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States — US presidential candidates Donald Trump and Kamala Harris again took their campaigns to battleground states Friday as a racially charged row over Haitian immigrants intensified with the Republican leader promising “large deportations.”
Trump, 78, was due to hold a rally later Friday in Nevada, where his campaign says he will focus on voters’ economic worries, including inflation.
Harris, coming off a strong performance in Tuesday’s televised debate against Trump, was headed to Pennsylvania — arguably the most crucial of the swing states that decide the winner in close presidential elections.
Opinion polls show a near-dead heat with only seven weeks until election day.
Stung by widespread agreement, including among some prominent Republicans, that Democrat Harris won Tuesday’s debate, Trump is doubling down on harsh rhetoric about illegal immigration — the issue at the core of his campaign.
In remarks from his luxury golf course near Los Angeles, Trump accused “communist” Harris of “allowing illegal aliens to stampede across our border.”
And he homed in on the small Ohio city of Springfield, saying Haitian immigrants there are “destroying their way of life.”
“We will do large deportations from Springfield, Ohio,” he said. “We’re going to have the largest deportation in the history of our country.”
Springfield is at the center of a swirling conspiracy theory spread by Republicans and Trump’s campaign that claims Haitians are eating local residents’ pets.
