Harris and Trump’s final push before Election Day takes them to Pennsylvania – NBC New York

Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump made their final pitches to voters Monday in the same part of Pennsylvania around the same time, spending the final full day of the presidential campaign in a state that could make or break their chances .

Focusing on the southeast corner of Pennsylvania, Trump took the stage in Reading, about 30 miles from Allentown, where Harris held her own event about a half hour later.

“If we win Pennsylvania, we win the whole wax ball,” Trump said. “It’s over.”

Indeed, a Trump victory in Pennsylvania, flipping 19 Electoral College votes, would break through the Democrats’ “blue wall” and make it difficult for Harris to reach the needed 270 votes.

Harris, the Democratic nominee, spent Monday in Pennsylvania, the biggest race among states that is expected to determine the Electoral College outcome, and offered a similarly harsh assessment.

“We need everyone in Pennsylvania to vote,” she said. “You are going to make a difference in this election.”

In their closing statements, Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump ended Tuesday’s debate with different messages about America’s future.

In addition to Allentown, Harris visited Scranton—the birthplace of President Joe Biden—and planned a stop in Reading before capping off with an overnight rally in Philadelphia that was expected to include Lady Gaga And Oprah Winfrey.

“Are you ready to do this?” Harris screamed Monday in Scranton with a large handmade “VOTE FOR FREEDOM” banner behind her and a similar “VOTE” banner on the side.

Trump first traveled to North Carolina and then visited Reading. He will head to Pittsburgh, on the opposite side of the state, before ending in Grand Rapids, Michigan, where he will hold his final campaign rally in the same place where he ended his 2016 and 2020 runs.

Southeastern Pennsylvania is home to thousands of Latinos, including a significant Puerto Rican population. Harris and her allies have repeatedly criticized Trump for the comedian’s performance in Puerto Rico during the former president’s Madison Square Garden event. Comedian Tony Hinchcliffe called Puerto Rico a “floating island of garbage.”

“It was absurd,” said German Vega, a Dominican-American who lives in Reading and became a U.S. citizen in 2015. “It bothered a lot of people—even a lot of Republicans. “It was wrong and I think Trump should have apologized to Latinos.”

But Emilio Feliciano, 43, waited outside Reading’s Santander Arena for a chance to photograph Trump’s motorcade. He rejected comments about Puerto Rico, even though his family is Puerto Rican, saying he cares about the economy and therefore will vote for Trump.

“Will the border be safe? Are you going to reduce the crime rate? That’s what worries me,” he said.

Harris told the crowd, “I stand here proud of my long-standing commitment to Puerto Rico and its people.”

“And I will be a president for all Americans,” she said, adding that “momentum is on our side. Do you feel it?

Meanwhile, Trump continued to talk about his proposed crackdown on immigration. He called to the stage Patty Morin, the mother of 37-year-old Rachel Morin, who was found dead a day after she went missing while on a camping trip. Officials say the suspect in her death, Victor Antonio Martinez Hernandez, entered the U.S. illegally after allegedly killing a woman in his home country of El Salvador.

About 77 million Americans have voted early. A victory for either side would be unprecedented.

Trump’s victory would make him the first new president to be charged and convicted of a felony since his hush money trial in New York. He will have the right to stop other federal investigations being conducted against him. Trump will also become the second president in history to win non-consecutive terms in the White House, after Grover Cleveland. at the end of the 19th century.

Harris is vying to become the first woman, the first Black woman and the first person of South Asian descent to reach the Oval Office – four years after she overcame the same barriers to national office to become President Joe Biden’s second-in-command.

The vice president rose to the top of the Democratic ticket after Biden’s disastrous performance at the June debate set his leaving the race is one of a series of shocks to hit this year’s election campaign.

Trump survived the assassination attempt by millimeters rally in Butler, Pennsylvania. Details of his secret service failed the second attempt in Septemberwhen a gunman planted a rifle while Trump was playing golf at one of his courses in Florida.

Harris, 60, is positioning herself as a generational change from Biden, 81, and Trump, 78. She emphasized her support for abortion rights following the 2022 Supreme Court decision that ended the constitutional right to abortion services, and she regularly noted the former president’s role in January 6 attack on the US Capitol..

Building a coalition made up of progressives like Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez New York to former Republican Vice President Dick CheneyHarris called Trump a threat to democracy and, late in the campaign, even endorsed criticism that accurately described Trump as “…fascist“

On Monday, Harris largely stopped mentioning Trump by name, instead calling him “the other guy.” She promises to solve problems and seek consensus.

Harris’ campaign chairman, Jen O’Malley Dillion, said on a call with reporters that the omission of Trump’s name was intentional because voters “want to see an optimistic, hopeful, patriotic vision of the future in their leader.”

Harris also shared some information about her personal development as a politician that she does not often divulge. In Scranton, she talked about how she once ran for San Francisco district attorney in 2002 and how she “campaigned with my ironing board.”

“I would go to the front of the grocery store outside and set up the ironing board because, you see, an ironing board makes a great standing desk,” the vice president said, recalling how she would tape posters to the outside of the board, fill in the top some with leaflets and “demand that people talk to me as they come in and out.”

In Allentown, Harris teamed up with rapper Fat Joe, and she planned to visit a Puerto Rican restaurant in Reading with leading New York progressive vocalist Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Both Fat Joe, whose real name is Joseph Cartagena, and Ocasio-Cortez are of Puerto Rican descent.

Standing in line at Harris’ rally in Allentown, Ron Kessler, 54, an Air Force veteran and Republican-turned-Democrat, said he planned to vote for only the second time in his life. Kessler said he didn’t vote for a long time, thinking the country would “vote for the right candidate.”

But “now that I’m older and much wiser, I think it’s important, it’s my civic duty. And it’s important that I vote for myself and vote for democracy and the country.”

Just on Sunday, Trump resumed his false claims that the US election was rigged against himthought about violence against journalists and said that “ should not have left” White House in 2021 — dark twists that obscured another anchor of his closing argument: “Kamala broke him. I’ll fix it.”