US election 2024: Biden sparks row with 'garbage' comment after Harris' big speech

In the second episode of US Elections Explained, Euronews politics editor Stefan Grobe looks into the dynamics of voter turnout and how it could affect the final result come election night.

This morning, Walz avoided directly addressing whether there should be restrictions on third-trimester abortions, instead emphasising that he and Harris are focused on restoring Roe v. Wade in an interview with CBS.

“We want the restoration of Roe, and that's the position we're taking,” and stressed that decisions about abortion should prioritise the health of the mother.

Walz criticised Trump’s policies, saying they led to "women having miscarriages in parking lots."

Trump was responsible for employing three Supreme Court judges that overturned Roe v. Wade, which allowed individual states to ban abortion.

Abortion is one of the priority issues for voters in the election, particularly women. It is also the one main issue that the Harris campaign has consistently led on over its Republican rivals and a key focus point for the Democrat campaign.

Hollywood superstar and former Republican governor has come out endorsing Harris, according to a post on X today.

"We need to close the door on this chapter of American history, and I know that former President Trump won’t do that," Schwarzenegger wrote. "He will divide, he will insult, he will find new ways to be more un-American than he already has been, and we, the people, will get nothing but more anger."



Last night, Trump brought out an interesting description of the European Union.

"I'll tell you what, the European Union sounds so nice, so lovely, right? All the nice European little countries that get together," Trump said during a rally the city of Allentown in Pennsylvania.

His comments came after he warned the European Union would be paying "a big price" for not buying enough American exports if he made it to the White House.

"They don't take our cars. They don't take our farm products. They sell millions and millions of cars in the United States. No, no, no, they are going to have to pay a big price," he said.

Trump has previously vowed to impose a 10% tariff on imports from all countries, a policy that would likely impact supply chains across the world.

Read our report on how Trump's proposal for the "Trump reciprocal trade act" would impact Europe:

Trump says ‘lovely’ EU will have to pay a ‘big price’ to trade in US

Donald Trump, the Republican US presidential candidate, said at a campaign event on Tuesday night that the EU will have to pay “a big price” if he wins the ele…

Did you know European corporations have indirectly funnelled around $14.3 million (€13.2 million) in funds towards US electoral campaigns during the current voting cycle?

Foreign companies are technically barred from directly contributing to US electoral campaigns, but this can be easily bypassed.

Read our feature to find out more:

How European firms indirectly invest millions in US elections

Pressure groups, known as PACs, with European ties are pouring money into US electoral campaigns. #EuroVerify

Police in Florida arrested 18-year-old Caleb James Williams on Tuesday after he allegedly waved an 18-inch machete at two women, aged 71 and 54, outside a polling station according to NBC News.

Williams was part of a group accused of intimidating Democrat supporters while waving signs supporting former President Donald Trump. 

Police charged him with aggravated assault and unlawful display of a weapon. 

“This goes way beyond expressing freedom of speech – to say your piece is First Amendment-protected right but that goes out the window the moment you raise a machete over your head in a threatening manner,” the local Police Chief Micheal Key said.

There have been other incidents of violence during this election campaign, such as when hundreds of ballots were destroyed on Tuesday after a ballot box was set ablaze in Washington. 

North Carolina is crazy close. After going for Trump in the previous two elections, it’s now in play for Harris and the Democrats.

While FiveThirtyEight’s model has Trump up by exactly 1 point in the Tar Heel State, Elon University, based the state, released their October poll yesterday showing a 46-46 tie. 

Both candidates will largely be sticking to their final week messaging in their respective North Carolina visits. Harris has been pushing a final week message of “unity” while Trump has stuck to the main policy topics that got him here: immigration, inflation and Harris being more of the same.

In North Carolina, however, we should expect Trump to push one other key message: the government failed the state with hurricane Helene. 

Per that Elon poll, 20% said they are more likely to vote because of Helene. 

According to the poll, while 68% of Democrat voters said the Federal and state government and their agencies did a good/very good job handling Helene (with another 20% saying the job was “adequate”) Republicans and Independents feel differently. 58% of Republicans said the government did a poor/very poor job. Independents are split more evenly, but most thought it was a poor job by the government (45%) compared to a good job (40%). 

This is crucial for two reasons. Firstly, the hurricane caused massive devastation in many parts of the state, especially in parts of the state that are not as accustomed to hurricane devastation (the inlands and mountain regions, as opposed to the coast, that is regularly hit by them).

