'Barnstorming' weekend in swing states: Biden and Obama kick off final push in Detroit while Trump does four rallies in Pennsylvania
President Trump, former Vice President Biden, and their respective camps are barnstorming across the United States this weekend in a last ditch effort to appeal to American voters for the upcoming election.
Former Vice President Joe Biden - with help from his old boss Barack Obama - is focusing on black voters in Michigan as the Democrat looks to head off a repeat of 2016 nominee Hillary Clinton's epic collapse in the state.
Biden and Obama held a pair of drive-in rallies Saturday in Flint and Detroit, predominantly black cities whose turnout will play a large factor in whether Biden turns the state back to the Democrats´ column.
Biden and Obama held a pair of drive-in rallies Saturday in Flint and Detroit
R&B legend Stevie Wonder is expected to perform in Detroit after Biden and Obama speak.
Biden's campaign announced it was sending Obama to Florida and Georgia on Monday. He is the campaign's most valuable asset to help energize the nonwhite voters Democrats so badly need to defeat Trump.
Trump is scheduled to attend four rallies in Pennsylvania over the weekend
'Joe Biden is my brother. I love Joe Biden, and he will be a great president,' Obama said Saturday.
The press for Michigan's black voters comes after voting was down roughly 15% in Flint and Detroit four years ago - a combined 48,000-plus votes in a state Trump carried by about 10,700 votes. Overall, the black voter turnout rate declined for the first time in 20 years in a presidential election, falling to 59.6 per cent in 2016 after reaching a record-high 66.6 per cent four years earlier, according to the Pew Research Center.
Trump isn't ceding Michigan to Biden. He visited Waterford Township, near Detroit, on Friday and held a rally in the state capital, Lansing, this past week, though the surging coronavirus cases are clouding his presidency.
Trump made an aggressive play for pivotal Pennsylvania, focusing largely on his white, working-class base. His first of four scheduled stops in Pennsylvania was in a small town in Bucks County on the eastern edge of the state.
Repeating what has become a consistent part of his closing message, Trump raised baseless concerns about election fraud, pointing specifically at Philadelphia, a city whose large African American population is key to Biden's fate in the state.
'Joe Biden is my brother. I love Joe Biden, and he will be a great president,' Obama said Saturday
Trump reacts to the crowd as he leaves following speaking at a campaign rally at Keith House, Washington's Headquarters
'They say you have to be very, very careful - what happens in Philadelphia,' Trump charged. 'Everybody has to watch.'
The president also railed against a recent Supreme Court ruling that will allow Pennsylvania to count mail ballots received as many as three days after polls close. He predicted 'bedlam' and 'many bad things' as the nation waits for a result.
Several studies, including one commissioned by Trump himself, have failed to uncover any significant examples of election fraud. Good-government advocacy groups are concerned that the president's repeated calls for his supporters to monitor the polls may lead to widespread voter intimidation.
With the campaign down to the final days, Trump's closing sprint includes, in addition to the four stops in Pennsylvania, nearly a dozen events in the final 48 hours across states he carried in 2016.
Biden will close out his campaign on Monday in Pennsylvania, the state where he was born and the one he´s visited more than any other. The Biden team announced that the candidate, his wife, Jill, running mate Kamala Harris, and her husband, Doug Emhoff, plan to 'fan out across all four corners of the state.'
The press for Michigan's Black voters comes after voting was down roughly 15% in Flint and Detroit four years ago - a combined 48,000-plus votes in a state Trump carried by about 10,700 votes