Obama and Trump Split Focus Between Ohio and Georgia in Final Push

Former President Barack Obama addressed a crowd in the Atlanta suburbs on Wednesday evening as President Donald Trump campaigned in Chillicothe, Ohio, less than 24 hours before the midterms.

The two leaders held events in different parts of the country to mobilize their respective bases for the upcoming elections scheduled for next week.

Trump has conducted over 20 rallies this month alone. He plans additional stops in South Carolina, Florida, Kansas, and Iowa in the coming days.

In Chillicothe, a city south of Columbus, Trump told a loud crowd that a high turnout would result in a tremendous victory for Republicans.

The president has focused his travel on states he won by large margins in the previous election. He visited Mississippi on Monday and Texas on Tuesday.

Trump also discussed legal actions involving the Alaska Senate race. He ordered the Department of Justice to file a preventive lawsuit against Democrat Mary Peltola if she wins.

The move follows reports that Peltola’s campaign sought to recruit a second candidate named Dan Sullivan, the same name as the incumbent Republican senator.

Speaking to reporters before boarding Air Force One, Trump urged Peltola to drop out and warned she could face a legal process. He called the situation a high-level electoral fraud and a Democratic conspiracy.

Peltola’s campaign issued a statement saying it has no relationship with either of the Sullivan campaigns.

In Georgia, Obama campaigned alongside Keisha Lance Bottoms, the former Atlanta mayor and a candidate for governor. He also spoke with Senator Jon Ossoff, who is running for reelection.

Ossoff criticized the president for using his office to benefit the Trump Organization. He described the situation in Washington and Mar-a-Lago as an unprecedented spectacle of fraud in U.S. history.

Ossoff added that there had never been so little effort to hide so much corruption. The White House said Trump ceded control of the family business to his sons upon returning to office. Obama criticized Trump for focusing on White House renovations and for enriching himself during his term. He said Trump was spending time gluing gold medallions onto the Oval Office fireplace mantel. Obama responded to recent comments he made about the White House decorations by saying the critics are not serious and lack solutions to real problems. He noted that he lived in Chuck E. Cheese, California Pizza Kitchen, and Cheesecake Factory during a previous decade. Trump interrupted his speech in Chillicothe after a protester shouted about Jeffrey Epstein. Trump said he kicked Epstein out of Mar-a-Lago decades earlier. He then praised the physical appearance of Ohio Senator Jon Husted. Trump is hoping to help Husted defeat former Democratic Senator Sherrod Brown. The president repeated his claim of winning the 2020 presidential election three times. He criticized Obama for not understanding cleaning or stone facades. In Michigan, Democrat Abdul El-Sayed campaigned in Wyandotte near Detroit. He said opponents want to point at him and his name to distract voters. El-Sayed stated that Michigan residents have an open mindset and care more about why people pray than how they pray. Republicans have argued El-Sayed is antisemitic. Senator Ted Cruz campaigned with Republican Mike Rogers in Birmingham, Michigan. Cruz called antisemitism a poison destroying the country and said the Democratic Party is being taken over by self-proclaimed communists and Islamists. Several voters who identified as lifelong Democrats said they voted Republican for the first time due to El-Sayed’s comments from last year. Those comments linked a synagogue attack in a Detroit suburb to Israel’s actions in the Middle East. El-Sayed apologized for the remarks and has since denounced antisemitism. This issue was a key point in the Democratic primary between El-Sayed and Representative Haley Stevens. Stevens defeated her rival by a narrow margin. Stevens supports her former opponent, but her fiancé Jason Turkish told The Detroit News on Wednesday that he plans to support Rogers because he believes El-Sayed is antisemitic.