Harris Ramps Up Attacks on Trump’s Fitness for Office: Oct. 14 Campaign News

Mr. Trump had his staff fire up his campaign playlist, standing on the stage for about half an hour and swaying to songs as his crowd slowly dwindled.

He bobbed his head through the Village People’s “Y.M.C.A.,” his usual closing song. He swayed soberly to Rufus Wainwright’s version of “Hallelujah,” watched a Sinead O’Connor video, rocked along to Elvis, watched the crowd during “Rich Men North of Richmond” and then, finally, left the stage to shake hands on his way out during one last song.

The impromptu D.J. session was a strange conclusion to a political event that had started on familiar turf. Aided by Gov. Kristi Noem of South Dakota, Mr. Trump answered questions in front of hundreds of people at the Greater Philadelphia Expo Center in Oaks, Pa., about 18 miles northwest of Philadelphia.

The inquiries from friendly audience members allowed Mr. Trump to rattle off a series of talking points about the economy and immigration and attacks against Vice President Kamala Harris. But the event’s tone shifted about 30 minutes in, when two people in the crowd needed medical attention after apparently passing out.

As medical personnel responded to the first incident and the room grew tense, Mr. Trump asked his campaign staff to play a rendition of “Ave Maria.” Minutes later, after the person was removed on a stretcher, Ms. Noem tried to return to the question-and-answer session. But that effort stopped abruptly because a second person, a woman, also suddenly needed medical attention.

After the woman got up and walked to the periphery of the event, Mr. Trump called for some air conditioning in the venue. Ms. Noem, trying to get back on message, made a joke about inflation, saying, “They probably can’t afford it, sir.”

Then, Mr. Trump suggested a return to his comfort zone. He called up a chart on immigration that he has displayed at nearly every recent campaign rally and ordered up “Ave Maria” again. And after it played one more time, Mr. Trump decided to end the question-and-answer session after just five questions.

“Let’s not do any more questions. Let’s just listen to music,” he said. “Let’s make it into a musical. Who the hell wants to hear questions, right?”

Mr. Trump’s crowd cheered in approval, an indication of how his supporters flock to his rallies to be in his presence as much as to hear him make political points with which they are intimately familiar.

The playlist session was a glimpse of the private version of Mr. Trump seen more often at Mar-a-Lago, his residence and club in Palm Beach, Fla., than at political events. The former president has been known to take out an iPad that is connected to the speaker system there and play D.J. for his guests.

As Mr. Trump stood through the first few songs, basking in the admiration of his supporters, the crowd packed into the expo center largely stayed put, filming him on their phones and at points singing along.

Mr. Trump’s supporters often wait for hours to see his rallies, and there can be lengthy lines for food, water and bathrooms once they are inside. At several outdoor events this summer, attendees have needed medical attention because of heat-related illnesses.

But Mr. Trump generally returns to his planned remarks after medical issues at other events. On Monday, he seemed more uncertain how to proceed. After offering what appeared to be a closing statement and having his campaign play a James Brown song, Mr. Trump suggested taking another question or two. As the crowd cheered in approval, he said, “let’s go,” but then said he’d play “Y.M.C.A.” and send the crowd home.

But after “Y.M.C.A.” ended, Mr. Trump seemed a little perplexed. “There’s nobody leaving,” he said. “What’s going on?” The audience cheered, and so the music kept going, as Ms. Noem stood awkwardly by, and many in the audience seemed unsure about whether the event was over.

Still, as one song became two, then three, many of those in the back of the house began to filter out. As the opening chords of the Guns N’ Roses power ballad “November Rain” played, one of Mr. Trump’s aides, Justin Caporale, came on the stage with a sheet of paper.

Mr. Trump briefly reviewed what had been handed to him, and the two chatted briefly. Then, seconds later, Mr. Trump decided he’d had his fill. He waved, pumped his fist, and finally made his way off the stage.

“After all these years, we know who Donald Trump is,” Ms. Harris said. “He is someone who will stop at nothing to claim power for himself.”

In a striking moment, Ms. Harris told the crowd of 6,000 that they didn’t have to take her word for it, that she had an example of his “worldview and intentions.”

