Harris slams Trump in Pennsylvania as US election race heats up

US Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris has accused her Republican rival Donald Trump of being a threat to democracy, as the pair held duelling rallies in the critical battleground state of Pennsylvania.

Harris and Trump addressed their respective supporters on Monday evening, with Harris speaking in the city of Erie and Trump hosting a town hall in Oaks, a suburb northwest of Philadelphia.

“A second Trump term would be a huge risk for America – and dangerous. Donald Trump is increasingly unstable and unhinged,” Harris told the crowd, referencing recent comments in which Trump warned that the United States faced an “enemy from within”.

Trump has leaned into increasingly incendiary rhetoric as the race for the White House heats up ahead of the November 5 vote.

The former president has adopted dehumanising rhetoric about immigrants, and he also recently suggested the country faced internal enemies who could be addressed with military force.“I think the bigger problem is the enemy from within,” he told Fox News in an interview that aired at the weekend when asked about potential chaos on Election Day. “We have some very bad people. We have some sick people, radical left lunatics.”

He added: “It should be very easily handled by, if necessary, by [the] National Guard, or if really necessary, by the military.”

Trump also has previously shared content on his social media platform suggesting that his political opponents were traitors who should face military tribunals.

For years, Democrats have sought to portray Trump as a threat to US democracy, particularly after a mob of his supporters stormed the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, in an effort to prevent Congress from certifying the 2020 election results.

President Joe Biden – who defeated Trump in that 2020 vote – said last year that the ex-president’s Make America Great Again (MAGA) campaign was an “extremist movement that does not share the basic beliefs in our democracy”.

But recent polls suggest Trump and Harris are locked in an extremely tight race for the White House, less than a month before the election.

In recent weeks, Harris has been on a media blitz as her campaign pushes to appeal to key segments of the Democratic base, including Black men as well as Arab and Muslim Americans who have shown waning support for the candidate.

At her rally on Monday, she showed clips of Trump’s most recent comments as she warned against electing him to another term.

“He considers anyone who doesn’t support him, or who will not bend to his will, an enemy of our country,” the US vice president said.

Polling averages show Harris with a narrow lead of less than 1 percent in Pennsylvania, a northeastern state that could prove critical in the upcoming election.

For his part, during his event in the Pennsylvania town of Oaks, Trump repeated a pledge to increase US oil drilling, which he said would drive down costs though domestic production is already at record highs.

“We’re going to drill baby drill. We’re going to have so much energy and we’re going to bring prices down,” Trump said.

After medical incidents in the crowd interrupted his town hall, the Republican candidate requested that the song Ave Maria be played for the audience.

“Those two people who went down are patriots,” Trump said afterwards. “We love them. And because of them, we ended up with some great music, right?”

Beijing deployed fighter jets, drones, warships and coastguard ships to encircle Taiwan on Monday. Taipei said it responded by dispatching “appropriate forces” and placing its outlying islands on heightened alert.

The defence ministry said 90 of the Chinese aircraft were spotted within Taiwan’s air defence identification zone.

‘Nonsense’

Beijing considers Taiwan part of its territory and has said it would never rule out using force to take it.China said the one-day drill, designated “Joint Sword-2024B”, was a warning against “separatist acts”. The war games followed a National Day speech last week by Taiwan President William Lai Ching-te that Beijing had denounced.

Lai said in the speech that China has no right to represent Taiwan and declared his commitment to “resist annexation or encroachment”.

“This is a resolute punishment for Lai Ching-te’s continuous fabrication of ‘Taiwan independence’ nonsense,” China’s Taiwan affairs office said in a statement.

Attracting attention

Taiwan’s Premier Cho Jung-tai stated that the manoeuvres were not only a concern for Taipei, but for the entire region.

“Any drills without prior warning will cause great disturbance to peace and stability in the entire region,” he told reporters. “China’s drills not only affect Taiwan’s neighbourhood, but also seriously affect the entire international navigational rights and air and sea space, so attracted the attention of other countries.”

Taiwan’s Office of the President called on China to “cease military provocations that undermine regional peace and stability and stop threatening Taiwan’s democracy and freedom”.

The United States, an ally to the self-ruled island, noted its concern, even as it launched its own war games in the disputed South China Sea.

The Pentagon slammed China’s drills as “irresponsible, disproportionate, and destabilising”.

However, thousands of US and Philippine marines launched 10 days of joint exercises in the Philippines, which is also locked in dispute with China, on Tuesday.

The exercises are focused on defending the north coast of the main Philippine island of Luzon, which lies about 800km (500 miles) from Taiwan.