Former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris are making campaign stops across the country in the final days of the election, and readers react to newspaper endorsements, or the lack thereof.

Trump gambles on late-stage trips to Democratic New Mexico and Virginia

The former President Donald Trump campaigns in Albuquerque, N.M., on Thursday and Salem, Va., on Saturday.

The Trump team is projecting optimism, based in part on early voting numbers, that they believe he can be competitive against Democrat Kamala Harris in both states — New Mexico in particular, if he sweeps swing states Nevada and Arizona. That hope comes even though neither New Mexico nor Virginia has been carried by a GOP nominee for the White House since George W. Bush in 2004.

Over the past few months in particular, the battleground states — Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin — have seen a constant stream of candidate visits, and residents have been bombarded with political ads on billboards, televisions and smartphones. In the past two weeks alone, presidential and vice presidential candidates have made 21 appearances in Pennsylvania, 17 in Michigan and 13 in North Carolina.

In the 43 other states, a candidate visit is an exciting novelty.

Trump retains fervent pockets of support even in states that vote overwhelmingly against him, and he can easily fill his rallies with enthusiastic supporters.

He has made other recent detours from the states most at play, holding rallies at Madison Square Garden in New York and in Coachella, Calif. — states that are even more solidly Democratic than New Mexico and Virginia. Those events satisfied Trump's long-shot claims that he can win both states, but were also aimed at earning maximum media attention as his campaign seeks to reach voters who do not follow political news closely.

Trump also showed up in staunchly Republican Montana, and both Trump and Harris campaigned on the same day last week in Texas, which Democrats last won in 1976.

Those trips served other purposes, such as highlighting issues important in a state or supporting House or Senate candidates.

"Kamala Harris' dangerously liberal policies have failed Americans across the country — from the Bronx, to Virginia, and New Mexico — which is why President Trump is bringing his America First message and vision for hardworking families right to their front door," said Anna Kelly, a spokesperson for the Republican National Committee.

Trump's strategy carries risk.

After losing to Trump in 2016, Democrat Hillary Clinton was criticized for going to Arizona late in the campaign instead of spending time in Wisconsin, Michigan or Pennsylvania, states that ended up deciding that election. Arizona is now a battleground, but it wasn't considered particularly competitive eight years ago, when it voted for Trump by a 4-percentage point margin.

Harris: Trump is 'capable of anything' in terms of challenging election results, but her team is 'ready' to respond

Vice President Kamala Harris said she believes her Republican opponent, former President Donald Trump, is “capable of anything” in terms of seeking to interfere with the results of next month's election, citing his actions around the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol. 

But her team is "ready" to respond, she said.

"I think he is capable of anything, as proven by what he did on Jan. 6," Harris told ABC News while on the campaign trail Wednesday when asked if she is concerned Trump will try to interfere with the certification of results. 

"No president of the United States, former president of the United States, who lost an election would ever have done and never did, or even come close to what Donald Trump did On Jan. 6,” she added. 

At the same time, she told ABC News that her team is “prepared to respond” should the former president seek to “manipulate the consensus of the American people.”

"We are, sadly, ready," Harris said of Trump potentially challenging the results. "And if we know that he is manipulating the press and attempting to manipulate the consensus of the American people based on fiction instead of facts, we're prepared to respond."

Harris said something similar in an interview earlier this month, telling NBC News that her campaign is prepared if Trump prematurely declares victory on Election Day next week.

“This is a person, Donald Trump, who tried to undo the free and fair election, who still denies the will of the people, who incited a violent mob to attack the United States Capitol and 140 law enforcement officers were attacked, some who were killed,” Harris said. “This is a serious matter.”

Trump has refused to acknowledge his 2020 loss to President Joe Biden, baselessly claiming cheating took place despite no evidence of widespread election fraud anywhere in the country. Officials in both parties, including Trump's own Attorney General William Barr, have repeatedly said the election was fair. Cases brought by Trump and his allies claiming fraud were rejected from courts nationwide, including the U.S. Supreme Court.

The former president has since called Jan. 6, 2021, in which some of his supporters stormed the Capitol to interrupt the certification of Biden's win, a “beautiful day" and a "day of love."

In the closing days of her campaign, Harris has leaned into highlighting her opponent's actions on Jan. 6, and comments from some of his former staffers — such as his longest-serving chief of staff John Kelly, who recently said Trump fits the definition of a fascist — to paint the former president as a danger to democracy. (Trump has rebuffed Kelly's allegations and called him a "lowlife," among other things.)

Newspaper non-endorsements at Washington Post, LA Times fit a trend, but their readers aren't happy

The number of newspapers endorsing a candidate for president has dwindled with the industry's financial troubles the past two decades, in part because owners reason that it makes no sense to alienate some subscribers by taking a clear stand in a politically polarizing time.

Yet in the past week, The Washington Post and Los Angeles Times have angered readers for precisely the opposite reason: by choosing not to select a favored candidate.

The fallout from both decisions continued Monday, with Post owner Jeff Bezos taking the unusual step of publicly defending the move in the columns of his own paper. Three members of the Post's editorial board resigned their positions, and some journalists pleaded with readers to not express their disapproval by canceling subscriptions. Hundreds of thousands have already done so.

Bezos, in a note to readers, said it was a principled stand to ditch endorsements. People essentially don't care and see it as a sign of bias, he said. His comments appeared hours after NPR reported that more than 200,000 people had canceled their Washington Post subscriptions.

If NPR's report is true, that would be a startling blow to an outlet that lost money and shed staff despite having more than 2.5 million subscribers last year. A Post spokeswoman would not comment on the report.