Pennsylvania is focus of Harris and Trump on final campaign day

Donald Trump dances during a campaign rally Monday in Reading, Pa.

, Daniel Miller and Hailey Branson-Potts

Nov. 4, 2024 3:51 PM PT

Former President Trump spent his last full day of campaigning Monday saying that only he can save America from an apocalyptic future dominated by out-of-control government, an “invasion” of criminal immigrants and amoral liberals — messages of dark foreboding much like the ones that have powered the Republican’s decade on the national stage.

Vice President Kamala Harris ended her campaign for the presidency with a series of rallies in which she promised to turn the page and put the U.S. on a more stable and hopeful trajectory, pledging not to seek revenge but to “spend every day working on my to-do list on your behalf.”

While the messages from the two presidential candidates diverged sharply, they nearly came together geographically, with both spending much of Monday in Pennsylvania, a state seen as critical by both sides in securing an electoral college victory.

The Keystone State awards more electoral votes to the winner — 19 — than any of the other states that are being most closely contested this year. Polls showed Pennsylvania in an apparent dead heat and the six other battlegrounds — Michigan, Wisconsin, Georgia, North Carolina, Arizona and Nevada — also too close to call, as voting wraps up on Tuesday.

In a late afternoon rally at an arena in Reading, Trump waxed nostalgic about his time on the national stage, while continuing to rail against an establishment he accused of conspiring to keep him from power.

“For the past nine years, we’ve been fighting against the most sinister and corrupt forces on Earth,” he told the crowd. “With your vote in this election, you can show them once and for all, that this nation does not belong to them. This nation belongs to you.”

Trump promised that his second term, coming four years after he lost the presidency to Joe Biden, would ring in a new “golden age” of peace and prosperity for Americans. “Nov. 5, 2024, will be Liberation Day in America!” Trump shouted, though he pledged that the “liberation” would begin on the first day of his presidency with the mass deportation of immigrants in the U.S. illegally.

“This is not sustainable by country,” Trump said of migration across the border with Mexico. “They’re taking over your towns, your schools, your hospitals,” he said, adding: “I will rescue every city and town that has been invaded and conquered.”

Immigration on the southern border skyrocketed in 2023 under the administration of President Biden and his vice president, Harris, but entries declined dramatically by this summer. Democrats and Republicans had worked out a compromise bill to stem the flow of migrants, but the legislation died when Trump came out against it.

The former president was scheduled for two more rallies in the state — in Pittsburgh and Philadelphia — before concluding the long campaign’s penultimate day.

In a note of particular concern to some in the state, he raised doubts about whether Harris would continue to allow hydraulic fracturing, known as fracking, to extract oil and gas. Trump pledged to the estimated 500,000 Pennsylvanians employed in the petroleum industry that if elected, “we will frack, frack, frack and drill, baby, drill.”

He ended his hour-and-20-minute presentation with a now-familiar string of promises.

“We will make America powerful again. We will make America wealthy again. We will make America healthy again,” he began. “We will make America strong again. We will make America proud again. We will make America safe again. And we will make America great again!”

Kamala Harris at a rally Monday in Allentown, Pa.

In another closing argument, Trump used his Truth Social platform to present a short video from his ally, Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

Kennedy contended in the video that the Democrats were “weaponizing” government agencies to crack down on dissent — an apparent reference to the administration’s attempt to stop disinformation on the COVID-19 pandemic from being spread online. The former environmental lawyer assured viewers that Trump is “going to be relying on me to help clean up that corruption.”

About the same time Trump spoke in Reading, Harris was appearing an hour’s drive away, in Allentown, where she delivered a 20-minute speech that included many of the crowd favorites from her whirlwind 105-day campaign for the presidency.

Harris returned to well-worn themes such as reproductive freedom, love for country and exhaustion with a decade of rancorous politics. As with Trump’s applause lines, those topics fired up the Democratic faithful, who applauded lustily and held aloft signs that said “USA,” and “WHEN WE FIGHT WE WIN.”

“Pennsylvania, you know me — I am not afraid of tough fights,” she said before listing her successes as a prosecutor in California. “It is my pledge to you, if you give me a chance to fight on your behalf as president, there is nothing in the world that will stand in my way.”

Harris did not mention Trump by name, but noted that if elected, she would not concern herself with an “enemies list” — an apparent reference to the former president’s now-routine remarks in recent weeks about those he says have wronged him — and would instead “spend every day working on my to-do list on your behalf.”

Harris made sure to be very specific about what she wanted Pennsylvanians to do next: providing the hours that they could vote and urging them to get out and do just that. After a nearly four-month stretch unlike any other in modern American politics, Harris had a final message for supporters: “One day left!” she said.

The Democrats also made sure to remind residents of the state — including an estimated 300,000 Puerto Rican Americans — about controversial remarks that overshadowed the final days of the race. The words came in the form of a joke from comedian Tony Hinchcliffe, who appeared for Trump at a Madison Square Garden rally last week.

The rapper Fat Joe reminded the Allentown crowd about the joke. “It was filled with so much hate ... calling Puerto Rico an island of garbage,” said the musician, a Bronx native who is of Puerto Rican and Cuban descent. “My Latinos, where is your pride?”

Referring to the Trump-JD Vance ticket, the rapper asked: “What more they got to do to show you who they are?”

Like Trump, Harris planned to end the long day of campaigning in Pennsylvania’s two biggest cities, with rallies planned for Pittsburgh and Philadelphia.

Harris’ campaign said her final stop would be outside the Philadelphia Museum of the Arts — the famous site of the steps where the title character finishes a triumphant run in the movie “Rocky” — to highlight the importance of democracy in the city where America’s founding documents were written. Scheduled to join Harris at the rally were Oprah Winfrey, Lady Gaga, the Roots and other pop culture luminaries.

Times staff writer Noah Bierman, in Philadelphia, contributed to this report.