Trump says 'suburban women are being attacked by migrants'

FDonald Trump has been consistently wooing male voters for months. Its media strategy focuses on bro-themed podcasts, and its field operation aims to target men who are unregistered or rarely vote. But three days before the election, the former president returned to a state he had won twice to make an explicit appeal for race-baiting to the opposite sex.

“I will protect women,” Trump told a crowd in Gastonia, North Carolina. He made no reference to one of the most important issues of this election: reproductive rights. In fact, Trump didn't mention the word “abortion” once in his 90-minute speech. Rather, he was referring to his plan to close the southern border and deport more than 11 million illegal migrants. “Suburban women are under attack,” Trump said. “If they don't get me, millions of people are going to come through the suburbs.” He then paused the rally to play a three-minute video in which a woman shares the harrowing account of her teenage daughter being kidnapped and strangled by illegal immigrants had entered the country.

Trump blamed the tragedy on his rival, Vice President Kamala Harris, who he falsely claimed was the Biden administration official in charge of immigration and the border; Her actual task was to investigate the causes of migration from Central America. The diatribe culminated in one of the loudest applause of the event – as Trump vowed to impose the death penalty on murderous migrants. “I hereby call for the death penalty for all illegal migrants who kill Americans or law enforcement officers,” he said.

According to several of his top advisers, Trump is trying to mitigate his most glaring vulnerability by making draconian immigration policies his main appeal to female voters in the final days of the election. A recent POLITICO analysis found that women have far outpaced men in early voting in battleground states, including North Carolina. That could be costly for Trump: Multiple polls — including the campaign's internal poll — have shown that women there prefer Harris by nearly 10 points. Trump may be particularly vulnerable among female voters in the Tar Heel State, where he defeated Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson's run for governor, even after CNN reported that Robinson had made lewd and racist comments on a pornographic website. Any migration could have consequences. The current one Thirty-five Average polls in North Carolina have Trump holding a slim one-point lead over Harris.

Fear-mongering wasn't the only Trump tactic at the Gastonia rally. On the runway at a small regional airport, Trump tried to echo President Joe Biden's gaffe earlier this week, seemingly calling his supporters “trash.” Many of the MAGA faithful wore the slur as a badge of honor. Several people came with garbage bags. “That’s what they want to call us,” said one of them, Jeff Miller, a truck driver from Gastonia. “We're going to go ahead and entertain this.”Terry Pinningtom, a retired construction worker from Hickman, hid in a trash can marked “NC Garbage for Trump.”

Trump tapped into the crowd's sense of dispossession, fear and resentment. He compared Biden's comment to Hillary Clinton's now infamous line from the 2016 campaign, in which she called half of Trump's supporters a “basket of deplorables.” The result, Trump's advisers tell TIME, is that it could mobilize the base, some of whom are not regular voters, in the eleventh hour of the election. On stage, Trump seemed to bask in it. “Garbage is much worse than deplorable,” he said with a grin.

While Trump expressed confidence in his campaign's chances, he spread unfounded claims of voter fraud by amorphous forces – an indication that he is laying the groundwork for the election to be stolen if he loses. “They want to cheat,” he said. “They're cheating like hell.” It's a message that even Trump's most trusted advisers have warned against, as it encourages his supporters to doubt the system and, in some cases, to abstain from voting altogether. But Trump couldn't contain himself, his advisers say, and instead tried to pre-empt that response. “The only way to stop the lies is to flood them with your voice,” he said Saturday.

Several participants braced for the possibility of Trump's defeat. Some of them were already anticipating how Trump would react if Harris won. “I think he should call on all his supporters to stand up,” Penningtom said. “Don’t get me wrong. I'm not asking them to go out and kill people in the streets. But if the evidence proves Trump is the president, the people who supported Trump shouldn't obey anyone but Trump.” Others say Trump should do what he didn't do last time and concede gracefully. “We have to accept it,” said Janice Pelonero, who lives just a stone’s throw from the rally. “What else are you going to do?”

It's unlikely Trump sees it the same way. But it's a problem he's trying to avoid as he spends the next two days climbing swing states. Aides say he will continue to try to appeal to suburban women by focusing on immigration as well as the economy and crime, while sticking to his campaign's theory that men under 40 are key to his return to the White House. Some in Trump's inner circle have warned him that it is a risky bet with obvious caveats. But Trump has moved forward. He confirmed the strategy on Saturday, suggesting that his marathon of sycophantic, frat-like podcast interviews could bring him back to power. “If Kamala can’t handle an interview with Joe Rogan,” Trump said, “then she can’t handle the presidency.”