“Please — roll the clip,” she said as the crowd groaned and gasped as Mr. Trump’s face flashed on screens.

“He’s talking about the enemy within our country, Pennsylvania,” Ms. Harris said to a jeering crowd. “He’s talking about that he considers anyone who doesn’t support him, or who will not bend to his will, an enemy of our country.”

Ms. Harris’s visit to Erie County, a bellwether county that is crucial to a statewide victory in a state that could be the 2024 tipping point, was her first as the Democrats’ presidential candidate since President Biden ended his re-election bid and backed her. Mr. Trump won the county in 2016 but lost it narrowly to Mr. Biden in 2020.

Ms. Harris used the first half of her stump speech to lay out her policy proposals to build an “opportunity economy,” taking on price-gouging and expanding Medicare to cover home health care for the elderly and ill. She continued positioning herself as the underdog and argued that the stakes of this election were higher than in 2016 and 2020 because of a Supreme Court decision that vastly expanded presidential power.

She called Erie a “pivot county” and pleaded with those in the crowd to cast their ballots before November, as early voting has already begun in the state. “The election is here,” she said.

But it was the back half of her speech where Ms. Harris ramped up her attacks on Mr. Trump. She has increasingly engaged in the unusual campaign strategy of drawing attention to her opponent’s rallies. It was at their debate last month where she first encouraged people to watch his rallies as she called attention to violent rhetoric and erratic behavior. On Monday, she issued her most ominous warning yet, outlining how he has attacked officials who don’t find extra votes for him in an election, judges whose rulings he disagrees with and journalists whose coverage he doesn’t like.

“This is among the reasons I believe so strongly that a second Trump term would be a huge risk for America, and dangerous,” she added. “Donald Trump is increasingly unstable and unhinged.”

Ms. Harris’s campaign on Monday also released a new ad called “Enemy Within,” drawing on Mr. Trump’s recent comments, featuring two of his former national security aides, Olivia Troye and Kevin Carroll.

“I do remember the day that he suggested that we shoot people on the streets,” Ms. Troye recalls in the ad.

“A second term would be worse,” Mr. Carroll says.

The advertisement is similar to one the campaign began in battleground states this month, with top national security officials issuing dire warnings about Mr. Trump’s fitness for office.

The Democratic ticket’s attacks were twofold on Monday night. In Green Bay, Wis., Ms. Harris’s running mate, Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota, struck perhaps his most fiery tone yet against Mr. Trump. Mr. Walz pointed to his own military service as he denounced Mr. Trump’s remarks, saying the notion of using the military against American citizens made him “sick to his stomach.”

Mr. Walz urged the audience to realize Mr. Trump’s proposals were not normal.

“The former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Mark Milley, said, ‘No one has ever been more dangerous to this country than Donald Trump, and he is a fascist to his core,’” Mr. Walz said, referring to statements from the former officials featured in the advertisement.

“Let that sink in, and don’t be a damn bit afraid of saying it, because that’s exactly who he is.”

Mr. Trump visited Erie County last month, where he railed against Ms. Harris, telling the crowd that she should be “impeached and prosecuted” for her handling of the southern border and suggested that “one really violent day” would quell crime in American cities.

As Election Day draws near, Ms. Harris has been goading Mr. Trump about his mental fitness, attacks that have intensified amid his rambling speeches at rallies.

Ms. Harris, who has insisted that Mr. Trump agree to a second debate, has maintained that he is hiding from engaging in normal campaign activity, like a “60 Minutes” interview. Over the weekend, she released her medical records, which found her in “excellent health,” and used another rally to question why Mr. Trump has not released his.

“It makes you wonder, why does his staff want him to hide away?" she said during a rally in North Carolina on Sunday. “One must question, are they afraid that people will see that he is too weak and unstable to lead America? Is that what’s going on?”

But during the rally, Ms. Harris also drew one line when it came to her opponent. After quoting him as saying that he wanted to “terminate the Constitution,” the crowd began chanting, “Lock him up.”

“Here’s the thing: The courts will handle that,” she said. “Let’s handle November, shall we?”

Jazmine Ulloa contributed reporting from Green Bay, Wis.

