The Democratic presidential nominee, Vice President Kamala Harris, greets the Republican presidential nominee, former President Donald Trump, as they joined other officials at Ground Zero on Sept. 11, 2024, honoring the lives of those lost in the terror attacks on the World Trade Center in New York City. The handshake came the day after a fiery debate between the candidates. (Photo by Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — The presidential race between Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump intensified in the days following their first, and likely only, debate, as both hit swing states with just over 50 days until the election.

The Harris campaign rode a wave of momentum to the week’s end, cutting ads featuring debate clips and kicking off an “aggressive” blitz of battleground states that it dubbed the “New Way Forward” tour.

Trump and Republican Party officials meanwhile filed what they described as “election integrity” lawsuits this week targeting voter registration and absentee ballots in Nevada and Michigan.

While numerous polls showed Harris outperformed the former president at Tuesday’s debate, Trump continued to tout his performance at a press conference Friday and chastised a reporter for suggesting some Republicans thought he gave a poor showing.

“We’ve gotten great praise for the debate,” he said, adding “You know, look, you come from Fox (News), you shouldn’t play the same game as everybody else.”

He has refused to debate Harris again.

Trump repeats lies about migrants

Trump spoke for roughly an hour and took a dozen questions at the Trump National Golf Course in Los Angeles where he promised, if elected, “to start with Springfield and Aurora” when he carries out the “largest deportation in the history of our country.”

Trump has repeated baseless rumors that Venezuelan gangs overtook an apartment building in Aurora, Colorado. In an unforgettable moment during Tuesday’s debate he claimed Haitian migrants are eating domesticated pets in Springfield, Ohio — a lie that circulated among the right on social media, including from his running mate, Ohio’s junior U.S. Sen. J.D. Vance.

Hundreds of thousands of Haitians live in the U.S. legally under temporary protected status after the nearby Caribbean nation was rocked by a violent government collapse this spring.

When asked by a reporter Friday if he felt any concern for the Ohio community that has been thrust into the national spotlight and is now the target of bomb threats, Trump said no.

“The real threat is what’s happening at our borders,” he snapped back.

Trump also lobbed similar attacks at a Thursday night rally in Tucson, Arizona, describing a small western Pennsylvania town of Charleroi as “not so beautiful now” because Haitian migrants moved in.

In reality, Charleroi has suffered population loss and blight for decades following the collapse of the steel industry in the 1980s.

Harris campaigns in North Carolina, Pennsylvania

Prior to the debate, a national New York Times/Siena poll showed Trump with a slight edge over Harris.

“We are the underdog, let’s be clear about that,” Harris told a roaring crowd in Greensboro, North Carolina Thursday night. “And so we have hard work ahead of us, but we like hard work.”

Harris held back-to-back campaign rallies Thursday night in North Carolina’s Raleigh and Greensboro that together drew 25,000, according to campaign figures.

The vice president headed to the battleground state of Pennsylvania Friday, where she first visited Classic Elements, a bookshop and cafe in the ruby-red Johnstown area before a nighttime rally in Wilkes-Barre.

The commonwealth’s junior U.S. Sen. John Fetterman and wife Gisele accompanied Harris to the small business, where she told about a dozen patrons, “You’ve created a space that is a safe space, where people are welcome and know that they’re encouraged to be with each other and feel a sense of belonging,” according to reporters traveling with her.

“I will be continuing to travel around the state to make sure that I’m listening as much as we are talking,” Harris said. “And ultimately I feel very strongly that you’ve got to earn every vote and that means spending time with folks in the communities where they live. And so that’s why I’m here and we’re going to be spending a lot more time in Pennsylvania.”

Harris garnered the coveted endorsement from mega pop star and Pennsylvania native Taylor Swift immediately after the debate.

Both Trump and Harris at 9/11 ceremony

By week’s end the vice president added to her list of Republican endorsements, when the Bush-era Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez announced his support. Gonzalez, who served under former president George W. Bush, wrote Thursday in Politico that Trump poses “perhaps the most serious threat to the rule of law in a generation.”

Tuesday’s debate was immediately followed by the 23rd anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Harris joined President Joe Biden at multiple ceremonies.

Trump also attended events in New York City and Shanksville, Pennsylvania, accompanied by far-right activist and 9/11 conspiracy theorist Laura Loomer. He defended her at his press conference Friday, calling her a “free spirit.”

Several Republicans have criticized Loomer in recent days.

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