Trump and Harris enter the decisive week of the presidential race

Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris will tour Michigan on Monday, while her rival Donald Trump heads to Georgia, another swing state that is crucial in this heated presidential race.

With just a week to go before the November 5 election, more than 41 million Americans have cast early ballots, joined Monday by outgoing President Joe Biden who cast his ballot in his hometown of Wilmington, Delaware.

“I am proud to vote for Kamala Harris and (her vice presidential nominee) Tim Walz,” Biden wrote on X.

Tensions are rising in a race that polls show is very close because of fears that Trump will again refuse to concede defeat, as he did in 2020.

Republicans continue to assert that he was cheated and his rhetoric has become increasingly violent and threatening.

“Kamala’s new line is that anyone who doesn’t vote for her is a Nazi… We’re Nazis,” Trump said at a rally Monday in Atlanta, Georgia.

“I am not a Nazi, I am the anti-Nazi,” the Republican candidate added, days after controversy over previous statements attributed to him.

John Kelly, a senior White House official during the Trump administration, said the Republican candidate met the definition of a fascist, an accusation echoed by Harris. According to Kelly, Trump said Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler “did good things”.

The political class denounced what happened during Trump’s election rally on Sunday in the famous Madison Garden Square Hall in New York, when one of the speakers described Puerto Rico, which has a majority of Latin American descent, as a floating island of garbage.

The Trump campaign stepped in to try to limit the damage, saying it “doesn’t reflect the views of President Trump”.

But comedian Tony Hinchcliffe showed no remorse, writing on social media that his critics had “no sense of humor” — a comment retweeted by Trump’s son and adviser Don Trump Jr.

For her part, Harris, described Trump in an interview with CBS News as “increasingly unstable and unbalanced”.

She urged him to undergo a cognitive ability test, saying she “will take the same test”.

In Michigan, Harris told supporters on Monday that “there is a lot at stake in this election, this isn’t 2016 or 2020”.

She added, “We can all see that Donald Trump is more unstable and unstable, and now he wants unchecked power, and this time there will be no stopping him”.

As the countdown begins, the challenge for Harris and Trump is to motivate core supporters and attract the small number of persuadable voters who could swing the election, especially in the seven swing states where polls show them running very close.

Harris, who spent Sunday in Pennsylvania, also a crucial state, will hold three rallies in Michigan while Trump holds two in Georgia, a pattern that will be repeated across the country over the next seven days.

Harris will deliver what her campaign is calling her closing argument in Washington on Tuesday, a reference to her career as a federal prosecutor.

The Democrat will speak from the same spot near the White House where Trump galvanized his supporters on January 6 to launch a violent assault on Congress in an attempt to stop the certification of Biden’s election.

Trump — the oldest presidential candidate ever and the first to be convicted of a crime — also used Madison Square Garden for his closing speech on Sunday.

The Trump campaign celebrated the event at the legendary arena as a show of strength and energy, emphasizing that tens of thousands of supporters thronged outside in addition to the large crowd inside.

The election is looming large over concerns that the next day could be as chaotic and dangerous as 2020.

According to a CNN poll conducted on Monday, only about 30% of Americans believe Trump will concede defeat, while 73% expect Harris to accept defeat.