Democrats take their fight to the heart of the US military establishment on Wednesday by deploying the father of a Muslim war hero to campaign against Donald Trump.
Khizr Khan, whose speech at the party’s convention in June came at the high-water mark in Trump’s poll ratings, will speak to veterans in Norfolk, Virginia, home of the world’s largest naval base and some 150,000 military workers.
Trump shocked many Republicans earlier this year by initially attacking the sincerity of the parents of army captain Humayun Khan, who died saving his unit from an Iraqi suicide bomb, after they criticised his proposed ban on Muslims entering the US.
But Captain Khan’s father is returning to haunt the campaign, and launching a new television advert, in which he again challenges the celebrity property developer: “Would my son have a place in your America?” It could further drive a wedge into remaining Republican support among military families after a disastrous few weeks that has seen the party’s presidential campaign pull out of states like Virginia.
Despite plummeting poll numbers, Trump meanwhile will be taking time off from the campaign trail to attend the grand opening of his new hotel in Washington DC, joined by his family members for an official ribbon-cutting ceremony on Wednesday.
Just yards from the White House, the glitzy venue has been struggling to attract business since its soft launch last month amid signs of a commercial boycott against Trump’s divisive campaign.
The juxtaposition of events also highlights the growing advantage of surrogates and endorsements for Clinton, who has seen powerful interventions in recent days by leading female supporters such as Elizabeth Warren and Michelle Obama.
The Democratic nominee, who turns 69 on Wednesday, celebrated her birthday a day early with a fundraiser at which she was serenaded by Stevie Wonder. She announced on Tuesday that Jay Z will be performing a get-out-the-vote concert for her in Cleveland, one of a number of high-profile performers who have jumped aboard her bandwagon, including Katy Perry, Miley Cyrus, Jon Bon Jovi and the National.
Former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani, one of the few prominent Republicans still appearing regularly to endorse Trump, promised the campaign was planning a change of strategy in the remaining 13 days before the election.
Asked on Fox News if there was anything other than rallies, he promised: “We’ve got a couple of surprises left … Surprises in the way we’re gonna campaign to get our message out there, maybe in a little bit of a different way.”
Giuliani continued to seize on internal campaign emails published by WikiLeaks, claiming they showed Democrats were “unethical” and using “dirty tricks” to try to disrupt Trump rallies. A Wall Street Journal report revealing campaign donations to the wife of an FBI official who subsequently went on to have a role in the investigation into Clinton’s private email server was also citied.
Peter Thiel, a controversial Silicon Valley investor who helped fund a lawsuit that bankrupted Gawker Media, announced he would be speaking about his support for Trump next week – one of the few business figures to do so.
The Trump campaign claims that its collapsing poll numbers are being misrepresented by a corrupt media and polling industry and is increasingly turning to alternative ways of reaching voters, including a Facebook channel that some see as a sign of Trump’s future media ambitions.
But with early voting figures showing signs of unusually high turnout for Democrats in must-win states like Florida, it appears that time may be running out for the Trump campaign.
If he loses by as big a margin as the polls suggest, it could be a humiliating end for the political ambitions of a man who has always emphasised his status as a “winner” who plays in the “big league”.
“I never had a failure,” Trump claims in a newly revealed interview conducted before he launched the campaign. “Because I always turned a failure into a success.”