Obama tells voters: ‘Don’t be nostalgic for Trump economy. It was mine’Barack Obama is hitting on a key issue for voters: the economy.“Don’t have nostalgia for what his economy was. Because it was mine,” Obama said.Polls show voters tend to favor Trump on the economy, yearning for the time, early in Trump’s presidency, pre-pandemic, when housing and grocery costs were lower.“I spent eight years cleaning up the mess that Republicans left,” Obama said.ShareUpdated at 23.20 CESTKey eventsShow key events onlyPlease turn on JavaScript to use this featureClosing summaryWe’re ending our live coverage for the day, just two weeks out from election day. Here are some key events and stories from the day:ShareUpdated at 03.19 CESTKamala Harris promotes small business loans for LatinosIn an interview with Telemundo earlier today, Kamala Harris pledged to drive more funds to community banks to help Latino men access small business loans. “We need to construct a strong economy that supports the working class, the vice-president said, AP reported. She continued:
I know that Hispanic men often have more difficulty securing loans from banks because of their connections and the fact that things aren’t necessarily set up so that they will qualify … For that reason, I’m focused on seeing what we can do to bring more capital to community banks that better understand the community so we can give them that kind of loans.
In a Trump event in Florida courting Latino voters, the former president denigrated Harris as “lazy as hell” and “low IQ”.ShareObama rallies in Michigan: ‘She didn’t pretend to work at McDonald’s’Barack Obama is rallying in Detroit after he was introduced by Eminem. The former president mocked Trump for his meandering rallies and inability to coherently answer questions:
Have you seen Mr Trump lately? … He’ll give two-and-a-half-hour speeches, just a word salad, you don’t know what the heck he’s saying. The other day he had a town hall meeting .. about 45 minutes into it, he says: ‘You know what? I don’t feel like taking questions no more,’ and then he just played music for half an hour.
Praising Kamala Harris, Obama took another swipe at Trump for his publicity stunt at a McDonald’s:
This is a leader who has spent her life fighting on behalf of people who need a voice, need a champion – somebody who was raised in the middle class. She worked at McDonald’s when she was in college to pay her expenses. She did not pretend to work at McDonald’s when it was closed.
Eminem hugs Obama in Detroit. Photograph: Emily Elconin/ReutersShareUpdated at 03.03 CESTKamala Harris: US is ‘absolutely’ ready for a female presidentVictoria BekiempisKamala Harris said that she has no doubt the US is ready for a female president, insisting that Americans care more about what candidates can do to help them, rather than a presidential contender’s gender.The vice-president’s statement came during an interview with NBC News’s Hallie Jackson, who asked whether she thought the country was ready for a woman, and a woman of color, to be in the Oval Office. “Absolutely,” Harris said. “Absolutely.”“In terms of every walk of life of our country,” Harris said, “part of what is important in this election is really, not really turning the page – closing a chapter, on an era that suggests that Americans are divided.ShareUpdated at 03.02 CESTEminem rallies for Kamala HarrisRapper Eminem took the stage at the Detroit rally for Kamala Harris:
It’s important to use your voice, so I’m encouraging everybody to get out and vote, please … I also think that people shouldn’t be afraid to express their opinions, and I don’t think anyone wants an America where people are worried about retribution … if you make your opinion known.
Vice-President Harris supports a future for this country where these freedoms and many others will be protected and upheld.
Eminem then introduced Barack Obama, who started his speech by reciting Eminem lyrics.ShareUpdated at 03.02 CESTTrump’s former chief of staff says he’s a ‘fascist’John Kelly, Donald Trump’s former chief of staff, told the New York Times that he believes his former boss meets the definition of “fascist”.NEW: In an interview with The New York Times — the audio of which we have published online — former White House chief of staff John Kelly answers the question of whether he thinks Trump is a fascist. https://t.co/RrSdanoNKz— Michael S. Schmidt (@nytmike) October 22, 2024Kelly, a retired Marine general who was Trump’s longest-serving chief of staff, has publicly condemned the former president over his contempt for wounded and killed soldiers. In a new interview with the Times, Kelly was asked whether he considered Trump a fascist. Kelly responded:
Looking at the definition of fascism: It’s a far-right authoritarian, ultranationalist political ideology and movement characterized by a dictatorial leader, centralized autocracy, militarism, forcible suppression of opposition, belief in a natural social hierarchy … Certainly, in my experience, those are the kinds of things that he thinks would work better in terms of running America.
Certainly the former president is in the far-right area, he’s certainly an authoritarian, admires people who are dictators – he has said that. So he certainly falls into the general definition of fascist, for sure.
Kelly said Trump “prefers the dictator approach to government”.Kelly also confirmed past reports that Trump privately made admiring comments about Hitler: “He commented more than once that, ‘You know, Hitler did some good things, too.’”ShareUpdated at 03.01 CESTDonald Trump rallies in North CarolinaDonald Trump is now speaking at a rally in North Carolina, mocking Kamala Harris, Joe Biden, Tim Walz and other Democrats.