Harris and Trump in bid to win over undecided voters

Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris and her Republican rival, Donald Trump, delivered radically different messages while on the US campaign trail yesterday, as they sought to win over undecided voters in the two weeks before election day.

The US vice president, campaigning alongside former Republican politician Liz Cheney in the three midwestern battleground states, argued that Mr Trump was a threat to democracy.

As the election draws closer, Ms Harris has been sharpening her attacks on Mr Trump's fitness for office, often calling him "unstable" or "unhinged" and questioning his temperament.

"In many, many ways Donald Trump is an unserious man, but the consequences of him being president of the United States are brutally serious," Ms Harris said at an event in Pennsylvania, one of seven battleground states expected to decide the winner of the election.

Mr Trump frequently rejects any notion he is a threat to democracy, arguing it is Democrats who are the real threat because of the criminal investigations he and his allies have faced for their attempts to overturn his 2020 election loss.

Mr Trump crossed North Carolina to gain support in the ultra-competitive state. At one stop in the hurricane-battered mountains, he urged supporters to go to the polls despite the hardships they were facing.

While Ms Harris was suggesting Mr Trump was unfit for office, the former president was questioning the Biden administration's competence.

Mr Trump renewed his criticisms of the emergency management agency FEMA and sought to relate to working-class supporters by praising his nonstop efforts on his own behalf.

"I've done 52 days without a day off, which a lot of these people would respect," Mr Trump said at a lectern backed by rubble from massive floods that hit the area last month.

With opinion polls showing a close race, the two candidates are picking up pace, their campaign schedule underlining the importance of small pockets of voters that could put either candidate over the top.

Mr Trump ended his day at an evangelical Christian event in Concord, North Carolina, telling a crowd he likes to think that during the failed assassination attempt against him on 13 July in Butler, Pennsylvania, he was saved by being "knocked to the ground by a supernatural hand".

In his remarks, he avoided using some of the off-colour rhetoric he has been using in recent speeches. He said as he looked back on his life, "I now recognise that it's been the hand of God leading me to where I am today."

Evangelical leader Franklin Graham offered a prayer that Mr Trump be elected.

"Rallies and positive poll numbers are not going to win this election," Graham said. "It's going to be God."

'Vote your conscience'

At an event with Ms Harris in Royal Oak, Michigan, Ms Cheney sought to give Republicans who are on the fence permission to support the Democrat without worry of reprisal.

"I certainly have many Republicans who will say to me, 'I can't be public.' They do worry about a whole range of things, including violence, but they'll do the right thing," Ms Cheney said.

"And I would just remind people, if you're at all concerned, you can vote your conscience and not ever have to say a word to anybody."

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Ms Cheney and her father Dick Cheney, who was vice president under President George W. Bush and is still vilified by many Democrats for his bullish defence of the US invasion of Iraq, are staunch conservatives and two of the most prominent Republicans to have endorsed Ms Harris.

Mr Trump's visit to North Carolina coincided with concerns among his Republican allies that crippling damage from storm Helene will depress turnout in the battleground states conservative mountain regions.

He said many Americans felt left behind by their federal government and renewed unsubstantiated claims that the response from the Biden administration has been slow, accusations the White House has rejected as misinformation.