November 3, 2016
Donald Trump and President Obama held dueling rallies in Florida on Thursday, with the president seeking to rally young voters for Hillary Clinton and Trump trying to stoke concerns about Clinton’s practices as secretary of state.
November 3, 2016
Donald Trump and President Obama held dueling rallies in Florida on Thursday, with the president seeking to rally young voters for Hillary Clinton and Trump trying to stoke concerns about Clinton’s practices as secretary of state.
President Obama speaks at a rally for Hillary Clinton at the University of North Florida in Jacksonville. – AFP/Getty Images
In Miami, Obama labeled Trump “uniquely unqualified” and “temperamentally unfit” to be president. In Jacksonville, Trump claimed that Clinton is under “criminal investigation” for “pay-for-play corruption” by the FBI, though no such investigation has been announced.
Speaking at Florida International University, Obama lambasted Trump’s treatment of women, minorities and working-class Americans.
“What kind of message are we sending if that’s our voice?” asked Obama. After the crowd erupted in boos when Obama first mentioned Trump, the president remarked: “He can’t hear you boo, but he can hear you vote.”
Obama criticized Trump for vowing to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act at an event earlier this week. The president said Trump and his fellow Republicans “don’t even have a semblance of a plan” for an alternative.
Trump said the FBI “investigating how Hillary Clinton put the office of secretary of state up for sale in violation of federal law.” He added that “the FBI agents say their investigation is likely to yield an indictment.”
Trump appeared to be referencing the Clinton Foundation. But there is no criminal investigation over “pay-for-play” or talk of an indictment, as Trump claims. The FBI has renewed the investigation into whether any classified information passed through Clinton’s private email server as secretary of state.
Obama said Clinton “made me a better president.” He added that his former secretary of state and political rival “doesn’t whine or complain,” or “suggest everything is rigged when things aren’t going her way.”
Trump has often accused the election of being “rigged” against him.
The president said a large part of his message to young voters is: “I’m asking you to believe in your ability to change things. You remember my slogan wasn’t ‘Yes I can.’ It was ‘Yes we can.’”
Obama will hold a second Florida rally Thursday afternoon at the University of North Florida in Jacksonville.
Trump, who departed Miami Thursday morning, criticized Obama on Twitter: “Looking at Air Force One @ MIA. Why is he campaigning instead of creating jobs & fixing Obamacare? Get back to work for the American people!”
With five days left to campaign before Election Day, Trump and Clinton prepared to focus their attention heavily Thursday on North Carolina, a pivotal battleground where polls show a close contest between the presidential rivals.
The Clinton campaign also announced that her final rally before Election Day will be Monday evening in Philadelphia. She will be joined by Obama, first lady Michelle Obama, and Bill and Chelsea Clinton, the campaign said.
Trump will hold rallies in Concord and Selma, N.C., on Thursday. Clinton will hold events encouraging early voting in Winterville and Raleigh, N.C.
Meanwhile, Trump’s wife, Melania, will make her highest-profile appearance on the campaign trail since speaking at the Republican National Convention. She will deliver remarks in Berwyn, Pa., a suburb of Philadelphia, about what a Trump presidency would mean for women, children and families, according to the Trump campaign.
“My wife, Melania, will be speaking in Pennsylvania this afternoon. So exciting, big crowds! I will be watching from North Carolina,” Trump tweeted Thursday morning.
In Ohio, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) will campaign for Clinton, while Bill Clinton will stump in Nevada for his wife.
North Carolina’s 15 electoral votes will be among the biggest prizes on Tuesday night. After the state voted Republican for seven straight presidential elections, President Obama turned the state blue in 2008. But it flipped back to Republican Mitt Romney in 2012, and the GOP further reasserted itself in the 2014 midterms.
Republicans have used their power in the state in recent years to implement deeply conservative policies that Democrats have vocally criticized. The state is undergoing swift demographic changes, gaining Hispanics and young white professionals, who tend to vote Democratic.
A Quinnipiac University survey released Wednesday showed Clinton with a small lead over Trump.
The Trump campaign says it also has its sights set on more Democratic states. In an interview on MSNBC, Trump campaign manager Kellyanne Conway said the campaign is trying to make a push into Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin. But polls show Clinton leading in those states.
“I mean, look, if you try to apply conventional political wisdom to Donald Trump, you lose every time,” said Conway. “The idea that, well, Michigan or Wisconsin have been elusive to Republican candidates. He’s just different. His message on illegal immigration, trade and jobs and patriotism. . . . It’s just a different messenger.”
Clinton on Wednesday laid out her final argument to voters still wavering over their presidential choice, asking Americans to “imagine” how Trump would conduct himself in the Oval Office.
“Imagine having a president who demeans women, mocks the disabled, insults Latinos, African Americans, the disabled, POWs, who pits people against each other,” the Democratic presidential nominee told a sprawling crowd gathered for a nighttime rally on the campus of Arizona State University.
“We really don’t have to imagine what it would be like, because everything he has said and done — both in his career and this campaign — is a pretty good preview,” she added.
The tightness of the race — and the multiple states poised to have a pivotal effect on the outcome — was apparent in the vast distances covered by both candidates and their surrogates Wednesday, as well as the tens of millions of dollars in advertising lined up to fill the airwaves in the last days.
A bullish Trump spent the day in Florida, assuring supporters that he was on the path to victory, while his running mate, Indiana Gov. Mike Pence, raced through Arizona, New Mexico and Colorado. Trump’s children also campaigned in key battlegrounds on his behalf, making stops in Colorado, North Carolina, Michigan, Ohio and Pennsylvania. Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas — Trump’s long-lasting rival in the primary contest — was set to appear with Pence on Thursday in Iowa and Michigan.
Speaking to a crowd of fired-up fans in Pensacola at his third stop of the day, the real estate developer at one point gave himself a lecture about staying on message.
“In six days, we are going to win the great state of Florida, and we are going to win the White House,” the GOP nominee said. “It’s feeling like it already, isn’t it? We’ve got to be nice and cool, nice and cool. All right? Stay on point, Donald, stay on point. No sidetracks, Donald.”
But in a break from his past rhetoric about curtailing immigration, Trump proclaimed that as president he would allow “tremendous numbers” of legal immigrants based on a “merit system.”
“They have to come in legally,” he added. “And we’ll have merit involved, too. Wouldn’t it be nice if we went a little bit on the merit system? We take people that are really going to help us to grow our country? Wouldn’t that be nice? Somebody said: ‘You can’t say that, that’s not politically correct.’ Well, I just said it, folks.”
Trump’s campaign said Wednesday that the Republican nominee will hold his election night event at the New York Hilton Midtown. The campaign rented a ballroom in the Hilton but expects to do a small event — at least compared with most of Trump’s big rallies, according to one person familiar with the plans who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe strategy.
In 2012, GOP nominee Mitt Romney spent $25,000 on a fireworks show over Boston Harbor that never came to pass because he lost to President Obama. There are no plans for Trump fireworks next Tuesday, the person said. Trump is “superstitious” and does not want to jinx things by planning a big victory celebration, the person added.
Trump’s decision means that both presidential nominees will be spending next Tuesday just a couple of miles apart. Clinton and her supporters will gather at the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center in Manhattan — a building with a symbolic architectural feature: a large glass ceiling.
Courtesy: Washington Post
