Ranting Trump loses his way as Harris backers dare to hope 

PHILADELPHIA, Pennsylvania — Was this the moment the U.S. presidential election finally started to turn Kamala Harris’ way?

It won’t be clear for at least another few days but the last weekend of the campaign proved every bit as eventful — and unpredictable — as the rest of the contest has been. 

Republican Donald Trump spent the weekend riffing about famous figures who are either dead or never existed, and getting confused about where exactly he was. 

Trump’s rival for the White House, Vice President Kamala Harris, has not so far shown much ability to capitalize on his weaknesses. But there were tentative indications that some crucial swing states might finally be starting to break her way. 

More than 160 million Americans are heading to the polls for Tuesday’s impossibly high-stakes election. The campaign for the White House has seen two assassination attempts on Trump, the withdrawal of incumbent President Joe Biden, and some of the most violent and vitriolic rhetoric ever deployed in an American election campaign.

Whatever happens, the result will be historic: either the maverick Trump will return to power, bent on “retribution” against his enemies after a four-year hiatus, or America will elect its first woman president. 

The candidates are focused on seven critical swing-state contests. These include a group of states in the so-called Sun Belt such as Arizona and Nevada, and declining former industrial heartlands in the Rust Belt — states such as Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania. 

The last of these, Pennsylvania, is perhaps the most vital of all, with 19 electoral college votes up for grabs — the largest number of any of the seven battleground states. 

On Sunday, Trump went randomly off script as he held a rally in Pennsylvania. He said he should “never have left” the White House, in a continuation of his false claim that he won the 2020 election. And he suggested someone should “shoot through” the “fake news” media, which some interpreted as more evidence of Trump’s fondness for violent rhetoric. 

Mike’s pillows

Later on Sunday at a rally in North Carolina, another swing state, Trump seemed confused. At one point he suggested to the crowd that he was still in Pennsylvania. He also told a fictional story about the Al Capone, the Chicago gangster who died in 1947, and “MyPillow” CEO Mike Lindell having dinner together, in which prominent Trump supporter Lindell offered Capone pillows.

“If he didn’t sleep well because he didn’t like Mike’s pillows, Mike had almost no chance of living,” Trump said. “He would dispose of Mike somewhere in a foundation of a building or something. You would never see Mike again. Mike does not want to have dinner with Scarface.” 

The crowd seemed confused and unsure how to react.

On Saturday, Trump suggested Hannibal Lecter, the villain in horror film “The Silence of the Lambs,” was a real-life undocumented migrant. 

Harris for her part claimed at a rally in Michigan, a Rust Belt swing state in the Midwest, that her campaign was gathering “momentum.” Senior Harris officials argued over the weekend that internal campaign data showed the vice president winning over late-deciding voters by a double-digit margin. A New York Times/Siena College poll, released on Sunday, also found those voters who had settled on their decisions recently backed Harris by a double-digit advantage. 

A separate and highly regarded poll in the Des Moines Register over the weekend found Harris narrowly leading Trump in Iowa, a state previously regarded as a safe bet for the Republican candidate. 

Research combining a “mega poll” of 31,000 people with separate swing states surveys shared exclusively with POLITICO also indicated tentatively that Harris was best placed to win. 

Lisa Kashinsky contributed reporting from Lititz, Pennsylvania. Andrew Howard contributed reporting from Washington, D.C. Elena Schneider contributed reporting from Michigan.