“We’re close to a nuclear war, and we don’t know who the hell is running our country,” the former president said, before an audience member shouted: “Obama!” Trump continued: “Obama, that’s another beauty. Obama, he did great, didn’t he? He did great, if you like a divided country. He was a great, he was fabulous. Obama, he was a real beauty. But under the Trump administration, we’re going to take back what is ours.”Trump in North Carolina. Photograph: Carlos Barría/ReutersShareUpdated at 01.45 CESTJoe Biden on Donald Trump: ‘We gotta lock him up … politically’Speaking at a Democratic campaign office in New Hampshire, Joe Biden outlined the threat posed by a second Donald Trump term:“He is talking about doing away with the entire Department of Education. He means it, this is not a joke. This is a guy who also wants to replace every civil servant, every single one, [who] thinks he has a version of the supreme court ruling on immunity to be able … to actually eliminate, physically eliminate, shoot, kill someone who is, he believes, to be the threat to him. I know this sounds bizarre. It sounds like, if I said this five years ago, you’d lock me up. We got to lock him up – politically lock him up.”The president paused after he echoed the “lock him up” chants of Trump critics, and then added “politically”.Biden in NH lists what Trump would do as president and says: “we gotta lock him up” and then, appearing to realize how his comments would be taken, adds: “politically, lock him up.” pic.twitter.com/cw3X8RzKn2— Alex Thompson (@AlexThomp) October 22, 2024When Kamala Harris supporters have shouted “lock him up”, she has generally not encouraged the chants and said the courts will handle his criminal cases. “Here’s the thing about that. The courts are going to take care of that,” the vice-president recently said at a rally.Trump has falsely claimed that Biden was behind his prosecution and conviction in his New York hush-money case and has repeatedly blamed Democrats for his various criminal cases.ShareUpdated at 01.44 CESTKamala Harris talks Trump pardon and Elon Musk in new interviewIn her NBC interview, Hallie Jackson asked Kamala Harris whether she would consider pardoning Donald Trump if she were elected, citing the argument some have made that clemency would “help unify the country and move on”. The vice-president responded:
I’m not going to get into those hypotheticals, I’m focused on the next 14 days … Let me tell you what’s gonna help us move on: I get elected president of the United States.
Harris also said the Democrats “have the resources and the expertise” in the case of Trump trying to subvert the election or declare early victory. She added:
This is a person, Donald Trump, who tried to undo the free and fair election, who still denies the will of the people, who incited a violent mob to attack the United States Capitol, and some 140 law enforcement officers were attacked. Some were killed. This is a very serious matter.
Asked about Elon Musk’s pledge to give away $1m to random voters as he campaigns for Trump, Harris said:
I’m not about doing gimmicks and all of that. I think that what we have to do, and what I’m going to continue to do, is to be out in the communities.
ShareUpdated at 01.25 CESTJD Vance campaigns in ArizonaRachel LeingangTwo weeks out from election day, JD Vance told supporters at a rally in swing state Arizona that they need to pull their friends to the polls because the race could go either way.“Here’s the scenario that I want you to consider, and I don’t mean to give you nightmare fuel here, but I’m going to do it,” Vance said to the crowd in Peoria, Arizona. “We wake up on November the sixth, and Kamala Harris is barely elected president of the United States by a 700-vote margin in the state of Arizona. Think about that. And ask yourself what you can do from now until then to make sure it doesn’t happen.”JD Vance in Peoria, Arizona. Photograph: Ross D Franklin/APVance visited Arizona on Tuesday, stopping in Peoria, part of the suburban metro around Phoenix, and is scheduled to stop in Tucson, in southern Arizona, later in the day. Donald Trump plans to rally in the state on Thursday. Democrats have a host of campaign surrogates, including former president Bill Clinton and current president Joe Biden, on the schedule this week in the final stretch before 5 November .ShareUpdated at 00.40 CESTKamala Harris to NBC: reproductive rights ‘cannot be negotiable’Kamala Harris has done an interview with NBC’s Hallie Jackson, as part of her ongoing media blitz. The interview is airing in full at 6.30 ET, but here are some initial highlights.Jackson asked which concessions could be on the table on reproductive rights, such as religious exemptions. Harris responded: “I don’t think we should be making concessions when we’re talking about a fundamental freedom to make decisions about your own body.” She declined to entertain hypotheticals about possible compromises with Republicans, saying: “A basic freedom has been taken from the women of America, the freedom to make decisions about their own body. And that cannot be negotiable.”Harris also said she is not concerned with sexism impacting the race:
My challenge is the challenge of making sure I can talk with 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 gender or their race, instead that that leader needs to earn the vote based on substance.
Asked if the “country is ready for a woman and a woman of color to be president”, Harris responded: “Absolutely … Part of what is important in this election is really not only turning the page, but closing the page and the chapter on an era that suggests that Americans are divided.”ShareUpdated at 00.40 CESTEdward HelmoreScrutiny is growing about the Montana aerial firefighting company once led by Tim Sheehy, the former Navy Seal and Republican Senate candidate who could oust the Democrat incumbent Jon Tester in next month’s election.According to NBC News, Sheehy’s Bridger Aerospace, a company he founded in 2013, negotiated a deal with Gallatin county in eastern Montana to use its pristine credit rating to raise $160m in bonds. The county was meant to benefit from Bridger’s plans to hire more workers and build two new aircraft hangers.But the company used most of the money, or $134m, from the 2022 bond issue to pay back previous investment from Blackstone, a New York-based investment giant.Bridger’s finances have been complicated by the fact that there were fewer wildfires to fight this year and thus less revenue for Bridger. As of Tuesday, the National Interagency Fire Center reported 42,603 wildfires nationwide this year compared with the 10-year average of 48,689 for the same period.In financial filings for the quarterly period that ended 30 June 2024, Bridger said it had “a substantial amount of debt” and that failure to service that debt “could prolong the substantial doubt about our ability to continue as a going concern”.A victory for Sheehy in November could hand Republicans control of the Senate, making his connections to Bridger a vital topic as voters head to the polls.ShareUpdated at 00.05 CESTToday so farElection day is exactly two weeks away, and today has been a frenzy of campaign activity.

