US election 2024 LIVE updates: Trump, Harris in damage control after ‘garbage’ comments rock both campaigns

In an election year marked by extraordinary upheaval, the aftermath of Hurricane Helene has become a political flashpoint in North Carolina, a fast-growing, racially diverse state that Trump won by only 1.3 per cent in 2020 – his narrowest margin of victory that year.

As Democrats’ hopes run high for the state, the lingering impact of Hurricane Helene remains a key uncertainty.

The hardest-hit areas are in Western North Carolina, a rural part of the state that has traditionally voted for Trump, except for Asheville, a left-leaning artsy haven likely to skew heavily to Harris.

Earlier this month, some roads remained blocked while others were barely passable. Power, water and mobile phone services were being gradually restored, and in a region where 95 people died from the storms and 89 people remain unaccounted for, politics may not be top of mind for many.

North America correspondent Farrah Tomazin reports.

The spectre of violence has haunted this campaign.

Not only have there been two assassination attempts on candidate Donald Trump’s life, the language of the campaign – particularly from the Republicans – has grown more militant and threatening.

Now an 18-year-old Trump supporter is facing a felony charge after police say he threatened two Kamala Harris supporters with a 60-centimetre machete as they campaigned outside a Florida early voting site.

Caleb James Williams is charged with felony aggravated assault on a person 65 or older and misdemeanour exhibition of a dangerous weapon, police records show.

Neptune Beach police chief Michael Key Jr said Williams and seven 16- and 17-year-olds drove to a suburban Jacksonville library on Tuesday afternoon “to protest and antagonise the opposing political side”. Carrying Trump flags, they began yelling at a group of Harris supporters and that escalated.

Key displayed a photo taken by a witness of a smiling Williams “brandishing a machete in an aggressive, threatening posture over his head”. The Harris supporters he allegedly threatened are women aged 71 and 54.

“This goes way beyond expressing freedom of speech. To say your piece is your First Amendment protected right, but that goes out the window the moment you raise a machete over your head,” Key said.

Neptune Beach is an upscale suburb of 7000 residents with a median income of $110,000, according to census records.

Williams, a restaurant busboy, was being held Wednesday afternoon at the Duval County Jail on $US55,000 bail after making his first court appearance. If the registered Republican is released, the judge ordered him to stay 300 metres from a polling place except to cast his own ballot and wear an ankle monitor.

AP

Kamala Harris and Donald Trump will make some of their final election pitches to voters on Wednesday in North Carolina, a southern swing state with a Democratic governor that has backed Republican US presidential candidates in the past three elections.

North Carolina has 16 Electoral College votes, tying it with Georgia as the second-biggest prize among the seven closely contested states expected to decide whether Democratic Vice President Harris or Republican former president Trump wins the election next Tuesday.

A Tuesday Reuters/Ipsos poll showed Harris leading Trump 44 per cent to 43 per cent among registered voters nationally, within the margin of error.

Other opinion polls show tight margins in the seven election battleground states. Last month’s hurricane damage has made North Carolina’s results especially difficult to predict.

On Wednesday (Thursday AEDT), Harris will be in the state’s fast-growing capital Raleigh, with a population of about 480,000 people, while Trump will hold a rally in Rocky Mount, a city of about 50,000 people.

Trump won North Carolina by under 1.5 percentage points in 2020. He also won the state in 2016 while Republican Mitt Romney won in 2012.

Trump currently leads Harris by just 1 percentage point in North Carolina, according to a polling average by FiveThirtyEight. The last time the state backed the Democratic presidential candidate was Barack Obama in 2008.

Reuters

Republican former California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has endorsed Kamala Harris for president, taking aim at Trump’s election denialism and for likening the US to a “garbage can”.

“Rejecting the results of an election is as un-American as it gets,” he wrote on X. “To someone like me who talks to people all over the world and still knows America is the shining city on a hill, calling America a trash can for the world is so unpatriotic, it makes me furious.”

Schwarzenegger moved to the US from Austria and built a successful body-building career before starring in 1980s movie mega-hits such as Conan the Barbarian, The Terminator and Predator.

He served as governor of California from 2003 to 2011.

The actor is one of several Hollywood stars who have endorsed Harris.

With Reuters

Vice President Kamala Harris has distanced herself from Joe Biden after the president appeared to refer to Trump supporters as “garbage”, in a damaging gaffe that has undercut her message of unity.

With less than a week before election day, Biden made the blunder during a video call with a Latino outreach group, just as 75,000 spectators had gathered in Washington to hear Harris’ “closing argument”, which urged voters to “turn the page” on the nation’s divisions.

Speaking in response to the controversial joke made at a Trump rally by comedian Tony Hinchcliffe about “Puerto Rico being in island of garbage,” Biden told the Zoom call: “The only garbage I see floating out there is his supporters. His demonisation of Latinos is unconscionable and it’s an American”.

While Biden and the White House quickly moved to clarify the comment – insisting that the president was talking about Hinchcliffe, and not Trump’s supporters more broadly – the Harris campaign spent much of the morning in damage control.

Asked about her boss’s comments en route to campaigning in North Carolina today, Harris told reporters: “First of all, he clarified his comments. But let me be clear: I strongly disagree with any criticism of people based on who they vote for.

“You heard my speech last night and continuously throughout my career: I believe that the work that I do is about representing all the people, whether they support me or not, and as President of the United States, I will be a president for all Americans, whether you vote for me or not.”

Good morning and welcome to our live coverage of the US election, which will take place on Tuesday (Wednesday AEDT).

Today, Vice President Kamala Harris is travelling to the battleground state of North Carolina. She’s also in damage control after President Joe Biden described Trump’s supporters as “garbage”.

Biden was responding to comments made at a Trump rally by controversial comedian Tony Hinchcliffe who called the US territory of Puerto Rico “a floating island of garbage”.

Those comments, made on Sunday night, sent Donald Trump’s campaign into crisis mode, as Puerto Ricans, a key Latino constituent, reacted with anger.

Trump is scheduled to hold a rally in North Carolina. The focus on the state underscores how crucial it is for both candidates.