WASHINGTON: Democratic White House candidate Kamala Harris on Thursday joined Liz Cheney, a high-profile Republican opponent of Donald Trump, in voting to impeach the former president for inciting an attack on the Capitol in 2021. Hours before the pair took the stage in the key state of Wisconsin, Trump rallied supporters in another tumultuous battleground state, Michigan, where he repeated false claims about voter fraud that led to deadly violence. His appearance came in the wake of a bombshell Wednesday in his prosecution for an alleged criminal conspiracy to subvert the 2020 election, which claimed he has no presidential immunity for “private criminal activities” and provided new evidence of his alleged wrongdoing. “We did great in 2016 – a lot of people don’t know that. We did much better in 2020 – we won. We won, we won. It was a rigged election,” Trump said of his $7 million defeat of Joe Biden. in the now familiar refrain. Trump has been spreading debunked conspiracy theories about fraud in the 2020 election before it even took place, but several more blatant falsehoods have come to light from the Republican, who has a string of felony and civil convictions for dishonesty. Trump repeatedly misled his audience about the Biden administration’s response to the deadly hurricane that devastated parts of the Southeast, misrepresented migrant crime statistics and questioned the mental health of Harris and two senior Democratic lawmakers. In the rusting county of Saginaw, Michigan, the former reality TV star said he won in 2016 and then narrowly lost to Joe Biden in 2020. Three “Rust Belt” states, Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, are among seven battleground states expected to decide the painfully close 2024 election, which is just over a month away. Flanked by Teamsters auto workers, Trump recalled how he “hated” paying workers overtime and bragged about how he got away with it. “I shouldn’t tell you. I’d go out and get other people and have them work regularly,” he said. Harris was scheduled to appear at an early-evening event at the Republican Party’s symbolic birthplace in Ripon with Cheney, a former congresswoman who switched parties to support the Democrat along with her father, former Vice President Dick Cheney. Harris, the current vice president, will use her rally to reach out to Republicans who Democrats hope will be put off by Trump’s extreme rhetoric on issues ranging from abortion to immigration and democracy. Conservative Liz Cheney was one of only 10 Republicans to vote to impeach Trump amid attacks on the Capitol by Trump supporters who tried to stop the confirmation of Trump’s defeat of Biden. Liz Cheney was ousted from the leadership of the US House of Representatives for her opposition to Trump. Her father’s support, meanwhile, came as a surprise to President George W. Bush’s former right-hand man. Harris has a narrow lead in the polls in Wisconsin and Michigan, but both candidates know all the swing states could go either way and are relentlessly hammering them with the election just 33 days away. One topic Trump avoided during the casual speech was his former first lady Melania Trump’s new memoir and her comments on the election issue of abortion. According to The Guardian, which said it had access to a copy ahead of publication next week, Melania wrote that “limiting a woman’s right to decide whether to terminate an unwanted pregnancy is tantamount to denying her control over her own body.” Her opinion diverges from Trump, who often boasts that his selection of Supreme Court justices paved the way for the end of national abortion rights in the United States. The Harris campaign responded that “unfortunately for women across America, Mrs. Trump’s husband strongly disagrees with her.” Trump and Harris remain at odds ahead of the election, despite historic upheavals including Harris replacing Biden as the Democratic nominee at the last minute in July and two assassination attempts against Trump.
