Election 2024 Latest: Trump and Harris lean into the campaign’s last leg with less than a week left
Donald Trump and Kamala Harris will crisscross several swing states on Wednesday, passing each other in Wisconsin, where the former president is scheduled to appear in Green Bay with a one-time local icon, retired NFL quarterback Brett Favre.
Mumford & Sons, Gracie Abrams, Remi Wolf and members of the band The National are expected to appear at Harris' rally Wednesday night in Madison.
Harris on Tuesday sought to remind Americans what life was like under Trump and then offered voters a different path forward if they send her to the White House, in a speech billed as her campaign’s closing argument.
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Here’s the latest:
RALEIGH, N.C. — Vice President Kamala Harris told an audience in North Carolina on Wednesday that this is a moment “for a new generation of leadership in America,” offering herself as both a transition from former President Donald Trump, and, more subtly, President Joe Biden.
Trump is 78 years old and this is his third run for the presidency. Biden, who stepped aside to allow Harris to be the Democratic nominee over the summer, is 81 years old.
“It is time for a new generation of leadership in America. I am ready to offer that leadership,” she said to an audience in Raleigh. “Let us lock arms with each other knowing that we have so much more in common than what separates us.”
“We know we have an opportunity in this election to turn the page on a decade of Donald Trump who has been trying to keep us divided and afraid of each other,” Harris added. “We know that is who he is, but North Carolina that is not who we are.”
RALEIGH, N.C. — Jennifer Bell, a North Carolina engineer who once voted for former President Donald Trump, introduced Vice President Kamala Harris at a rally in Raleigh on Wednesday, highlighting how flipping Trump voters and independents has become central to Harris’ closing message.
Bell is the latest in a growing list of former Trump supporters who have introduced Harris or spoken at one of her rallies in the closing days of the campaign.
“I would invite them to, today, join me in putting country before party,” Bell said to one-time Trump voters. “Let’s put our principles before partisanship and stand up to support a leader who has shown unwavering dedication to bring our country together.”
“As a fiscal conservative, I feel like I made an honest mistake when I voted for Trump in 2016,” Bell said to some boos from the audience.
After saying that she thought a businessman would help streamline the government, she added, “The flaw in the plan is he is a failed businessman.”
She later said Trump’s “extremism destroyed the Republican Party.”
BATON ROUGE, La. — A new record has been set for early in-person voting in Louisiana, with 849,784 people casting their ballots ahead of the conclusion of the early voting window on Monday, Secretary of State Nancy Landry announced. The state saw a 3% increase from 2020 during the same time frame, when the former record was set.
In total, between early voting and returned absentee ballots, nearly one-third of Louisiana’s registered voters have already cast their vote ahead of the Nov. 5 election.
“I’m pleased that so many Louisianans have already made their voices heard in this election,” Landry said.
RALEIGH, N.C. — Jennifer Phelan, 60, said ahead of Vice President Kamala Harris’ rally in Raleigh, North Carolina, that she feels nervous because the election seems so close. To her, it shouldn’t be.
“It just seems very much like a cartoon of good and evil,” Phelan said.
She still feels fairly confident in North Carolina flipping blue from the conversations she’s had since she started volunteering in March, as well as the enthusiasm she sees among fellow volunteers. Phelan remembers discussing the race when Biden was atop the Democratic ticket, and she said more people seemed hesitant about supporting him. That hasn’t been the case as much with Harris leading the ticket, she said.
She’s also had conversations with some conservatives who said they’d vote for Harris because they don’t like Trump — adding that those were “real Republicans” in her eyes.
“I don’t consider Trump to be a real Republican,” she said.
U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio, who first told Trump at a Tuesday rally in Pennsylvania that President Joe Biden had called the former president’s supporters “garbage,” is blaming Democrats for these comments.
“Biden only said out loud what every top democrat actually believes about anyone who votes for Trump,” Rubio said on X.
Biden was speaking on a campaign call organized by the Hispanic advocacy group Voto Latino about remarks made by comedian Tony Hinchcliffe during Trump’s rally in Madison Square Garden on Sunday where he referred to Puerto Rico as a “floating island of garbage.”
“The only garbage I see floating out there is his supporters. His demonization of Latinos is unconscionable, and it’s un-American,” Biden had said in the call.
RALEIGH, N.C. — Liz Kazal, a rallygoer at Vice President Kamala Harris’ rally in Raleigh, said she’s “cautiously optimistic” about the election — a lesson she said she learned from 2016 when Hillary Clinton lost to Donald Trump.
“You hope for the best and plan for the worst,” she said on Wednesday.
Kazal, 35, said she’s tried to do some form of volunteering every week — door-knocking with her 2-year-old daughter, phone banking and fundraising for Harris with friends and family. Over the next week, Kazal said she plans to go door-knocking more and hold a phone banking session at her home.
“We’re the closest we’ve been since Obama won in ’08,” Kazal said.
Kazal has family members who are Trump supporters, but it’s been hard to talk to them about politics. To Kazal, it seems like Trump “transcends politics for them.”
“I’m at a loss for how to talk to them,” Kazal said. “But yeah, I’ve been able to talk about other issues.”
LOS ANGELES — In a lengthy post on the social platform X, the former Republican governor of California said he “hates” politics more than ever, is not happy with either political party and would prefer to “tune out.”
