Trump is making a last-ditch effort in Pennsylvania (and courting Latino voters). usa elections

If today is Monday, it must be Pennsylvania. Or North Carolina. Or Michigan. For the last day of his extraordinary campaign, the Republican candidate planned to visit four cities spread over three states that were decisive in this Tuesday’s presidential elections. In total, he planned to cover a distance of about 1,800 kilometers aboard his plane, Trump Force One.

It began 50 minutes behind schedule that morning in Raleigh, a university town in North Carolina, a state to which it has devoted an unusual amount of energy in recent days, as if it wanted to reassure it. The plan was to end, perhaps at dawn, with an event in Grand Rapids (Michigan), where he took the stage with his Vice Presidential candidate J.D. Vance, two days before the end of the Republican Convention in Milwaukee and two of the murders. She survived the expedition, just one week after suffering the first of the attempts. The middle part of Monday was spent in Pennsylvania, with appearances in the state’s second city, Reading, and Pittsburgh.

It made sense: it is he who contributes the most electoral votes (19) of the seven hinges and the latest polls show an almost perfect tie here between Trump and his rival, Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris. In Reading’s case, it added to his interest in attracting the Latino vote, which is one of the big issues (and unknowns) of these elections.

He started about an hour and a half late, and delivered one of his classic irregular speeches, during which he attacked Nancy Pelosi (“a disgrace”) and the press (“fake news”) and urged his people to vote for him. Asked to gather. , Tomorrow. “November 5th will be Emancipation Day in the United States. And as soon as I (arrive to the Oval Office) I will begin the largest deportation in history of migrant criminals: They’re like animals.

“Pennsylvania built the United States of America and now it’s going to save the country,” he said after painting a false apocalyptic image of the United States on the brink of economic meltdown, as he has done at every rally. “I’ve been waiting for this for four years and there’s only one day left,” said the candidate who lost to Joe Biden in the 2020 elections. Trump appeared on stage with dozens of women behind him holding pink signs that read: “Women,.” With Trump.” Republicans know that the female vote could only discourage his return to the White House.

Reading is a town that, like many others in this part of the country, has seen better days. With about 100,000 residents (68.9%), it is the most Latino in a state that has over a million Hispanics and almost half a million Puerto Ricans. And that’s the explanation not only for why Trump stopped by this Monday to speak in front of thousands of supporters at the Santander Arena, where the local hockey team plays, but also why his opponent, Democrat Kamala Harris, Took a surprising decision for a short stay. in reading as a special part of Travel Last minute: The vice president had planned five cities, all in Pennsylvania.

I am proud of my railway past and the place where they invented the bread and biscuit mixture pretzelThe blame for the fact that Reading has become, for a few hours, the center of world politics, lies in a joke: one told by the comedian Tony Hinchcliffe at New York’s Madison Square Garden a few Sundays ago. You know, the one where he compared Puerto Rico to a “floating garbage island” in the middle of the ocean.

Four hours before the start of the event, hundreds of people lined up at the stadium doors, some of them for the first time since the previous night. There were only a handful of Latinos in line in the predominantly white crowd, and this type of event had its usual share of extravagance, like some kind of rock man island in the shape of one of those big heads from Easter that they called the leader. Had a mop of orange hair in honor of.

A couple formed by Ecuadorian Edison Guiracocha and Salvadoran Flor Pacheco, residents of Reading since 2010, cited economic reasons for voting for Trump. Also ideological: “We don’t like the ideas that the Democrats want to put into the minds of children. They asked themselves what it meant to change gender at the age of 10?

A little further, three friends, Jay and Justin, brothers of Puerto Rican origin, and Kenny, a grocery store owner of Indian origin, are proud of the website political Having posted a photo of his business that morning to illustrate a report on the transfer of Hispanic votes in favor of a Republican candidate in Pennsylvania, he acknowledged that there was nothing offensive in the joke about Puerto Rico: “First of all, he Said no, and second, “He’s a comedian dedicated to insulting others, so I don’t know why people are surprised,” Kenny said. “I was there in New York,” Shawn DVS 7.0, of Dominican descent. A young man who defined himself as “a conservative Christian rapper” later explained. “When (the comedian) said it, a lot of people didn’t laugh, it was a bad joke, but not offensive.” “Hispanics have voted Democratic for years because they’re the ones who have given them all the benefits, but that’s changing.”

“That insult to Puerto Ricans not only changed everything within that community, because when they insult one, So they insult all of us Hispanics.” And she has donated her restaurant Mi Casa Su Casa to the Harris campaign. It is located on the main street of the city, where the headquarters of the Republican Party is also located. “There are two reasons why a Hispanic might decide to vote for Trump: because he has been led to believe that he will come to solve all the economic problems and because he suffers from amnesia and cannot remember. Not what he did when.” He was in the White House.” Cepeda-Fritz acknowledged that abortion may also play a role, but only among those who do not understand “the concept of separation between church and state.”

Trump’s appearance at the reading was also delayed. It was scheduled for 2:00 pm and did not enter the scene until approximately 3:00 pm. The question at that time was not only whether he would win on Tuesday, but how he planned to carry out his plans and, specifically, when he would take the stage in Grand Rapids (an appearance scheduled for 10:30 p.m.), Keeping in mind. Tendency to give long and unpredictable speeches. Moreover, as he told his followers in Greensboro (North Carolina) on Saturday night, he doesn’t know how to do it any other way. “I could come here, talk for 25 minutes and leave, but I’m not going to do that,” he told his loyalists, who stoically endured the two-hour delay.

In addition to lax management of the schedule, the final stages of Trump’s campaign have seen an uptick in rhetoric from the candidate, who appeared baffled by misogynistic remarks from a supporter at a Greensboro rally on Saturday who said Harris had never worked at McDonald’s, but “On a corner”, and on Sunday he joked in Lillitz (Pennsylvania) with the idea that if they shot him again and the bullets would pass through the place where the gun was placed the press (fake news, they called it Said) the idea wouldn’t “bother” them.