GREEN BAY (AFP) – Donald Trump pulled an election stunt with a garbage truck on Wednesday as the White House campaign was forced off-piste by muddled remarks from President Joe Biden about the Republican’s supporters that caused a headache for Democratic candidate Kamala Harris.
Harris had hoped to spend the day expanding on the final week “closing argument” she made at a huge Washington rally the night before – but found herself instead disavowing Biden’s remark that appeared to label Trump supporters “garbage”.
Trump – who, unlike Harris, has recently called his political opponents “garbage” in public – was on hand to exploit the misstep with a photo op, climbing into a garbage truck at an airport in Wisconsin and answering questions from reporters.
The row started over the weekend when a warm-up speaker at a Trump rally called the United States (US) territory of Puerto Rico “a floating island of garbage”, in remarks that initially put the Republican campaign on the defensive.
Yet Biden’s gaffe provided Trump the opportunity to play the victim.
“How do you like my garbage truck? This truck is in honour of Kamala and Joe Biden,” Trump said from the cabin of the vehicle.
“You can’t be president if you hate the American people, which I believe they do,” Trump added later at his rally in Green Bay, still wearing his high-visibility jacket.
But as Republicans voiced outrage over Biden’s remarks, anti-Trump political group The Lincoln Project shared a video from the Republican’s September 7 rally in Mosinee, Wisconsin – verified by AFP – in which he called “the people that surround” the vice president “garbage”.
Trump had just attacked Harris over employment figures before he said: “And it’s not her, it’s the people that surround her. They’re scum. They’re scum, and they want to take down our country. They are absolute garbage.”
Harris meanwhile travelled to North Carolina and onward to Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, focusing again on three of seven battleground states that could determine who wins the closest election in modern US history.
In Madison, Wisconsin she told supporters: “Folks are exhausted and want it to stop, the pointing fingers. It is time that we start locking arms together as a people who rise and fall together.”
More than 57 million have already cast their ballots via early or mail-in voting, over a third of the 2020 total.
Trump – who has 34 felony convictions for crimes connected to the 2016 election – is expected to reject Tuesday’s result if he loses.
The Republican is already seizing on commonplace verification processes by election officials to amplify his claims of widespread “cheating”.
