After boasting about the economy and raising fears over immigration, US President Donald Trump is facing pushback from his predecessor Barack Obama, who is taking on an increasingly prominent role in the final weekend of campaigning before midterm elections in which Republican control of Congress is threatened.
With rallies taking place in Montana and Florida, a state he had already visited on Wednesday, Trump is keeping up his relentless campaign schedule before Tuesday’s ballot, which has become a referendum on his utterly unconventional presidency.
The campaigning comes one week after a gunman, who allegedly hated immigrants and Jews, killed 11 people at a synagogue in Pittsburgh, and after a fanatical Trump supporter was arrested in Florida on charges of mailing homemade bombs to more than a dozen Trump opponents, including Obama.
At a moment of deep national division, with the political temperature soaring, the president’s critics say he has helped create an atmosphere in which the two attackers felt comfortable to carry out their crimes.
“A Republican Congress means more jobs and less crime. A Democratic Congress means more crime and less jobs, very simple. I like that. Nothing like simplicity,” Trump told supporters in Belgrade, Montana.
Trump says his Republicans are in a good position ahead of the midterm congressional elections, particularly with new employment figures out showing the economy booming.
But polls point to the Democrats capturing at least the House of Representatives, threatening the billionaire president with the specter of an opposition finally able to block policies and dig into his highly opaque personal finances.
In the last stages of the campaign, Trump is dueling with Obama, who returned to the public eye at a Florida rally on Friday.
Obama is set to campaign again Sunday in his adopted hometown of Chicago, as well as in Indiana, where the seat of Democratic Senator Joe Donnelly is in danger.