Republican presidential nominee, former President Donald Trump attends a town hall event hosted by Fox News on October 15, 2024, in Cumming, Georgia.
| Photo Credit: AFP

Kamala Harris spent much of Tuesday (October 15, 2024) questioning Donald Trump’s mental state and fitness for office after the 78-year-old Republican’s latest televised town hall veered into a surreal, impromptu music session.

“Hope he’s okay,” the Democratic candidate posted on X.

Ms. Harris’s campaign, which has begun to aggressively challenge Mr. Trump on his health and mental stability, said that he appeared “lost, confused, and frozen on stage” during the Monday (October 14, 2024) event.

Former President Trump defended the event in the critical swing State of Pennsylvania, saying it was “so different.”

“It was amazing! The Q and A was almost finished when people began fainting from the excitement and heat,” Mr. Trump posted on his Truth Social network.

“We started playing music while we waited, and just kept it going. So different, but it ended up being a GREAT EVENING!”

He hit out at Vice President Harris, who released a White House medical report at the weekend that said she was fit for the highest office and challenged Mr. Trump to do the same.

“With all of the problems that she has, there is a real question as to whether or not she should be running for President! MY REPORT IS PERFECT — NO PROBLEMS!!!” Mr. Trump wrote.

‘Let’s just listen to music’

For about half an hour, the event in Oaks near Philadelphia was standard fare ahead of the November 5 election, as Mr. Trump took friendly questions from supporters on the economy and cost of living.

But it ended with a bizarre 39 minutes of music and dancing as Mr. Trump swayed awkwardly on stage following interruptions because of medical emergencies in the crowd.

“Who the hell wants to hear questions, right?” he said.

Mr. Trump has made a brief, jerky dance his signature at the end of rallies for years, nearly always to his exit song— the Village People’s 1978 disco anthem “YMCA.”

On Monday, however, he stayed on stage for nine songs, ranging from opera to Guns N’ Roses and Elvis, with the ex-president alternating his dance moves with standing in place and staring into the crowd.

Ms. Harris and Mr. Trump are locked in a dead heat, according to polls, and the election is set to be decided by seven swing states where the margins could come down to barely 10,000 votes each.

With only three weeks to go, the 59-year-old Democrat has increasingly been homing in on Mr. Trump’s health and age.

‘Obnoxious’ tariffs

It was the topic of her closing argument as she sat down with popular radio host Charlamagne tha God in an effort to boost her messaging to Black male voters— a part of the electorate where Trump has made gains.

After setting out her policies for improving the lives of Black men, she turned to Mr. Trump’s rallies and repeated a claim that riled him during their September debate— that bored supporters were leaving his rallies early.

“I will point out what everyone knows, which is that the people who worked the closest with Donald Trump when he was president— worked with him in the Oval Office, saw him at play in the Situation Room, his chief of staff, two secretaries of defence, his national security advisor and his former vice president — have all said he is dangerous and unfit to serve,” Ms. Harris said.

Mr. Trump’s own campaign schedule began with an Economic Club of Chicago event, where he said he was for slapping “obnoxious” tariffs on trading partners like Mexico so that companies move factories to the U.S.

“To me, the most beautiful word in the dictionary is the tariff,” Mr. Trump said, before heading for a rally in swing-State Georgia.

Mr. Trump is now the oldest person ever to be nominated for a presidential bid after President Joe Biden dropped out of the race following a disastrous debate that sparked fears about his own age.

He has not released a recent comprehensive report on his state of health, prompting fierce criticism from Harris.

Republican presidential nominee and former U.S. President Donald Trump reacts during a campaign rally, at the North Carolina Aviation Museum & Hall of Fame in Asheboro, North Carolina.
| Photo Credit: Reuters

In his first outdoor rally since last month’s assassination attempt, Donald Trump appeared on stage in North Carolina to talk about national security as part of his weeklong trip across the country to draw attention away from Democrats and their national convention.

“Seventy-six days from now, we’re going to win this state and we’re going to win the White House,” Trump said at the North Carolina Aviation Museum & Hall of Fame from behind a podium surrounded by panes of bulletproof glass that formed a protective wall across the stage.

Storage containers were stacked around the perimeter to create additional walls and block sight lines. Snipers were positioned on roofs at the venue, where old aircraft were sitting behind the podium and a large American flag was suspended from cranes.

The event, billed as being focused on national security issues, is part of Trump’s weeklong series of counterprogramming to the Democratic National Convention, which is underway in Chicago. Allies have been urging him to focus on policy instead of personal attacks as he struggles to adjust to running against Vice President Kamala Harris after President Joe Biden dropped out of the race.

On Tuesday night, the convention showcased a double dose of Obama firepower, as the former president and former first lady assailed Trump, calling him out repeatedly by name.

“His limited and narrow view of the world made him feel threatened by the existence of two hardworking, highly educated, successful people who happen to be Black,” Michelle Obama said of Trump in a rousing speech.