But, he said, he is endorsing Democrats Harris and Walz because “I will always be an American before I am a Republican.”
Schwarzenegger went on to harshly criticize Donald Trump for rejecting the results of the 2020 presidential vote.
“(R)ejecting the results of an election is as un-American as it gets,” he said. “To someone like me who talks to people all over the world and still knows America is the shining city on a hill, calling America ... a trash can for the world is so unpatriotic, it makes me furious.
He ended by saying the country needs to “close the door on this chapter of American history, and I know that former President Trump won’t do that. He will divide, he will insult, he will find new ways to be more un-American than he already has been, and we, the people, will get nothing but more anger.”
WASHINGTON — Kamala Harris has Bruce Springsteen, Taylor Swift and Beyoncé. Donald Trump has Kid Rock, Waka Flocka Flame and Hulk Hogan.
As the 2024 campaign whirls into its final week, Democrats are noticeably leaning on their star power advantage, calling on a diverse range of celebrities to endorse Harris, invigorate audiences and, they hope, spur people to the ballot box.
Democrats have long enjoyed a celebrity advantage and used it to close out presidential campaigns when attention and energy are critical. That upper hand has grown during Trump’s rise, a period that saw scores of celebrities, even apolitical stars, break their silence and speak out against the Republican leader. The advantage often means raucous, fiery events in the closing days of a race, but history — namely Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign — highlights how the energy at those events can sometimes paper over broader issues with a candidate.
▶ Read more on the impact of celebrity involvement in campaigning
WASHINGTON — Harris said she spoke with Biden Tuesday night after her speech, but his comments in the campaign call didn’t come up.
She said: “I will represent all Americans, including those who don’t vote for me.”
The flap over the president’s comments allowed Harris to make her sharpest break yet with Biden during her three-month campaign for the White House. She’s come under fire for not differentiating herself enough from the unpopular Democratic incumbent.
WASHINGTON — The vice president was responding on Wednesday to comments made by President Joe Biden on Tuesday night.
Biden was on a campaign call Tuesday evening reacting to a comic who called Puerto Rico garbage during a Trump rally last weekend. The president said, “The only garbage I see floating out there is his supporters.”
Biden’s remarks were quickly seized on by Republicans who said he was denigrating Trump supporters, a distraction for Harris when she is trying to reach out to GOP voters.
He quickly sent a social media post seeking to clarify his remarks.
“His demonization of Latinos is unconscionable,” Biden said of Trump. “That’s all I meant to say.”
Harris noted that Biden later clarified his comments.
Democratic vice-presidential candidate Tim Walz says Kamala Harris’s unity message wasn’t undermined by President Joe Biden calling Donald Trump’s supporters “garbage.”
Walz said Wednesday on “CBS Mornings” that Biden “was very clear that he’s speaking about the rhetoric we heard, so it doesn’t undermine it.”
Harris argued the case for her candidacy in a speech Tuesday night in Washington in which she promised to be an inclusive president.
During a call Tuesday organized by a Hispanic advocacy group, Biden said the “only garbage” he sees floating out there are Trump supporters. He was responding to a comic at Trump’s Madison Square Garden rally on Sunday who said Puerto Rico is a “floating island of garbage.”
Biden later clarified his remarks, saying in a post on the social platform X that he was referring to “hateful rhetoric about Puerto Rico spewed by Trump’s supporter” at the rally.
Walz was also asked about Biden’s comments when he appeared on ABC’s “Good Morning America” and said the president had issued a clarification.
“Let’s be very clear, the vice president and I have made it absolutely clear that we want everyone as a part of this. Donald Trump’s divisive rhetoric is what needs to end,“ Walz said.
Donald Trump will be campaigning with former Green Bay Packers quarterback Brett Favre in Wisconsin on Wednesday night at the same time that popular musicians will be rallying with Vice President Kamala Harris about two hours away in the swing state’s capital city.
Mumford & Sons, Gracie Abrams, Remi Wolf and members of the band The National were slated to appear at the Harris rally Wednesday night in Madison.
At the same time, about 140 miles (225 kilometers) northeast of there, Trump was to hold a rally not far from Lambeau Field with Favre.
Both Harris and Trump will again be in Wisconsin for dueling events on Friday. Trump is holding a rally Friday night in Milwaukee at the Fiserv Center, which was the site of the Republican National Convention. Harris is planning multiple stops in the state but has not said where yet. Wisconsin is one of seven battleground states that’s seen multiple visits from Trump, Harris, their running mates and other surrogates.
NEW YORK — In the shadow of the White House, seven days before the final votes of the 2024 election are cast, Kamala Harris vowed to put country over party and warned that Donald Trump is obsessed with revenge and his own personal interests.
Less than 48 hours earlier inside Madison Square Garden, Trump called his Democratic opponent “a trainwreck who has destroyed everything in her path.” His allies on stage labeled Puerto Rico a “floating island of garbage” and made a baseless claim that Harris, a former prosecutor and senator who is trying to become the first woman to be elected president, had begun her career as a prostitute.
Two nights and 200 miles apart, the dueling closing arguments outlined in stark terms the choice U.S. voters face on Nov. 5 when they will weigh two very different visions of leadership and America’s future.
Read more about what Trump and Harris are presenting to voters
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