Donald Trump spent his last Florida rally before the election focused on two targets: Hillary Clinton and rap music.
The Republican nominee trotted out familiar attacks on Clinton, seemingly unbowed by FBI director James Comey’s decision to clear her in the investigation of new emails unearthed from her private server on Sunday. “Hillary Clinton is the most corrupt person ever to seek the presidency,” he told a cheering crowd in Sarasota. “Lock her up,” the crowd chanted in response.
Comey’s letter to Congress a week and a half ago announcing that new emails had been found which may be pertinent in the investigation of the former secretary of state’s use of a private email server had been a surprise boost for Trump. But the FBI director’s attempt to put the issue to bed on Sunday came as a demoralizing blow for the Republican candidate’s idiosyncratic campaign.
On Monday, Trump called Comey’s decision “disgraceful” and said that as a result “our country is a laughing stock all over the world”.
“The system is rigged. The system is rigged,” he added. Those wanting to put Clinton in prison had to vote for him, Trump said. “Now it’s up to American people to deliver justice at the ballot box tomorrow,” he told the crowd.
The Republican nominee also warned darkly that if Clinton wins “the American people will lose big league. This is it. We will never have another opportunity, not in four years, not in eight years. With supreme court justices, with people pouring into our country, it will be over.”
Trump has expressed irritation over the past few days that the rap and R&B power couple Jay Z and Beyonce appeared at a concert with Clinton in Cleveland on Friday, and in Sarasota he poured scorn not only on the two pop stars but on hip-hop music itself.
“They were singing, singing right? Or was it talking or singing? I don’t know,” Trump said.
The Republican nominee, whose use of bad language dominated the media for weeks following the release of a tape from 2005 in which he boasted of grabbing women “by the pussy”, renewed his criticism of the stars’ lyrics.
“The language is so bad ... Isn’t it amazing that Jay Z and Beyonce used that filthy language in the song? If I ever used the words, it would be reinstitution of the electric chair,” he said.
Trump has long used crowd size as the most important metric of political success, and has seemed to resent Clinton for using celebrities as an added draw. “I don’t need Beyonce and I don’t need Jay Z,” he boasted to a cheering crowd in a late night rally in Denver on Saturday.
The stop in Sarasota was Trump’s first of a frantic day as he goes on a whirlwind schedule of swing states and other seemingly safe Democratic parts of the country in an attempt to pull off an underdog victory against Hillary Clinton, taking in Raleigh, North Carolina, Scranton, Pennsylvania, and Manchester, New Hampshire, before ending the day with a late-night rally in Grand Rapids, Michigan, just before polls open on Tuesday.
Although polls have narrowed in recent weeks, Clinton still has a strong advantage on the electoral map and Trump has widened his focus in the past week in hopes of pulling off an upset in at least one Democratic-leaning state.
The Republican nominee ended Saturday and Sunday with late night rallies in Colorado and Virginia respectively. The two were considered swing states at the beginning of the cycle, but they have come to strongly favor the former secretary of state in recent months.
His campaign likely needs wins in Florida, North Carolina and Ohio to have any path to victory, and it has expanded to seemingly unlikely targets in recent days. Trump held a rally in Minnesota on Sunday, a state which has not voted for a Republican presidential candidate in 1972, and he is now making repeated visits to Michigan, a Democratic leaning state, in hopes of appealing to blue collar workers in the car manufacturing center.
The grueling schedule and long odds have seemingly energized Trump, who seemed to gain in strength this week as the days have dragged on. He mocked the traveling press at a midnight rally in Virginia on Sunday, saying “their cameras are drooping”, and in Sarasota on Monday mugged for the crowd with a Halloween mask of himself. “Nice head of hair, huh?” he said as he posed for pictures before tossing the mask back underhand into crowd. He then went on praise firemen, posing with a fire helmet on stage, and rhapsodized about “a beautiful beautiful baby” in the crowd, adding: “Good job, daddy.”
As Trump left the fairgrounds, which is also the home of Ringling Bros Barnum & Bailey Circus, two elephants, long the traditional symbol of the GOP, seemed to stand in salute with their front left legs extended. It was unclear if it was in tribute to Trump or in mourning for his flailing candidacy.
