Washington:
Courts, bullets and verbal stumbles have left their mark on this year’s US election campaign – one of the most extraordinary in the country’s history.
Here are five key moments so far as candidates Donald Trump and Kamala Harris head into Election Day on November 5.
Trump the criminal
‘Trump Guilty’ is on the front pages of the world. On May 30, the Republican will become the first former US president to be convicted of a felony – 34 counts to be exact.
He appears to have falsified company records to conceal a hush money payment to porn star Stormy Daniels on the eve of his 2016 election victory so that she would not make their alleged sexual encounter public.
In the explosive six-week trial, Daniels shares excruciating details about their apparent one-night stand, including the sexual position and Trump’s silk pajamas.
The ordeal pulls him off the campaign trail, but the enormous media attention keeps him in the spotlight, even if it concerns his criminality.
Nothing in US law prevents Trump from running for the White House after the guilty verdict, and Republicans are doubling down on their unwavering support for the party’s standard-bearer, who faces three other criminal cases.
Debate drama
Democrats’ hopes appear shattered after President Joe Biden, the party’s presumptive nominee, delivered a disastrous debate against Donald Trump on June 27.
The 81-year-old mumbles his words and often appears to forget what he is saying, adding to fears that he is unfit to run for president again.
Biden dismisses it as a “bad night,” but dissenters say otherwise, with donors threatening to pull funding if he doesn’t step aside.
Post-debate polls show Trump pulling away from Biden, but the White House insists there is no chance he will withdraw.
Attempted murder
A sun-drenched Trump rally in Pennsylvania on July 13 offers the most shocking moment of the election campaign so far.
There are popping noises, Trump touches his ear, sees blood and falls to the stage floor. Secret Service agents surround him as screams echo through the crowd.
Within seconds, Trump is helped back up. “Fight, fight, fight!” he addresses a now cheering audience and raises his fist to create one of the most iconic images in American political history.
The shooter, 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks, was shot dead on the spot by Secret Service, and Trump survived with a minor scratch on his right ear.
Trump’s base is galvanized. “I took a bullet for democracy,” he tells his supporters at a later rally.
Biden says ‘bye’
On Sunday, July 21, at 1:46 p.m., a beleaguered President Biden announces in a tweet that he will not seek re-election, giving in to intense concerns about his ability to defeat Trump in November.
It makes him the first sitting president since 1968 not to seek re-election, and turns the White House race on its head.
Kamala Harris, the first female, Black and Asian American to serve as US vice president, has Biden’s backing to replace him in the campaign.
Within two weeks, she formally clinched the Democratic nomination, making her the first woman of color to win a major party.
Harris energizes Democrats and delivers immediate results in opinion polls by clawing back Trump’s gains, including in election-deciding swing states.
Trump’s second fear
Trump’s golf weekend in Florida on September 15 is disrupted by the sound of gunshots – this time fired by a Secret Service agent who thwarts what the FBI is calling an apparent assassination attempt.
The Republican candidate remains unscathed in the second such panic in two months.
Investigators say the gunman, Ryan Routh, did not shoot at Trump but instead fled when a security officer opened fire after seeing his rifle pointed through a tree line onto the golf course.
Trump attributes the fear of an assassination to the supposedly provocative ‘rhetoric’ of Biden and Harris.
Democrats say they condemn political violence, but the incident highlights the volatility of American politics just weeks before voters go to the polls.
(This story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)