Donald Trump told supporters Monday he is "not a Nazi," using a rally in the final week of a bitter White House race to push back on accusations of authoritarianism, including from a former chief of staff who branded him a fascist.
As he and rival Kamala Harris entered the final stretch of one of the closest US presidential elections in modern times, each candidate and their teams have ramped up the political rhetoric, bringing an already simmering campaign to a boil.
Democrat Harris, who has accused Trump of stoking divisions, was crisscrossing Michigan on Monday while Republican Trump headed to Georgia, another of the decisive swing states, where he said critics are accusing him of being a modern-day "Hitler."
"The newest line from Kamala and her campaign is that everyone who isn't voting for her is a Nazi," Trump told a boisterous rally in Atlanta.
"I'm not a Nazi. I'm the opposite of a Nazi."
The comments come a day after Trump held a mega-rally in New York's famed Madison Square Garden that was widely condemned for racist remarks that his allies made during the event.
They also follow recent publication of a New York Times interview in which Trump's longest-serving White House chief of staff, retired general John Kelly, said the Republican fits the definition of a fascist -- something Harris said she agreed with in a live CNN event last week.
Kelly also told the paper that Trump had remarked that "Hitler did some good things too" and that instead of the US military, he "wanted generals like Adolf Hitler had."
Tensions are soaring in a race that polls suggest is too close to call, fueled by fears that former president Trump could again refuse to recognize a defeat, as in 2020, and by his harsh rhetoric threatening migrants and political opponents.
Concerns increased after a fire reportedly consumed hundreds of early ballots cast in a supposedly secure drop-off box in a highly competitive district in northwestern Washington state. Arson was reportedly suspected in another ballot box fire hours earlier in Portland, Oregon.
And Trump has faced renewed outrage after one of the warm-up speakers at his huge Sunday rally in New York's Madison Square Garden called US territory Puerto Rico "a floating island of garbage."
- 'Dividing our country' -
"Last night, Donald Trump's event in Madison Square Garden really highlighted a point that I've been making throughout this campaign," Harris told reporters as she headed for Michigan on Air Force Two.
"He is focused and actually fixated on his grievances, on himself, and on dividing our country. And it is not in any way something that will strengthen the American family, the American worker."
The former president's campaign said the comments on Puerto Rico did "not reflect the views of President Trump."
Residents of the island cannot vote in presidential elections, but those within the United States proper -- which includes about 450,000 Puerto Ricans in crucial battleground Pennsylvania -- can.
Trump used Sunday's event -- likened by Democrats to an infamous 1939 rally of American fascists in the same venue -- to lash out on familiar topics including undocumented migrants and domestic opponents whom he again branded the "enemy from within."
And in Atlanta, he reprised his attacks on Harris, calling her a "hater."
"Get out and vote," he told Monday's crowd. "With your help, eight days from now we're going to defeat Kamala. You know she's not a nice person."
More than 47 million Americans have already cast ballots in early voting -- including outgoing Democratic President Joe Biden, who voted Monday after waiting in line near his hometown of Wilmington, Delaware.
- Swing state battle -
As the clock ticks down, the challenge for Harris and Trump is both to energize core supporters and pull in the tiny number of persuadable voters who might still tip the balance -- especially in the seven swing states where polls have them running neck-and-neck.
Harris held three events Monday in Michigan, while Trump hosted two in Georgia -- a pattern set to be repeated across the country's other battlegrounds for the next week.
At her first event Harris stopped at a semiconductor factory, reflecting the Democrat's need to appeal to blue-collar voters and promise recovery in America's post-industrial "Rust Belt."
On Tuesday in Washington, Harris will deliver what her campaign calls a "closing argument" from the same spot near the White House where then-president Trump stoked his supporters on January 6, 2021, to launch a violent assault on the US Capitol.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
