'It's existential' Harris and Trump predict same bleak fate if rival wins

America is at a turning point, and the outcome of the election will have profound consequences for the country, according to both Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump.

- Chris Stein

Among the promises, falsehoods, insults and jokes, one line stood out in Donald Trump's speech to a Wisconsin arena six days before the presidential election: "November 5 will be the most important day in the history of our country."

Hyperbole? Undoubtedly, and the sort the former president has used repeatedly in the past months as he plots a return to the White House from which Joe Biden ousted him four years ago. Did it ring true to his supporters? For many, the answer was yes.

"We're screwed. Plain English, we're screwed," John Martin, a 72-year-old retiree, replied when asked what would happen if Trump lost at the ballot box tomorrow.

"We're going to become a third-world country," added Mary Watermolen, 55, as the couple left Trump's speech in Green Bay, Wisconsin, last Wednesday.

Two days earlier and hundreds of miles away, Kamala Harris, the vice-president and Trump's Democratic opponent, had used a similar framing of the election to the hundreds of people who had turned out to see her in a Michigan college town.

"I do believe Donald Trump to be an unserious man, but the consequences of him ever being president again are brutally serious," she said at a city park in Ann Arbor, Michigan. "So much is on the line in this election, and this is not 2016 or 2020. We can all see that Donald Trump is even more unstable and more unhinged, and now he wants unchecked power, and this time there will be no one there to stop him."