Donald Trump and Joe Biden traded barbs on Sunday as the race ahead of the November 2024 Presidential Election heats up.

Donald Trump used an expletive to attack Joe Biden during an address to an influential gun group on Saturday, while the incumbent president warned, in the crucial swing state Georgia, that his “unhinged” challenger is a threat to US democracy.

The dueling events came as Trump sought to make the most of his limited time on the campaign trail, with a criminal trial over hush money payments to a porn star keeping him mostly confined to a New York courtroom.

In a 90-minute address to the politically powerful National Rifle Association, Trump said that Biden is “the worst president in the history of our country by far.”

“You’re fired, get out of here Joe!” he called out to laughter from the thousands-strong crowd in Dallas, Texas.

Trump, who is fending off multiple criminal indictments for his attempt to overthrow the results of the 2020 election and was twice impeached as president, told the crowd that Biden is “crooked” and a “threat to democracy.”

If Biden were Republican, he would be “given the electric chair,” Trump said.

Meanwhile,  Biden was stumping in Georgia, the key southern state, as he sought support from African Americans.

The 81-year-old narrowly won Georgia in 2020 and some polls show that Black voters are increasingly deserting him ahead of November’s rematch with Trump.

“Our democracy is really on the line,” Biden told supporters at Mary Mac’s Tea Room, a Black-owned restaurant in Atlanta.

“My opponent’s not a good loser. But he is a loser,” Biden said to applause.

“He’s clearly unhinged,” Biden said, adding that something “snapped” in Trump after losing the 2020 election.

“Folks, Trump isn’t running to lead America. He’s running for revenge.”

On Sunday, Biden is due to speak at Morehouse College, a renowned historically Black university in Atlanta, then travel to Detroit where he will address the NAACP, the nation’s top civil rights group.

Trailing Trump

A recent New York Times/Siena poll showed Biden trailing Trump in several key battleground states, despite Trump facing four criminal cases – in Washington, Georgia and Florida, in addition to New York.

Trump routinely claims that the prosecutions are a conspiracy by Biden to prevent his return to the White House.

“Our enemies want to take away my freedom because I will never let them take away your freedom,” he told the crowd in Dallas.

“In the end, they’re not after me. They’re after you. I just happened to be standing in their way.”

Trump’s appearance before the gun rights group comes after the White House moved last month to crack down on firearm sales at gun shows and online that evade federal background checks.

Biden repeatedly called for a long-lapsed ban on military-style assault weapons to be reinstated, among other restrictions.

Warnings that Democrats would take away Americans’ guns is a core theme at Trump’s events, most recently at a fundraising dinner in Minnesota on Friday.

“If the Biden regime gets four more years they are coming for your guns, 100 percent certain,” Trump said.

Efforts at broad reforms to gun laws have been stymied for decades, with executive actions and state initiatives attacked in court by critics as infringing on the constitutional right to own a firearm, enshrined in the Second Amendment.

The 150-year-old NRA, whose longtime CEO resigned in January amid a graft lawsuit, is closely aligned with the Republican Party in opposing firearm restrictions, despite routine mass killings in the United States and high rates of gun violence, compared to peer nations.

There were more than 40,000 gun-related deaths in the United States last year, according to the Gun Violence Archive.

Andrew Caballero-Reynolds, Daniel Stublen, with AFP