Secondly, Harris as sitting vice president has a direct connection to the job of the federal government in helping out victims of natural disasters. FEMA, the federal agency in charge of emergency response, took flack for claiming to not have enough funding. Republicans pounced on it accusing FEMA (and it’s oversight department Homeland Security) of spending those resources on migrant housing.

Although this claim has been debunked, its impact on voters is yet to be seen.

Hurricane-ravaged North Carolina will see both Harris and Trump today.

The key battleground state has a population of 10.8 million people and has been Republican since 1980 with one exception: it turned blue for Obama in 2008.

Polls suggest that Trump is in the lead with one percentage point that is subject to a margin of error, leaving the results effectively tied.

Early voters have come out in droves, with the state breaking early-voting records.

It is so far unclear how hurricane Helene, which caused huge damage to the state and killed 98 people, will impact the presidential race aside from damaged voting sites.

One theory is that residents might be less likely to vote as they pick up the pieces of their homes following the hurricane. This has, however, been disproven by strong early voting numbers in recent weeks.

Trump is likely to continue criticism of the current government's hurricane response. He has previously claimed the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the government's arm for dealing with hurricanes, spent money that was supposed to go on disaster relief on migrants instead — a theory that has been widely debunked.

"In all probability, the winner of the state will win the election," said US think tank Brookings.

They were talking about Pennsylvania: a state in the country's east that has the most, 19, electoral college votes out of all the key battleground states.

Both sides have campaigned hard in the state, with Trump's near-assassination attempt in the city of Butler becoming one of the most enduring moments of the entire election cycle.

In 2020, Biden won the election after narrowly winning the state, which happened to also be the state he was born in. In 2016, Pennsylvania voted for Trump after he made big gains outside the major metropolitan areas.

Before that, it was Democrat for thirty years.

“If we win Pennsylvania, we win the whole thing,” Trump said at a rally in Pennsylvania last month. “It’s very simple.”

Harris and Trump have to convince Pennsylvanians that they can handle the economy, which is a key issue here. Under the Biden administration, residents have suffered cost-of-living pressures as a result of inflation.

The race is set to be tense and likely unpredictable. A FiveThirtyEight poll shows Trump is winning by 0.2 points in Pennsylvania, which is the country's most polled state in the entire election cycle.

Trump used yesterday to give a speech from his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida. He called his highly controversial rally in Madison Square Garden on Sunday a "love fest."

What else did he say?

Trump said his presidency will see the US seize assets of "criminal gangs and drug cartels" and use them to compensate victims of what he calls "migrant crime."

He also called the government agency that responds to hurricanes, Fema, a "total disaster" — a claim he is likely set to repeat as he campaigns for hurricane ravaged North Carolina this week.

What are the presidential campaigns doing in the final stretch? Boyd Wagner gives his top five priorities for the campaigns as they navigate the final week of the election.

Then, we look at the latest news and notes from the campaign trail as the candidates make their final pitch for America. 

Is this the weirdest, wildest presidential campaign in US history? A president who lost the vote for his back-to-back mandate is back for a rematch, while the incumbent's re-election campaign was brought to a halt because of a bad debate.

US election 2024: The latest from the US presidential campaign trail

Boyd Wagner is Euronews US politics analyst and head of polling. In his video series on the US election, he explores the latest news from the campaigns, what t…

Harris will be holding rallies in North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.

Trump will be pitching to voters in North Carolina and later Wisconsin.

North Carolina is a swing state that has voted Republican for over a decade, albeit with razor-thin margins.

Democrats hope the state could turn blue, especially after Hurricane Helene which saw the western part of the state struck with flooding damage.

Trump downplayed comments by comedian Tony Hinchcliffe at his rally on Sunday where he referred to Puerto Rico as a "floating island of garbage."

“Somebody said some bad things. Now, what they've done is taken somebody that has nothing to do with the party, has nothing to do with us, said something and they try to make a big deal,” Trump said. “I can’t imagine it’s a big deal” Trump said during an interview with Fox News.

Donald Trump's Truth Social is now worth more than Elon Musk's X platform thanks to a recent run-up in shared.

Trump Media & Technology Group (TMTG) is now valued at over $10 billion after its shares more than quadrupled since late September. Meanwhile, X Holdings is valued at around $9.4 billion, based on the most recent value the investment group Fidelity assigned to its stake in the company formerly known as Twitter.

TMTG was created after Trump was banned from Twitter and Facebook after the Capitol riots of 2021. Although he owns about 57% of the company, he doesn't have a role in its day-to-day running.

Both Musk and Trump, who is back on X, are highly vocal about the Republican campaign on the platform. Musk has used increasingly violent rhetoric and imagery to promote Trump and his policies, as well as attack Democrats.

