Washington (AFP) – Taking a sledgehammer to Donald Trump’s Walk of Fame star, 69 candles for Hillary Clinton — and two seriously mismatched political duels: here is a rundown of offbeats from the campaign trail as the White House race hits its fevered final stretch.
– Happy Birthday, Hillz! –
Hillary Clinton has had the hardest time whipping up passion on the campaign trail — but you wouldn’t know it from the rapturous welcome the Democrat received in Florida on her 69th birthday.
Arriving for a rally at Palm Beach State College on Wednesday, Clinton was greeted by a cheering crowd of around 400, waving flags and balloons and half-singing, half-yelling “Happy Birthday.”
Drowned out by the deafening noise, a beaming Clinton — who hits the last two weeks of the race with a lead over her Republican rival Trump — mouthed “thank you” to the crowd.
The previous evening, Clinton was sung “Happy Birthday” by a singer and Mexican back-up band — during a stint on a Spanish-language TV show — before being presented with a four-tier cake with a replica White House on top.
“What gets better than this?” asked Clinton — who later stole a few moments off the trail to take in a pre-birthday concert by pop icon Adele.
– Sledgehammer meets star –
Trump’s star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame has been having a rough time.
It has been smeared with excrement, daubed with a swastika and in July a street artist erected a tiny barbed-wire-topped wall around it — in a critique of Trump’s vow to build a wall on the Mexican border.
In the latest affront, the star was vandalized Wednesday with a sledgehammer and pickaxe — by a man who said he wanted to auction it for the benefit of women allegedly mistreated by the real estate mogul.
The vandal, who identified himself as James Lambert Otis, walked up to the star before dawn dressed in construction overalls and began hacking away at the gold lettering displaying Trump’s name.
Otis said he originally intended to remove the entire star from the sidewalk — but was unable to lift the paving slab.
“It was very difficult. The stone was like marble — hard to get through,” he said.
His plan was apparently to auction it and donate the proceeds to women who claim they were groped or sexually mistreated by Trump — charges the Republican denies.
– ‘Mr Tough Guy’ –
For Vice President Joe Biden, sexual assault is no joking matter.
At a recent campaign stop for Clinton, Biden hit out hard at Trump over a 2005 video of him bragging about groping women with impunity — saying he wished he could “take him behind the gym” to knock sense into him.
Trump declared himself ready and eager to rise to the challenge at a rally Tuesday night.
“Did you see Biden wants to take me to the back of the barn?” he told supporters.
“Ohhhh,” Trump said with mock fear. “Some things in life you can really love doing.”
“You know when he’s Mr Tough Guy? When he’s standing behind a microphone by himself,” he taunted.
Biden — who has been vocal on the issue of sexual violence — had called out Trump for boasting of what amounted to “a textbook definition of sexual assault.”
Asked if he wished he could debate the Republican nominee, he replied: “I wish we were in high school. I could take him behind the gym. That’s what I wish.”
– Kelly vs the Trump gang –
Trump publicly buried the hatchet in his long-running feud with Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly with a face-to-face interview in May.
But on Wednesday, one of his campaign surrogates — former House speaker Newt Gingrich — took it up again with a vengeance, accusing Kelly of being sex-obsessed in an exchange that went viral.
Complaining about the media attention given to the stream of allegations of sexual misconduct facing Trump, Gingrich charged: “You are fascinated with sex and you don’t care about public policy.”
An astonished Kelly retorted: “Me? Really?”
“You know what Mr. Speaker, I’m not fascinated by sex, but I am fascinated by the protection of women and understanding what we’re getting in the Oval Office and I think the American voters would like to know…”
Gingrich interrupted Kelly repeatedly as she defended her network’s impartiality, before giving him the iciest of sendoffs:
“We’re going to have to leave it at that and you can take your anger issues and spend some time working on them, Mr. Speaker.”
Trump seemed to feel his ally came out well from the exchange.
“Congratulations, Newt, on last night,” he said in Washington before a crowd at his new hotel, including Gingrich. “That was an amazing interview. We don’t play games, Newt. We don’t play games.”
Trump’s own standoff with Kelly began in August last year when the businessman — unhappy with her line of questioning during the previous day’s primary debate — uttered the now-infamous words: “You could see there was blood coming out of her eyes. Blood coming out of her wherever.”
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