NORTH CAROLINA, United States (AFP) — Kamala Harris on Wednesday was forced to distance herself from comments by President Joe Biden that appeared to label Donald Trump supporters “garbage”, as the US election entered its final week.

Harris travelled to North Carolina and onward to Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, focusing again on three of seven battleground states that could determine who wins the closest election in modern US history.

Trump was also in North Carolina on Wednesday — in the town of Rocky Mount, about an hour’s drive from Harris’s Raleigh rally — and then headed to Wisconsin to appear alongside US sports star Brett Favre.

More than 57 million have already cast their ballots via early or mail-in voting, more than 35 per cent of the total votes cast in the 2020 election.

Trump is expected to reject the election result if he loses, and the Republican is already seizing on isolated irregularities caught by election officials to amplify his claims of widespread “cheating”.

On Wednesday, Harris had hoped to be basking in the afterglow of a speech attended by tens of thousands outside the White House, where the Democrat warned her rival was unstable and itching for unbridled power.

Instead, she was fending off questions about Biden’s apparent gaffe when the president reacted to a warm-up speaker at a Trump rally who refered to the island of Puerto Rico as “a floating island of garbage” in an off-colour joke that risked alienating Latino voters.

“The only garbage I see floating out there is his supporters,” Biden said, before the White House sought to clarify that he was referring to Trump’s rhetoric, not to his supporters.

“Let me be clear, I strongly disagree with any criticism of people based on who they vote for,” said Harris, Biden’s vice-president.

At his Rocky Mount rally, Trump said Biden had “finally said what he and Kamala really think of our supporters.”

“My response to Joe and Kamala is very simple: you can’t lead America if you don’t love Americans,” he said, adding that Harris and Biden were “low-lifes.”

In North Carolina, Harris hammered home her campaign’s message to “turn the page” on former president Trump, leading the crowd in chants of “we are not going back!”

“This is someone who is unstable, obsessed with revenge, consumed with grievance and out for unchecked power,” said Harris, echoing her speech outside the White House the night before.

There, Harris had spoken at the very spot where Trump stirred up a mob that went on to attack the US Capitol on January 6, 2021 in a violent attempt to keep him in power even though he lost the 2020 election to Biden.

But the vice president also gave an optimistic vision of the United States’ future, with the White House lit up behind her.

Harris has pushed for the votes of undecided moderates, and in Raleigh she contrasted her leadership with Trump, who has repeatedly called political opponents “the enemy within”.

“I don’t believe people who disagree with me are the enemy,” she said. “He wants to put them in jail, I’ll give them a seat at the table.”

During her Pennsylvania campaign event, Harris was interrupted by a protester, with the crowd quickly shouting them down.

“Everybody has a right to be heard, but right now I am speaking,” said Harris.

On Wednesday, Trump took to social media to repeat his claims of voter fraud, appearing to set the stage for a repeat performance around the unfounded claim that his 2020 loss to Biden was rigged.

He denounced what he said was “cheating” at “large-scale levels never seen before” in the key battleground state of Pennsylvania.

At his North Carolina rally, Trump again cast doubt on the fairness of voting machines and called for a return to paper ballots.

He also referred to Harris as a “simpleton”, “corrupt,” “grossly incompetent” and “failed”.

His campaign on Wednesday made a fresh plea for campaign donations by referencing Biden’s comments.

But one person who will not be voting for Trump on November 5 will be actor and former Republican governor of California Arnold Schwarzenegger, who endorsed Harris.

“Rejecting the results of an election is as un-American as it gets,” he said of Trump.

Inflation and the economy have been key issues this election, and on Wednesday new data showed solid economic growth despite a slight slowdown.