“We’re very concerned about Trump dividing the country, civil rights, everything that’s happening,” Mr. Siblani said. But Ms. Harris’s association with the Biden administration’s backing of Israel in the regional war, he said, also made it impossible to endorse her. “She has not separated her ideas from Biden’s,” he said.

Arab Americans have broadly voted Democratic for more than two decades, and neither AAPAC nor the Arab American News has endorsed a Republican for president since George W. Bush, though both have occasionally declined to endorse candidates.

Mr. Siblani has long been frank in his opposition to Israel, which he has called a “terrorist state,” and recently hailed Hassan Nasrallah, the Hezbollah leader assassinated by Israel, as “the great leader of this time.” But his publication has nonetheless endorsed candidates from both parties who affirm the U.S. government’s longstanding support for Israel, and emissaries of both presidential candidates have met with him this year.

Polls shortly before and after the 2020 election suggested that Mr. Biden enjoyed the support of both Arab American and Muslim voters by a large margin in that election. But Arab Americans have turned sharply against his administration over its backing of Israel after the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks, which Israeli officials say killed about 1,200 people with more than 200 others taken hostage. Israel’s retaliatory military operation has killed 41,000 in the Gaza Strip and 2,000 in Lebanon, according to government health ministries.

The war has become a potential political liability for Ms. Harris, who has sought to walk a fine line on the conflict to avoid alienating constituencies on either side. Her path to victory in November is likely to rely on holding several northern swing states won by Mr. Biden in 2020, including Michigan — where Arab Americans constitute a larger share of the overall population than any other state. (AAPAC also declined to endorse a candidate in the state’s Senate race between Representative Elissa Slotkin, a Democrat, and former Representative Mike Rogers, a Republican.)

Some groups that have been critical of the Biden administration’s Middle East policy have endorsed Ms. Harris, whether enthusiastically or ambivalently, or at least hinted that she is the better option.

In September, Ms. Harris was endorsed by Emgage Action, one of the country’s largest Muslim voter-mobilization organizations, though that group has continued to call on her to support a cease-fire in Gaza.

And the Uncommitted movement, a group of activists within the Democratic Party that had sought to push Mr. Biden toward endorsing a cease-fire and arms embargo by voting against him in the primaries, has recently grown more vocal in its opposition to Mr. Trump. In a video, a founder of the group said bluntly that a Trump victory would be worse than a Harris presidency — but stopped short of endorsing her.

On the Screen

The ad toggles between two former Trump administration officials who are shown speaking directly to the camera: Kevin Carroll, who was a senior counselor to the Homeland Security secretary, and Olivia Troye, who was Vice President Mike Pence’s homeland security adviser. Ms. Troye is also shown looking on behind Donald Trump in the White House when he was president.

The ad briefly shows the infamous 2019 hurricane map held up by Mr. Trump that was altered with a black marker to show a path into Alabama, as Mr. Trump had falsely suggested was forecast.

Images of disasters flash by: homes damaged by a hurricane or destroyed by raging wildfires, a sky turned orange by smoke. Mr. Trump is seen, in a photo, staring directly at the camera, and in a video clip, tossing paper towels to storm victims in Puerto Rico as if he were shooting basketball free throws.

As the music becomes more upbeat, Ms. Harris is shown meeting with storm victims. Mr. Trump is seen alone on an airport tarmac and then shaking hands with guests applauding him in the White House. The book version of Project 2025 — a policy guide written by Trump allies — briefly fills the screen, then gives way to images of Mr. Trump as president, speaking angrily and glowering from the lectern of the White House briefing room.

It concludes with video of Ms. Harris handing out meals at a Red Cross station and consoling more disaster survivors, a glimpse of an American flag, and a last word from Ms. Troye.

The Script

Carroll

“I worked in the Trump administration.”

Troye

“Never in a million years did I ever think that I’d be working in the White House with a president that didn’t care about the American people.”

Carroll

“He would suggest not giving disaster relief to states that hadn’t voted for him.”

Troye

“I remember one time, after a wildfire in California, he wouldn’t send relief because it was a Democratic state. So we went as far as looking up how many votes he got in those impacted areas, to show him: These are people that voted for you. This isn’t normal. The job of the president is to protect Americans regardless of politics.”

