Donald Trump began rushing through four Maga rallies in three battleground states – delivering a dark and dystopian speech about the “migrant invasion” of killers and drug dealers – as Kamala Harris put all her last chips on Pennsylvania during a frantic final day of campaigning from both candidates.

With polls showing the battle essentially deadlocked between two starkly different political views, both the ex-president and vice president tried to make their message clear on Monday. While early voting has already broken records across the country, there’s still everything to play for to lure undecided and disengaged voters to the polls on Election Day.

Trump started in Raleigh, North Carolina, where he went to a sports arena Monday morning to deliver what is likely one of his last speeches as a presidential candidate. In a 90-minute speech dominated by his virulent stance on immigration, he announced that, if elected, he would impose a new set of tariffs on Mexico unless doing so would stop the passage of undocumented migrants across the southern border .

He threatened Claudia Sheinbaum, the new Mexican president, that he would impose tariffs on all Mexican goods entering the US. “I’m going to inform her on day one or sooner that if they don’t stop this onslaught of criminals and drugs coming into our country, I’m immediately going to impose a 25% tariff on everything they send in.” USA, he said.

In an impressive display of endurance for a 78-year-old, Trump was scheduled to hold four rallies by the end of the final day of the campaign. After Raleigh, he will address two successive rallies on Pennsylvania’s all-important battlefield, in Reading and Pittsburgh.

He will conclude his conversation with American voters with a late night event in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

In contrast to Trump’s three-state dashboard, Harris put all her last chips on Pennsylvania. She will start in Scranton, a mocking location to start the final day since it is the hometown of Joe Biden from whom she has carefully tried to distance herself in recent days.

She will then appear in Allenstown and Pittsburgh before culminating her unexpected bid for the White House in Philadelphia. Her final words will be delivered from the legendary steps of the Museum of Art, immortalized by Sylvester Stallone in the 1976 film Rocky, where she will be joined by a host of celebrities, including Lady Gaga and Oprah Winfrey.

In the final hours of the race, Trump showed signs of wear and tear. His voice is hoarse, he looks tired, and his energy level is relatively low.

“The vote is barely holding up,” he told the crowd in Raleigh.

Trump spent much of his speech in Raleigh deviating from his written remarks and engaging in long verbal ramblings, which he called his “weave” and claimed was a sign of his “genius.” His wanderings included the anti-climb panels he ordered to build his border wall, his wife Melania Trump’s bestselling book, Elon Musk’s rocket launches, the grass growing on NASA runways before he came along, and air conditioning and steam baths for dogs.

Trump denigrated leading Democrats, starting with his presidential rival. He called Harris “low IQ” and who, in a bizarre riff, imagined herself “turning, tossing, sweating” in her sleep.

He also called former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi “as crazy as a bedbug,” Barack Obama the “great divider,” and said he was waiting for a “backlash” against former first lady Michelle Obama after she criticized him.

But the thrust of his closing argument focused on immigration, and the supposed 21 million unauthorized migrants — “many of them murderers” — who he claimed were allowed into the U.S. by the Biden administration. Even for a presidential candidate who has focused his campaign on anti-immigrant rhetoric, his closing remarks were appalling.

‘They kill people. They kill people whenever they want,” he said, providing gruesome details about specific killings committed by undocumented migrants. “They just come into our country and kill people.”

Trump’s stop in Raleigh marked his final appearance in North Carolina, a critical battleground state he must win if he wants a clear shot at returning to the White House. Although Democrats have won the presidential race here only twice since Jimmy Carter in 1976 (the other time was Barack Obama in 2008), Harris is running neck-and-neck against Trump.

The Guardian poll shows Trump with just a one-point lead – well within the margin of error.

Like the rest of the country, North Carolinians have voted early in historic numbers. More than four million people have already cast their ballots, substantially more than in 2020 and 2016, with the party lineup split roughly evenly between Republicans, Democrats and unaffiliated voters.

As part of his latest effort to secure victory on Election Day, Trump repeated the lie that the Biden administration and the federal disaster agency Fema had done nothing to help affected families in western North Carolina after Hurricane Helene . Even that untruth was related to immigration.

“Fema has done a terrible job,” Trump said. ‘The administration, they’re still not there. Do you know why? Because they spent all their money bringing in murderers, they spent all their money bringing in illegal immigrants.”

In fact, Fema’s budget for housing undocumented migrants is limited and does not impact the agency’s work in responding to disasters. Fema is funneling millions of dollars in federal money to the hurricane-affected area.

Read more about the Guardian’s 2024 US election coverage