WASHINGTON (AP) — Presidential election campaigning revved back up Tuesday, with Donald Trump heading to Michigan and Vice President Kamala Harris answering questions at a forum for Black journalists in Pennsylvania — all while authorities investigate the second apparent assassination attempt against Trump that’s roiled the race.
Trump is holding a town hall in Flint, Michigan, and has appearances later in the week in New York, Washington and North Carolina. Harris will participate in a Philadelphia gathering of the National Association of Black Journalists. She skipped the group’s recent gathering in Chicago, while an openly antagonistic appearance there by Trump sparked an uproar when he questioned the vice president’s racial identity.
Harris has her own stops in Washington, as well as Michigan and Wisconsin, planned in coming days, with both sides zeroing in on the industrial Midwest and Pennsylvania and North Carolina — all battleground areas that could swing an election expected to be exceedingly close.
Harris said in an interview recorded Monday that she was “briefed immediately after” the apparent assassination attempt and that she was grateful Trump was OK. Speaking with a Spanish-language radio host Chiquibaby, Harris echoed her past sentiments about the attack, condemning “violence of any kind.”
“We have to have civil dialogue, and be able to talk through our differences,” Harris said. “And violence has no place.”
The vice president also talked about her mother, the late Shyamala Gopalan, who was born in India, being an immigrant to the U.S.
She blamed Trump for helping to derail a bipartisan border security plan in Congress and detailed her previously announced plans to use tax incentives to encourage first-time home purchases and combat grocery “price gouging” to help tame inflation.
Trump has claimed, without evidence, that months of criticisms against him by Harris and President Joe Bideninspired the latest attack. That’s despite the former president’s own long history of inflammatory campaign rhetoric and advocacy for jailing or prosecuting his political enemies.
Both Biden and Harris have so far avoided politics in reacting to the attack. Biden has called on Congress to increase funding to the Secret Service.
Authorities say Ryan Wesley Routh camped outside the golf course in West Palm Beach, where Trump was playing on Sunday, for nearly 12 hours with food and a rifle but fled without firing shots when a Secret Service agent spotted and shot at him.
Subsequently arrested, Routh’s past online posts suggest the suspect has not been consistent about his politics in terms of supporting Democrats or Republicans.
That attack came barely two months after Trump was wounded during a rally in Pennsylvania. In fundraising emails, he’s implored supporters, “Fear not.” During an interview on the X social media platform, Trump recounted his experience Sunday, saying he was golfing with a friend and heard “probably four or five” shots being fired in the air.
Will Weissert, The Associated Press