The United States presidential election campaign continues to get muddied with just two weeks left until voting day. This Tuesday, The Atlantic published that Donald Trump said when he was president that he needed “the kind of generals that Hitler had.” In parallel, at an electoral event in New Hampshire, the president, Joe Biden, spoke of “locking up” Trump, although he immediately said that he was referring to “locking him up politically.” The climate of extreme polarization It raises fears about the reaction to the electoral result, especially if the loser is the Republican. This Tuesday, in an interview on NBC News, the Democratic candidate, Kamala Harris, said she was prepared in case her rival was declared the winner on election night before the votes were counted. as it already did in 2020.

The presenter asked her what her plan was for that scenario. “We have two weeks left, and I am very focused on the present, in terms of the task at hand, and we will deal with election night and the days afterward, as they come, and we have the resources and the experience and the focus on that too,” answered the vice president.

Harris took advantage of the issue to attack Trump as a threat to democracy, which he has been doing more and more frequently as the election date approaches. “The American people are presented, right now, two weeks away, with a very, very serious decision about what the future of our country will be. And it includes whether we are a country that values ​​a president who respects his duty to defend the Constitution of the United States. “Donald Trump has said he would tear down the United States Constitution.”

That was one of Biden’s favorite plot lines against Trump. The Democratic candidate does not plan to campaign with him at the moment, but the president is participating in some electoral events on his side (and in other official ones with campaign overtones). This Tuesday, Biden was in a Democratic campaign office in Concord (New Hampshire) and attacked that flank.

“Democracy at stake”

“I’m not a person prone to hyperbole, but we have a group leading MAGA Republicans who have no regard for the Constitution,” Biden said. “Our democracy is at stake. Think about it. Think about what would happen if Donald Trump wins this election (…) It is a genuine threat to our democracy, and that is not hyperbole,” he insisted, pointing out that the United States is at a decisive turning point in its history that will determine what it will be like in the next five or six decades.

In the middle of his speech, however, he slipped into delicate semantics, doing Kamala Harris a disservice. “I know it sounds strange. It sounds like if I said this five years ago, you would have locked me up. We have to lock him up. Lock him up politically. Lock him up. That’s what we have to do.” When Democratic supporters chant “lock him up” at Harris’ rallies, she has a standard response: “Let’s leave that to the courts. Let’s deal with November 5th.”

Biden’s phrase, although he added “politically,” has provoked a rapid reaction from the Republican campaign. “Joe Biden just admitted the truth: his and Kamala’s plan all along has been to politically go after their opponent, President Trump, because they can’t defeat him fairly. The Harris-Biden administration is the real threat to democracy,” said Karoline Leavitt, press secretary for the Trump campaign, in a statement.

This scuffle shows that the campaign has moved mainly into the realm of personal attacks, including insults. In that rarefied climate, the progressive magazine The Atlantic attributed to Trump some explosive statements. “I need the type of generals that Hitler had,” Trump would have said in a private conversation at the White House, according to two people who heard him, said the media. “People who were totally loyal, who followed orders,” they explained. A Trump spokesman, Alex Pfeiffer, responded to the magazine: “That is absolutely false. “President Trump never said this.”

It is not the only revelation in the magazine. It tells the case of Vanessa Guillén, a 20-year-old army private, daughter of Mexican immigrants, who was beaten to death by a comrade at Fort Hood, in Texas. The murderer, helped by his girlfriend, burned her body. The remains were discovered two months later, buried on the bank of a river near the base, after an intensive search. Trump received the family at the White House and promised financial help for the funeral. Months later, however, he asked if they had sent the invoice and when they told him the cost, he became angry. “It doesn’t cost $60,000 to bury a fucking Mexican!” he said. “Don’t pay for it!” he added to his chief of staff, Mark Meadows. Later that same day, always according to The Atlantic he was still agitated. “Can you believe it? “Damn people, trying to scam me,” he said, according to a witness. Trump’s spokesperson also denies it: “It is a scandalous lie from He Atlantic two weeks before the election.”

Trump, meanwhile, continues his personal attacks on Harris, whom last week he called a “shitty vice president.” This Tuesday, taking advantage of the fact that the vice president did not have any campaign events, she blurted out, “Who the hell takes a break when you have 14 days left? She’s lazy. “She’s lazy as hell.” For some, using the term “lazy” to describe Harris, who is black and of South Asian descent, has racist overtones, because it evokes clichés that paint American blacks as lazy or inept. He has also said about her during the campaign that she is “slow” and that she has “a low IQ.”

A female president

Harris had been uninterrupted with campaign events for 14 days and on Monday she had them in three different states: Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin. However, he dedicated Tuesday to work meetings and giving two interviews, to NBC and Telemundo. In the NBC interview, the host, Hallie Jackson, reminded her that in the 2019 primaries Harris had said that the “elephant in the room” was whether the United States was prepared for a woman, and a woman of color, to be presidents.

Is the United States ready now? he asked. “Absolutely, absolutely. And I am seeing it in all areas of life in our country. “I think part of what’s important in this election is not just turning the page, but closing the page and the chapter on an era that suggests Americans are divided,” she replied.

Jackson insisted that she had not made any claim to be a woman. “Well, it’s clear that I’m a woman,” she replied, laughing. “I don’t need to point it out to anyone. What most people really care about is whether you can do the job and whether you have a plan to focus on them.”

The presenter then asked if the gender gap indicated by polls (Harris has less male support than Biden on his day, and clearly less than Trump, but more female support) It was due to sexism. “You have come to my events, and you will see that there are men and women at those events, whether they are small events or events with 10,000 people. So the experience that I’m having is one where it’s clear that regardless of someone’s gender, they want to know that their president has a plan to reduce costs, that their president has a plan to secure America in the context of our position in the world,” he evaded.

At the insistence of the interviewer, he added: “I don’t see it that way. My challenge is to make sure I can talk to and listen to as many voters as possible and earn their vote. And I will never assume that anyone in our country should elect a leader based on their sex or race, but that that leader has to earn the vote based on substance and what they will do to meet challenges.”

In that same interview, Harris alluded to answering whether he would be willing to pardon Trump for the unification of the country if he wins the elections. “I’m not going to go into those hypotheses. “I am focused on the next 14 days.”