Eminem reportedly will introduce Barack Obama when he appears in Detroit tonight, and Bruce Springsteen will headline two concerts as part of a series that will hit every swing state.

Obama also campaigned with Tim Walz in Wisconsin.

JD Vance dodged a question about whether he would strip immigrants with legal authorization of their status, at an event in Arizona.

Donald Trump will be in North Carolina, where Walz is holding a second event this evening.

Trump held a roundtable with Latino leaders but took his time in getting to issues of importance to the voting bloc.

Harris will campaign in Houston on Friday, with an eye towards picking up Texas’s Senate seat and highlighting how abortion bans have affected women in the Republican bastion.

The US economy is poised for stronger growth than many wealthy nations, the International Monetary Fund said in forecasts released today.
ShareUpdated at 00.04 CESTMeanwhile, in New Hampshire, Joe Biden appeared alongside Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders to discuss his administration’s work on lowering prescription drug prices.But the president also took a chance to issue a warning that Trump and Vance were extreme. “This is not your father’s Republican party,” Biden said, referencing Strom Thurmond, the late senator from South Carolina who famously conducted the longest speaking filibuster in opposition to the Civil Rights Act of 1957. Thurmond later moderated his stance.“People change, but these guys just keep getting worse,” Biden said of the party now. “Get to the vote. Because the nation’s democracy depends on it.”He shared an embrace with Sanders.ShareUpdated at 00.03 CESTRachel LeingangAt an early voting pop-up location at the University of Minnesota, hundreds of students waited in line to cast ballots on Tuesday – a sign of youth enthusiasm for the presidential election.The early voting location at the campus’ Weisman Art Museum, a one-day on-campus polling place for any Minneapolis voter, was a first-time occasion made possible by recent changes in state law to allow for pop-up polling places to help voters who can be harder to reach, like college students.“We brought the polls to them,” said Riley Hetland, a sophomore and undergraduate student government civic engagement director who helped plan the event. Hetland said the group has been going to classrooms and hosting tables around campus for weeks to get people registered to vote and help them make a plan to cast ballots. So far, they have gotten 12,000 voters to pledge to vote, double their goal of 6,000.Madelyn Ekstrand finished her class for the day and waited about an hour, all told, to cast her ballot. The 21-year-old senior said abortion access and climate change were important to her, so she was voting for Harris. She thought she’d vote early to get it done, but didn’t realize how popular the choice would be – she was glad it was so busy.“I’m happy to see people my age getting out and voting and being proactive and not waiting till the last second,” she said.ShareGeorgia’s supreme court has rejected a Republican effort reinstate last-minute election rule changesThe ruling upholds another order by a Fulton county judge, who invalidated last-minute rules made by Georgia’s state election board this year.The rules, which were approved by Trump-aligned members of the board, would have required all ballots to be counted by hand on election night – a feat that would probably yield results that are far less accurate than a count done by ballot scanners. The changes would also have allowed officials investigate discrepancies in vote totals and conduct “reasonable inquiries” into irregularities, without clarifying what such an inquiry entailed.The unanimous ruling by the conservative-majority supreme court did not touch on the legality of the seven rules – rather, it dismissed a request to hold a decision issued by a lower-court judge.ShareUpdated at 22.52 CEST