WASHINGTON -- President Donald Trump and former President Barack Obama exchanged tough words Friday as they sought to rally their parties' base voters in the final days before the midterm elections.
Obama urged Democrats in Miami to turn against "a politics based on division" and expressed hope that "we will cut through the lies, block out the noise and remember who we are called to be." Trump said in West Virginia that he watched Obama's speech aboard Air Force One, reminding some of his most loyal supporters of what he called Obama's broken promises on health care, the freedom of the press and global trade.
The competing campaign rallies, including Friday evening events in Georgia and Indiana, set the stage for weekend campaign events for both party heavyweights.
Trump covets the Senate seats held by Democrats Joe Donnelly of Indiana and Joe Manchin of West Virginia, two states that the president won handily in 2016. Democrats, meanwhile, could make history by electing black governors in Florida and Georgia, and are turning to the nation's first black president to help make their case.
Trump will head to Montana and Florida today and Georgia and Tennessee on Sunday. Obama will return to the trail Sunday, headlining rallies for Donnelly in Gary, Ind., and in his hometown of Chicago for J.B. Pritzker, who is running for Illinois governor.
In Miami, Obama said democracy can't work when words stop having meaning, encouraging a crowd of about 3,000 to vote for Democratic gubernatorial candidate Andrew Gillum and Sen. Bill Nelson.
Obama said voters shouldn't be bamboozled by misinformation while Republicans allow polluters to poison the environment, give tax cuts to billionaires and take health care away from millions.
Trump quickly fired back at his White House predecessor, saying the former president didn't keep his promises to voters.
Trump said that Obama's assertion that "if you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor" under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act proved false. Some Americans were forced to change providers or health plans under the law.
Trump also said "nobody was worse to the press than Obama," after Obama spoke in defense of the First Amendment. "He's talking about how I should be nice to the fake news," Trump said. "No, thank you!"
Trump received the type of jobs report that any president would envy heading into the final days before the midterm elections.
The October economic data released Friday packed a wallop, finding that U.S. employers added 250,000 jobs during the past month and unemployment remained at a five-decade low of 3.7 percent. More people entered the labor force and wages made their biggest gains since 2009.
Yet it landed at the end of a week in which the president has made immigration and border security the paramount issue for Republicans in the midterms, warning without offering evidence that a caravan of migrants is preparing an "invasion" of the U.S. southern border.
Trump called the economic numbers "incredible" on Twitter, but it raised the question of whether the president will pivot back to the economy -- an approach favored by embattled House Republicans -- or keep up his drumbeat on immigration before the election.
Meanwhile, campaign ads are sending conflicting messages.
There's the Republican candidate arguing that his Democratic opponent won't stand up to Trump. An ad by the party aligned with the fossil fuel industry tells voters that a candidate of the party that's antagonistic to coal is weak on climate change. And a Democrat promises to back tougher immigration enforcement.
Republican Rep. Kevin Yoder of Kansas, a loyal supporter of White House policies who's at risk of losing his seat in the Kansas City area, recently suggested his Democratic opponent, Sharice Davids, may not "actually stand up to President Trump," the Kansas City Star reported.
His evidence: Davids held an apolitical fellowship at the Department of Transportation granted under Obama and which extended into the Trump administration.
In a competitive South Florida district now represented by two-term Republican Rep. Carlos Curbelo, the National Republican Congressional Committee is running a TV ad accusing Democrat Debbie Mucarsel-Powell's campaign of being "flooded with dirty coal money, the very polluters that threaten our way of life in the Keys."
The committee is the election arm of House Republicans, who have backed Trump's moves to bolster the coal industry by rolling back environmental regulations.
In Missouri, Democratic Sen. Claire McCaskill wants voters to know she's "100 percent" supportive of Trump's efforts to crack down on a migrant caravan making its way to the U.S. from Central America, ostensibly to apply for asylum. "I do not want our borders overrun. And I support the president's efforts to make sure they're not," McCaskill said in a recent interview on Fox News.
The Trump-friendly rhetoric raised eyebrows among Republicans given that McCaskill voted against a Trump-backed immigration bill in February and has criticized his immigration policies. It comes as McCaskill is running against Trump-endorsed Republican Josh Hawley in a state that the president carried by 19 points in 2016.
"The attempted role reversals in this campaign are just bonkers," said Jack Pitney, a professor of government at Claremont McKenna College in Southern California. "Kind of like Bonnie and Clyde portraying themselves as champions of bank security."
Information for this article was contributed by Ken Thomas and Ellis Rua of The Associated Press; and by Sahil Kapur of Bloomberg News.
A Section on 11/03/2018