Trump sets sights on Pennsylvania and Harris plans to head west as hurricane scrambles campaigning
WASHINGTON — WASHINGTON (AP) — Donald Trump holds rallies in crucial Pennsylvania on Wednesday while he is vice president Kamala Harris is preparing for another visit to the West – even if Hurricane Milton threatens Florida and threatens to overshadow presidential campaigns.
Trump, the former president and current Republican candidate, has planned events in Scranton – the president’s hometown Joe Biden – and in Reading, where he is expected to speak about the economy and immigration in a city that is two-thirds Spanish.
The hurricane caused Trump to postpone a virtual event focused on health care and postpone a Univision town hall in Miami on Tuesday evening.
Harris plans her own Univision town hall in Las Vegas on Thursday before returning to Arizona in what will be her second visit to both states in less then two weeks. Before flying to Nevada, she will virtually attend a briefing on the storm and the federal response that Biden will receive at the White House on Wednesday.
Biden already has postponed a trip planned this week to Germany and Angolaand said, “I just don’t think I can be out of the country right now.”
Milton approaches just days later Hurricane Helene Six southeastern states killed more than 220 people and left a trail of destruction that federal, state and local authorities are trying to alleviate even as they now prepare for the next storm.
Harris spent Tuesday in New York record interviews on ABC’s “The View,” with radio personality Howard Stern and on “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert.” During her interview on “The View” and later during her taping with Colbert, Harris failed to mention key ways in which her future administration would differ substantially from Biden’s.
“There’s nothing that comes to mind,” Harris said on “The View.”
Trump responded on his social media platform, writing that Harris said “she wouldn’t have done anything differently” than Biden, whom he called “the WORST PRESIDENT IN THE HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES.”
Harris had her own sharp words for her opponent. Respond to notifications Bob Woodward from his new book ‘War’ that Trump, while president, secretly sent COVID-19 test kits to the Russian president Vladimir Putin in 2020, when they were hard to find in the United States, she said curiously, “Do you remember what those days were like?”
“Remember how many people didn’t have tests and were trying to get them?” Harris asked during the taping with Colbert. “Remember how rare it was to have them?”
She said of Trump: “And this guy gives COVID test kits to Vladimir Putin. Think about what this means,” before adding, “He thinks Vladimir Putin is his friend. What about the American people? They should be your first friends.
Trump denied the reports. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov confirmed that the US has sent test kits. whom he called “testers,” but denied that the exchange took place in secret.
“There were no secret shipments. The pandemic already started then,” Peskov said in a message on Wednesday. “Many countries exchanged equipment. We sent ventilators. Testers came from America.”