WASHINGTON (AP) — Presidential campaigning is heating up Tuesday as Donald Trump heads to Michigan and Vice President Kamala Harris answers questions at a forum for black journalists in Pennsylvania — even as authorities continue to investigate another apparent assassination attempt against Trump. competitive.
Trump will hold a town hall in Flint, Michigan, and will make appearances in New York, Washington and North Carolina later in the week. Harris attends the National Association of Black Journalists event in Philadelphia. He skipped the group’s recent gathering in Chicago, but Trump’s openly hostile appearance there sparked an uproar when he questioned the vice president’s race.
Harris has his own stops in Washington and Michigan and Wisconsin planned in the coming days, with both parties zeroing in on the industrial Midwest and Pennsylvania and North Carolina — all battlegrounds that could swing what is expected to be a very close election.
Trump has claimed, without evidence, that months of criticism of him by Harris and President Joe Biden inspired the latest attack. This despite the former president’s own long history of inflammatory campaign rhetoric and imprisoning or prosecuting his political enemies.
Both Biden and Harris have so far avoided politics in their response to the attack. Harris has condemned political violence, while Biden has called on Congress to increase funding for the Secret Service.
Authorities say Ryan Wesley Routh camped outside the West Palm Beach golf course where Trump played Sunday for nearly 12 hours with food and a rifle, but fled without firing a shot when a Secret Service agent spotted him and shot him.
Routh’s past online posts, which were later arrested, suggest the suspect has not been consistent about his politics in terms of supporting Democrats or Republicans.
The attack came barely two months after Trump was wounded during a rally in Pennsylvania. In fundraising emails, he implored supporters: “Don’t be afraid.” In an interview on the X social media platform, Trump recounted his experience on Sunday, saying he was playing golf with a friend and heard “probably four or five” shots fired into the air.