Last night, Trump dropped a Latin-inspired two minute long song featuring boats and people waving Trump flags on X with seemingly no context.

But what is the song?

The band are Cuban and are called Los 3 de La Habana, and both they and the song are not new.

In February, the band and the song, which is called the "Trump song" and has a Spanish-language version, were invited to play at the former president's mansion in Mar-a-Lago.

It was first released in October 2020 when Trump was fighting the presidential race against Joe Biden. After it went viral, resonating with voters in Florida in particular, Trump uploaded a portion of the song on his YouTube channel with the phrase "Thank you."

Trump has previously used music to target voters. His last-minute efforts to try and target Spanish-speaking voters comes after he faced controversy over racist comments made by a comedian about Puerto Rico at a rally on Sunday.

The Republican party have tried to turn the controversy around to target Democrats after Joe Biden seemingly called Trump supporters "garbage."

As Republicans and Democrats bicker about garbage, two women have been removed from a British Airways flight at Heathrow airport in the UK after fight broke out reportedly over a Make American Great Again (Maga) hat.

Witnesses say the incident occurred on Sunday with the two women were on a flight bound for Texas. One took offence at the other's Maga hat and asked that it be removed.

Punches were reportedly exchanged with the two women escorted from the aircraft by police, according to local media.

The flight took off without the two women on board.

In a statement, British Airways said, "We apologised to our customers for the delay and got them on the way as quickly as possible.”

Republicans have seized Joe Biden's comments, that supporters of the Republican party were "garbage", as an opportunity to criticise Harris and Biden.

Trump's running mate took to X to say, "Kamala Harris and her boss Joe Biden are attacking half of the country."

In another emotive post Vance said, "A mother mourning her son who died of a fentanyl overdose is not garbage. A truck driver who can't afford rising diesel prices is not garbage" referring to Trump supporters.

Biden and the White House have insisted he was talking about one specific Trump supporter -- the comedian Tony Hinchcliffe who started the "garbage" debate at a Trump rally on Sunday.

It seems, however, that the word "garbage" won't go away that easily.

Last night Harris gave a key speech. Here's a sample of what she said:

Anti-Trump Harris mentioned Trump over 20 times in her speech, which was around 30 minutes long, calling him, "unstable, obsessed with revenge, consumed with grievance and out for unchecked power.”

Freedom vs chaos Harris told people the election was "probably the most important vote you will ever cast" and that US voters had the chance to "write the next chapter in the most extraordinary story ever told" as she framed the vote a choice between freedom with her or chaos with her rival, Trump.

Economy When she moved to her policies Harris told people she understood living pressures, saying the biggest challenge now was to "lower costs."

Abortion rights The Vice President repeated her pledge to restore protections for abortion access, saying people had a "fundamental freedom" to be able to make decisions about their own bodies.

Watch a snippet of her speech below:

The word "garbage" has dominated the campaign's final week, and now current President Joe Biden has weighed in, risking bringing the controversy away from the Republicans towards the Democrats.

If you are just joining us now, "garbage" was first used by comedian Tony Hinchcliffe at a Trump rally on Sunday when he referred to the island of Puerto Rico as a "floating island of garbage."

His comments were slammed by Puerto Ricans in the US and abroad, creating a headache for the Trump campaign who sought to distance themselves from the remarks.

Now, Biden has triggered a row with the Republican party after he called Trump's supporters "garbage."

“The only garbage I see floating out there is his supporters... his, his demonisation of Latinos is unconscionable" Biden said on a Zoom event shortly after Harris' speech.

Republicans say that Biden was referring to all Trump supporters, but the White House insists he was referring to the comedian specifically -- "supporter's" not "supporters" according to a transcript they provided as the backlash from Republicans grew.

Biden took to X to explain himself but not before Trump jumped in — accusing the president of "running a campaign of hate."

Of Harris he wrote on his website, Truth Social: "She has spent all week comparing her political opponents to the most evil mass murderers in history. Now, on top of everything, Joe Biden calls our supporters 'garbage'."

Kamala Harris delivered a speech at the grassy Ellipse in Washington DC last night, hoping the symbolic spot where Donald Trump held a rally before his supporters stormed the Capitol would draw a positive contrast between her and her political rival.

What did Harris say in her hotly anticipated speech?

Kamala Harris delivers closing campaign pitch in Washington DC

The vice president spoke at the Ellipse in Washington DC, the same site where Donald Trump told his supporters to ‘fight like hell’ shortly before the 2021 Cap…