This combination of file pictures created on August 3, 2024 shows US Vice President and 2024 Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris speaking on March 26, 2024, in Raleigh, North Carolina; and former US President and Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump speaking in the first presidential debate with US President Joe Biden in Atlanta, Georgia, on June 27, 2024. (AFP)
AUGUSTA – White House rivals Donald Trump and Kamala Harris headed for key election battlegrounds Friday as the Republican bids to mend fences alongside a one-time political foe in hurricane-devastated Georgia and his Democratic opponent works to mobilize blue-collar support in Michigan.
Georgia is a potent symbol of the headwinds Trump has faced in his third bid for the presidency as he awaits a criminal trial over his 2020 election interference and deals with the fallout of a feud he started with the southern state’s hugely popular Republican governor, Brian Kemp.
A swing state narrowly claimed by President Joe Biden four years ago but won by Trump in 2016, the Peach State is considered to be the second biggest prize of the 2024 election map, after Pennsylvania.
Trump inserted himself aggressively into Georgia politics after his 2020 defeat, pushing for Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger in a now-infamous phone call to “find” enough votes to overturn Biden’s victory.
The former president was charged with racketeering and several other felonies as the alleged ringleader of a criminal conspiracy to fraudulently overturn his defeat, in a case that is on pause and expected to start up again after November’s presidential election.
Trump has furiously denied wrongdoing, alleging “prosecutorial misconduct,” and he tried unsuccessfully to oust Raffensperger, Kemp and Attorney General Chris Carr in subsequent elections.
Revenge plot
His foiled revenge plot — and his repeated smears of Kemp on social media — raised questions about his temperament and continuing sway over his party in one of the country’s key battlegrounds.
But Trump and Kemp have since buried the hatchet, and the governor has endorsed the Republican presidential ticket.
The pair will deliver remarks together after receiving a briefing in Augusta on the devastation wreaked by Hurricane Helene, the deadliest storm to hit the US mainland since 2005’s Katrina.
Trump — who was last in Georgia just four days ago as he inspected hurricane damage in Valdosta — will then move on to neigboring North Carolina, another prized swing state, for a town hall meeting in Fayetteville.
He began the day with Washington politics on his mind, however, as he assailed “Lyin’ Kamala Harris” on his Truth Social website for tying him to “Project 2025,” a radical, right-wing governing blueprint produced by the Heritage Foundation.
Trump rejected the document after it aroused harsh criticism. He claimed to “know nothing” about the manifesto or the figures behind it, despite its numerous links to figures from his inner circle and its close similarity to his own stated policies.
Vice President Harris, who is neck-and-neck with Trump in all seven swing states, was set to rally Friday in Michigan — a union stronghold that epitomized the US manufacturing decline of the 1980s.
‘Profound difference’
Harris hit out at Trump on social media over his refusal to accept his 2020 election defeat.
“I have sworn an oath to uphold the Constitution six times in my career, and have always upheld it without reservation,” she said in a statement.
“Therein lies the profound difference between Donald Trump and me. He violated that oath, and, make no mistake: if given the chance, he would violate it again.”
Harris will start out in Detroit before heading to Flint, a majority Black city where a 2010s scandal over lead-tainted water highlighted government mismanagement and the disproportionate damage to poor and non-white communities.
Harris is expected to use her appearance to shore up her pro-labor credentials, a day after dockworkers ended a nationwide strike that could have hit the economy and rattled her campaign.
Unions are traditionally a key Democratic constituency, and Harris issued a statement supporting the workers and saying the dispute was “about fairness,” adding that the economy “works best when workers share in record profits.”
Trump has been able to peel away blue-collar Democratic support — the Teamsters union and the International Association of Fire Fighters both declined to endorse Harris — with claims that he leads “the party of the American worker.”
Harris’s campaign announced that the country’s first Black president, Barack Obama, would be stumping for her in Pennsylvania and other key swing states as she woos undecided voters in the US heartland.