told his supporters that there are “two very different visions for our nation” and that voters see this “every day on the campaign trail.”

“Donald Trump is the same old tired show,” she said. “The same tired playbook we’ve been hearing for years.”

She said Trump was “a very dubious man.” “However, the consequences of his return to the White House are extremely serious.”

Trump’s event featured billboard-sized mugshots on both sides of the stage of men in the U.S. illegally accused of crimes, including Alejandro Jose Coronel Zarate, a case Trump cited in his speech.

Wisconsin Republicans in recent days have cited the story of Coronel Zarate’s arrest in Prairie du Chien as further evidence that people in the country illegally are committing crimes throughout the United States, not just in the southern border states. Prosecutors charged Coronel Zarate on September 18 with sexual assault, child abuse, strangulation and domestic violence. His lawyers declined to comment.