Not sure whether US polls will be peaceful: Biden

President Joe Biden Friday said he was not confident the US election in November would be peaceful, citing incendiary comments by Republican contender Donald Trump, who still rejects his 2020 defeat.
Biden’s warning came with lawmakers and analysts voicing concern over increasingly bellicose campaign language ahead of the vote.
Trump — who survived an assassination bid in July and another apparent plot in September — alleged widespread fraud after his defeat to Biden, and pro-Trump rioters riled up by his false claims ransacked the US Capitol.
“I’m confident it will be free and fair. I don’t know whether it will be peaceful,” Biden told reporters as he discussed the election.
“The things that Trump has said and the things that he said last time out when he didn’t like the outcome of the election were very dangerous.”
Trump was impeached in 2021 for inciting the insurrection after hundreds of his supporters — exhorted by the defeated Republican to “fight like hell” — battered police as they smashed windows at the Capitol and broke through doors.
He has been indicted over what prosecutors allege was a “private criminal effort” to subvert the election that culminated in the violence.
Trump — who is due to return to the venue of his first assassination bid in Butler, Pennsylvania on Saturday — has long been assailed over his violent rhetoric.
Biden made his comments during what was the first appearance of his presidency in the White House briefing room, where he touted his administration’s achievements as his vice president, Kamala Harris, battles Trump.
Harris and Trump meanwhile were barnstorming the battleground states that are likely to decide who wins the White House.
Trump campaigned Friday in North Carolina, where he reprised his claims of 2020 voter fraud: “We should get elected, but remember this, they cheat like hell,” he said.
He also visited neighboring Georgia, a swing state narrowly claimed by Biden four years ago but won by Trump in 2016 — and one of the biggest prizes of the 2024 election map.
Donald Trump will make a defiant return Saturday to the small town in Pennsylvania where an assassin tried to shoot him dead during a rally attended by thousands of supporters.
The former president will appear alongside JD Vance, his running mate in the November election, as well as family members of those hurt in the July 13 attack, first responders and tech billionaire Elon Musk.
Trump, 78, was charged by state prosecutors with racketeering, in a case that is on pause and expected to start up again after the election. He denies wrongdoing.
Harris, who is neck-and-neck with Trump in all seven swing states, rallied Friday in Michigan — a union stronghold that epitomised the US manufacturing decline of the 1980s.
The Democratic contender accused Trump of jeopardizing Michigan auto jobs.
Later, in the city of Flint, she branded Trump “one of the biggest losers of manufacturing jobs in American history.”
In Flint, Michigan, Harris met with Arab American and Muslim leaders as her presidential campaign seeks to win back voters angry at US support for Israel’s wars in Gaza and Lebanon.
The meeting is one of several attempts in recent days to mend fences with Muslim and Arab voters, who resoundingly backed Democrat Joe Biden in 2020 but could withhold their votes from Harris in numbers that would cost her the key state of Michigan.
During the half-hour meeting, Harris expressed her concern on the scale of suffering in Gaza, civilian casualties and displacement in Lebanon and discussed efforts to end the war, according to a campaign official. She also discussed efforts to prevent a regional war, the official added.
Flint is a majority Black city where a 2010s scandal over lead-tainted water highlighted government mismanagement and the disproportionate damage to poor and non-white communities.