Live: Harris campaigns in Philadelphia as Trump supporters gather for New York rally

Inside Madison Square Garden, retired wrestler Hulk Hogan is doing some crowd work.

He’s just finished speaking and is using his walk-off music to hit some impromptu classic bodybuilding poses.

Dr Phil host Phil McGraw is up next and arrives on stage to cheers and applause.

It was a long, cold wait for the thousands of Trump supporters who came to New York to attend the Madison Square Garden rally.

Some will go home disappointed.

Supporters were admitted in batches to control the crowds, but in the late afternoon an announcement was made that the venue, which holds around 20-thousand people, had reached capacity.

Some supporters have been allowed into a pen directly in front of MSG, where they can watch the event on a huge screen.

Others wandered off, clearly frustrated not to have made the cut.

Registered nurse Catherine Bernardone has driven down from Massachussets to attend the New York rally and she’s pretty excited at the prospect of seeing Donald Trump for the first time.

She says this event is the “most important” of the campaign.

Because we got to get everybody excited and and ready to go for the big election next week.

Trump has suggested he could win New York state in next week’s election.

Polls would suggest that’s very unlikely, but Catherine Bernardone says she wouldn’t rule it out either.

I think there’s more Republicans in New York than we think. Same in Massachusetts, they’re more red than you think.

Political commentator and Fox News host Tucker Carlson is now on stage at Madison Square Garden.

He tells the crowd Democrats have “no idea” why half of the country’s voters like Donald Trump. 

“Their first theory was, ‘Well, Donald Trump is evil, so half the country is evil also’,” he says.

“How much easier would it have been to just pause for 20 minutes and ask yourself honestly in some silent place, ‘Why do people like Donald Trump?’

“And if they had been honest enough to ask themselves that question, they would’ve come up with the two main reasons.

“The first reason that people like Donald Trump is because he likes them.”

He says the second reason is because Trump “has liberated us from the obligation to tell lies”.

Up now at Donald Trump’s New York rally is Robert F Kennedy Jr. 

He’s told the crowd about a conversation he and Trump after the former president was shot.

“He said to me, ‘There are some things we can agree on and some we disagree on, but the landscapes on which we agree are so much larger’.”

“Don’t you think we deserve a president in this country who’s going to restore the moral authority of the United States of America?” he said.

“Don’t you think we deserve a president who’s going to end the warfare estate and rebuild the middle class?

“Don’t you want a president who’s going to put America first?”

The politician and environmental lawyer started out on the campaign trail as a rival to Trump, but ultimately dropped out of the race to endorse the former president.

Trump is making gains with young men as the election approaches and has been actively courting their support.

We spoke to a couple of young men heading into the Madison Square Garden rally about what they like about the Republican presidential candidate.

Alex Kiel, a 24 year-old engineer, said he likes the fact that Trump talks a lot about taking on the establishment.

He’s also just hilarious, so that that catches a lot of young people on, I think that’s the appeal.

I was curious if Alex had heard Trump’s recent eyebrow raising remarks about a dead golfer’s penis.

He had, and said he wouldn’t have said those things himself, but they didn’t trouble him.

He throws a few wild cards in there once in a while, so it didn’t really shock me.

Kamala Harris has appealed to young and first-time voters at her Philadelphia rally.

“Is Gen Z in the house? Who’s voting for the first time in their first election?” she asked. 

Cheers and applause erupted through the crowd.

“Alright! Now, here’s the thing thing I love about you young leaders: you are rightly impatient for change, you are rightly impatient. 

“You have only known the climate crisis, you are leaders in what we need to do to protect our planet.

“You who grew up with active shooter drills, you know what we have to do to fight for safety in our schools.

“You who right now know fewer rights than your mothers and grandmothers understand the importance of fighting for the right of a woman to make decisions about her own body and not have her government telling her what to do.

“I see you because I see your power. You are here because you know your power and I am so proud of you. Everyone, let us applaud our young leaders, our first-time voters.”

Donald Trump has become estranged from New York in recent years.

The city where he made his name as a real estate mogul and reality tv star has become the city where he has faced criminal and civil trials.

New York is also a heavily Democratic state, but Donald Trump has his supporters here and they turned out today in large numbers for him.

Many left disappointed in the end after Madison Square Garden reached capacity.

The venue can hold just under 20-thousand people.

Kamala Harris paused her speech at a rally in Philadelphia soon after she took the stage to call for medical assistance for someone in the crowd.

“That’s what we do: we look out for each other,” she said on stage.

Shortly after, she launched into her speech.

“We are all in this together, and we are all here together, because we also understand how high the stakes are at this very moment, Philly.

“We have nine days. Nine days.”

A speaker at Donald Trump’s rally in New York has referred to Puerto Rico as a “floating island of garbage”.

Comedian Tony Hinchcliffe was the first to speak at the event with a stand-up routine full of lewd jokes and racist stereotypes.

“I don’t know if you guys know this, but there’s literally a floating island of garbage in the middle of the ocean right now,” he said.

“I think it’s called Puerto Rico.”

The comment was immediately picked up by the Democratic campaign, which has been competing with Trump to win over Puerto Rican communities in Pennsylvania and other swing states.

At the time, vice-presidential candidate Tim Walz was live-streaming with representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

Here’s how they reacted.

Reporting with AP

It’s less than an hour until Donald Trump is expected to take the stage at his Madison Square Garden rally.

We’re currently hearing from former New York City mayor and Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani. 

“Like me, President Trump grew up here,” he began.

“He’s a New Yorker. That’s why some people get a little annoyed at him: he speaks his mind.”

Giuliani has faced a slate of legal troubles in recent years, including a criminal indictment in Georgia for spreading false claims of election fraud in the 2020 election.

Other speakers at today’s rally have included America First Policy Institute president Brooke Rollins, comedian Kill Tony and 10X CEO Grant Cardone. 

Earlier, Kamala Harris told a church congregation in Philadelphia that the US was “determined to turn to the page on hatred and division”.

The vice-president is today campaigning “neighbourhood-to-neighbourhood” in the swing state.

In her remarks to the predominately Black audience at the Church of Christian Compassion, Harris drew on the story of the Apostle Paul.

“In hard times when we may grow weary in doing good, we must remember the power that works within us, the divine power that transformed Paul’s life, guided him through shipwreck and sustained him through trials,” she said.

After the service, she told reporters Philadelphia is a “very important part of our path to victory”.

“It’s the reason I have been spending time here.

“But I’m feeling very optimistic about the enthusiasm.”

Reporting with AP

New polling has found Australians and New Zealanders would overwhelmingly support Vice President Kamala Harris if they were eligible to vote in the US election.

But as Q&A and RN Breakfast host Patricia Karvelas writes, there is a clear gender divide.

You can read more here.

Good morning and welcome to our live coverage of the 2024 US presidential election.

With just over a week until Americans head to the polls, Vice-President Kamala Harris and Donald Trump are making their final pitches to voters.

Harris is currently campaigning “neighbourhood-to-neighbourhood” in Philadelphia ahead of a rally later today.

Meanwhile, Trump supporters have begun gathering at Madison Square Garden in New York, where he will speak later.

Follow along here for the latest updates.