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00:00With the hours ticking away to Election Day in the US, both candidates are pushing their
00:09closing messages.
00:10Donald Trump campaigned in three different battleground states on Sunday, Pennsylvania,
00:15North Carolina and Georgia.
00:17The Republican repeated promises to carry out more oil drilling, suggested his opponents
00:22were already committing election fraud, and made a comment about journalists being shot,
00:27which his team later sought to play down.
00:30Kamala Harris, meanwhile, set her focus on Michigan, and for her final rally of the day,
00:34she made a pitch to the state's significant Arab-American community, pledging to do everything
00:40in her power to end the war in Gaza if elected president.
00:43Let's take a listen to the candidates.
00:46I have a piece of glass over here, and I don't have a piece of glass there, and I have a
00:57piece of glass here, but all we have really over here is the fake news, right?
01:09And to get me, somebody would have to shoot through the fake news, and I don't mind that
01:19so much.
01:20I don't mind.
01:21Here we are on the Sunday before the election, and I would ask, in particular, people who
01:29have not yet voted to not fall for his tactic, which I think includes suggesting to people
01:38that if they vote, their vote won't matter, suggesting to people that somehow the integrity
01:43of our voting system is not intact, so that they don't vote.
01:49Well, let's get some more analysis on the US presidential race now.
01:53For that, we can bring in Dr Christopher Featherstone, who's an Associate Lecturer at the University
01:58of York's Department of Politics and International Relations.
02:01Thank you very much for speaking to France 24.
02:05Thank you very much for having me.
02:06You have a focus on US foreign policy, so let's start off with some of the big topics
02:11that divide the candidates in this area.
02:13First of all, the war in Gaza.
02:15The Biden administration's handling of the war means that many Democrats could maybe
02:20not vote to vote for Trump or the Greens candidate.
02:23How significant a role is this issue playing in the vote?
02:27Well, I think this is a knife-edge election, and actually, we need to acknowledge this
02:32when we make any claim about foreign policy or any typical issue that might arise in a
02:38US election, and this time is no different.
02:41I would say that this is one of those issues where it will divide certain communities far
02:47more than it would for other groups.
02:50So I would say that this election, the Arab-American, the Muslim-American vote is so important,
02:58given that it is such a knife-edge election, that the Democrat campaign will not want any
03:03vote splitting at all.
03:05So we can definitely see that this is an issue that would be very important, and actually
03:10this is an issue that Harris has not really addressed all that competently previously.
03:14So actually, this is quite a refreshing move from a Democrat for Democratic voters.
03:20I think that this would probably speak to a group who feel an issue has been underrepresented
03:25in the election campaign so far.
03:27So it's a big one.
03:29Whether it's too little too late, I'm not sure, but it's certainly a very significant issue.
03:35When it comes to Trump, Trump has referred to telling Netanyahu to do whatever he needs
03:41to do, and therefore he's unlikely to get much support from the Muslim-American and
03:48the Arab-American vote.
03:51But Trump has also said that, along with the war in Ukraine, he would end the war in Gaza.
03:56What implications for Washington's relationship with Israel would that have?
04:04Well, the Biden administration has had an incredibly strong relationship with Israel.
04:09Biden is famously known for being incredibly pro-Israel, whereas Trump has a strong relationship
04:15with the Israeli state and with Netanyahu, but in a much less deep way, a much less enduring
04:23way.
04:24So there is a strong relationship there.
04:25Trump famously recognized Jerusalem as the capital, and therefore we can see that there
04:30probably would be a strong relationship with Israel.
04:33Unfortunately, on the other side, we would have a huge amount of controversy surrounding
04:38a lot of his proposed solutions.
04:41His proposed solution to the war in Ukraine is to negotiate without Ukraine being involved.
04:46So it might have a way of addressing the crisis, a way of trying to bring peace, but it would
04:52also exclude some key actors from involvement.
04:56So I think that it would have quite a detrimental impact on certain relationships and certain
05:01allies as well.
05:03And do you think Trump's promise to end the war in Ukraine, he said in a matter of hours,
05:08in fact, do you think that's achievable?
05:10And on the democratic side, in general, Harris had said that she would cut her own path away
05:16from the Biden administration.
05:19But on this issue of Ukraine and NATO, is it fairly predictable what she might pursue
05:24if she was elected?
05:27I would say, yes, it is relatively predictable what we might expect from Harris.
05:33But that is largely because we don't really know anything else.
05:36She hasn't really said what she would do, just that she would walk her own path.
05:41Well, that's fine.
05:42But we need to know what that might be.
05:44And Harris has been deliberately coy about referring to that, I would say.
05:48When it comes to Trump, I think the idea that he could end the war in Ukraine in hours is
05:53incredibly optimistic and at the same time incredibly unlikely.
05:57I think it's possible that we might see some bold comments from Trump in the first initial
06:03hours of becoming president.
06:05It's fairly typical for Trump to say some quite wild things.
06:08I would be shocked if it had any real impact on Putin and the war, unfortunately.
06:15Right. And Donald Trump has floated plans for tariffs on Chinese imports.
06:20But will China-U.S. relations remain strained no matter who's in the White House?
06:25Yes, I would say so.
06:27It is an issue that is likely to endure for years to come.
06:31So the Biden administration has maintained a lot of the tariffs that were already in
06:35place when they entered office.
06:37And I don't see Trump as likely to move any of those down or remove any of them.
06:43I think when it comes to U.S.-China relations, it is likely that China would have a more
06:48stable competition and more stable relationship with a Biden or a Harris administration than
06:55a Trump administration.
06:57But then you could also argue that Trump might be able to keep them destabilised and keep
07:00that relationship in a more nuanced manner because China would have to be trying to predict
07:07a rather unpredictable man in terms of foreign policy.
07:10All right, Dr. Christopher Featherstone, thank you very much for your analysis.
07:14We'll have to leave it there.
07:15Thank you very much.
07:17We'll, of course, be bringing you the U.S. election results as they come in.
07:20With plenty of analysis, you can check out our special programme from 6pm GMT on France24.
07:27That's 7pm Paris time and 1pm in Washington.