She also referenced a comment he made in a June debate, asking: “Who’s going to tell him that the job he’s currently seeking might just be one of those ‘Black jobs’?”

Barack Obama mocked Trump’s obsession with his crowd sizes and called Trump “a 78-year-old billionaire who hasn’t stopped whining about his problems since he rode down his golden escalator nine years ago.”

“It’s been a constant stream of gripes and grievances that’s actually gotten worse now that he’s afraid of losing to Kamala,” the former president said.

Trump was joined Wednesday by his running mate, Sen. JD Vance of Ohio, who cast Harris as a candidate selected by power brokers instead of voters and lambasted her vice presidential pick, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, before Trump took the stage.

That included continuing to hammer Walz for, at times, mischaracterizing his service record as an Army National Guard member, as well as Walz’s retirement from service before his unit’s deployment to Iraq.

“What won’t Stolen Valor Tim Walz lie about?” Vance, who served four years as a Marine, asked the crowd.

Trump has spent the week visiting battleground states in his busiest week of campaigning since the Republican primaries.

Reflecting the importance of North Carolina in this year’s election, the trip is Trump’s second to the state in just the past week. Last Wednesday, he appeared in Asheville, North Carolina, for a speech on the economy.

Trump won North Carolina by a comfortable margin in 2016. The state delivered the former president his closest statewide margin of victory four years ago and is once again considered a key battleground in 2024.

Before Trump arrived, his plane did a flyover of the rally site. The crowd erupted into cheers.

Edna Ryan, a 68-year-old retired flight attendant and private pilot, said she was bullish on the Republican’s chances, but said: “We need to be strong because otherwise we’re going to be very sorry.”

Lisa Watts, a retired business owner from Hickory, North Carolina, who was attending her fifth Trump rally, said she’s feeling “very positive” about the race against Harris.

“A month ago they never spoke her name and now she’s like, quote quote the ‘savior for the country,’” Watts said. “I don’t think that her record proves that she is ready to run this country.”

Watts said she doesn’t think Trump’s chances of winning are much different now from when Biden was the Democratic nominee.

“I think the Democrats are going to try to do everything they can to keep her up on that pedestal,” she said, predicting the hype around Harris will fade.

Former U.S. Vice President Mike Pence announces that is withdrawing from the presidential campaign during the Republican Jewish Coalition Annual Leadership Summit in Las Vegas, Nevada on October 28, 2023.
| Photo Credit: Reuters

Former U.S. Vice President Mike Pence ended his cash-strapped presidential campaign on October 28, after struggling for months to convince Republican voters he was the best alternative to the man he once served with unswerving loyalty — Donald Trump.

“To the American people I say: This is not my time,” Mr. Pence told attendees at the Republican Jewish Coalition donor conference in Las Vegas.

Mr. Pence, 64, publicly broke with Mr. Trump, lambasting the former president for his role in the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection at the U.S. Capitol. Mr. Pence gambled that Republican primary voters would reward him for following the U.S. Constitution rather than obeying Mr. Trump, who wanted him to overturn the 2020 election results.

But Mr. Trump’s base of core supporters never forgave Mr. Pence for overseeing the certification of Democrat Joe Biden’s election. They viewed Mr. Pence’s actions in his ceremonial role as president of the U.S. Senate as a supreme act of disloyalty to Mr. Trump, who has become the runaway frontrunner in the Republican race.

Mr. Trump has built one of the biggest primary opinion poll leads in U.S. electoral history. Polls show a majority of Republican voters have embraced, or do not care about, Mr. Trump’s lie that the 2020 election was stolen from him and his subsequent efforts to overturn the result.

Mr. Pence stopped short of endorsing anyone in his speech on October 28, but in an apparent swipe at Mr. Trump, called on Americans to select someone who appeals to “the better angels of our nature” and can lead with “civility”.

Mr. Pence failed to attract enough anti-Trump Republican primary voters, and donors, to sustain a candidacy that has languished in the low single digits in opinion polls and struggled to raise money since he announced his White House bid in June.

As a result Mr. Pence, a stolid campaigner short on charisma, was low on cash by October and despite spending time and resources in the first Republican nominating state of Iowa, had failed to catch fire there.

When his campaign released Mr. Pence’s third quarter fundraising totals on October 15, his candidacy was $620,000 in debt and only had $1.2 million cash on hand, far less than several better-performing Republican rivals and insufficient to sustain the financial demands of a White House race.

In several past elections, former vice-presidents who have competed to become the White House nominee have succeeded, including Republican George H.W. Bush in 1988 and Democrat Al Gore in 2000.

This year, Mr. Pence was up against the political juggernaut that is Mr. Trump, along with other rivals who appealed more to anti-Trump primary voters and donors, including former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley and Florida Governor Ron DeSantis.

Mr. Pence ran as a traditional social and fiscal conservative, and a foreign policy hawk, calling for increased military aid to Ukraine and cuts in welfare entitlement spending. But that brand of Republicanism has been eclipsed in the Trump-era by full-throated populism and “America First” isolationism.