Carroll

“If Trump’s elected again, there will be no one to stop his worst instincts. He’ll have yes-men to help him to implement Project 2025’s agenda. Unchecked power, no guardrails.”

Troye

“They will be serving one man. I am voting for Kamala Harris because she will put the safety and security of every American first, whether they voted for her or not.”

Accuracy

The only assertions made are the recollections of the two former Trump administration officials.

The Takeaway

The timing and placement of the ad are as important as what it says. Parts of Georgia and North Carolina are only now beginning to recover from Hurricane Helene, and much of the country just watched on television as Hurricane Milton blew across Florida.

The Harris campaign aims to warn voters that if Mr. Trump were president and another natural disaster struck, his response would be governed by politics.

It is a tricky path for the vice president: She wants to be seen as overseeing a competent Biden administration response to the hurricanes, even as she seeks to weaponize the storms against Mr. Trump. Her message appears to be that however bad things now may be, they would be worse under Mr. Trump.

“We all need to go out there and look people in the eye and tell them why we’re for Kamala and Tim,” Mr. Clinton added. “We need to do that, and I think it’s much more effective, and I think it has been for a long time.”

Lapsing into his practically customary blend of pundit and storyteller, Mr. Clinton went on: “The biggest voter impact that I saw way back when Hillary ran in 2008 was the endless number of front-porch rallies, front-yard rallies. Go see Americans where they live, and because of social media, it reaches other people that you’re doing it.”

Some Democrats have puzzled over how best to deploy the former president, one of the most gifted politicians of his generation but a figure shadowed by a personal and policy record that has come under renewed scrutiny since he left office in 2001. Republicans have tried to frame some of his remarks on immigration as critical of Ms. Harris, and suggested that her deployment of Mr. Clinton, who turned 78 in August, was a stale strategy.

The state Democratic Party chairwoman, Representative Nikema Williams, hardly seemed bothered by the former president’s longevity: When she spoke on Monday, she went as far as to cite Mr. Clinton’s 1992 victory in Georgia. (Senator Bob Dole carried the state against Mr. Clinton in 1996 by about 27,000 votes.)

And Mr. Clinton received warm receptions from rank-and-file Democrats in places like Albany and Fort Valley, where party strategists wanted him to rally supporters in oft-overlooked areas before the start of early voting on Tuesday.

Deborah Terrell, 68, who was among the people who gathered to see Mr. Clinton on Monday in Columbus, predicted that he would “tap into those people that can remember how good it was for them” during his presidency. She said his longstanding ties to the state, which he toured with fixtures of Democratic politics in south and central Georgia, gave him lasting credibility among party stalwarts.

“It’s like a friend that’s saying ‘Go out and vote,’” Ms. Terrell said, noting how Mr. Clinton’s travels through less populated places signaled that voters would not be neglected if they lived in parts of Georgia beyond vote-rich metro Atlanta.

Mr. Clinton, who is scheduled to headline a bus tour of rural North Carolina this week, picked up that argument later as he explained the merits of visiting places like Columbus.

“It’s a statement,” Mr. Clinton said, “of who matters.”

This is Ms. Harris’s first formal interview with Fox News, whose day-to-day programming is heavy on conservative punditry that often explicitly supports her Republican opponent, former President Donald J. Trump.

It could also represent an opportunity for the Democratic nominee three weeks ahead of Election Day.

Ms. Harris will have a chance to deliver her message to a viewership that may be skeptical of her candidacy. Her willingness to appear on Fox News may aid the perception that she is open to facing tough questions. And she can reach a swath of independent voters, more of whom watch Fox News than CNN or MSNBC, according to research by Nielsen.

Senior Democratic officials have long shown hostility toward Fox News, going so far as to formally bar the network from hosting a primary debate in 2020. Hillary Clinton, in 2016, was the last Democratic presidential nominee to sit for a Fox News interview. President Biden has not appeared on the network since taking office, though he has jousted at news conferences with its senior White House correspondent, Peter Doocy.

But a thaw has occurred.

Ms. Harris’s running mate, Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota, was interviewed on “Fox News Sunday” the past two weekends. (Mr. Walz’s aides reached out to Fox to schedule his second appearance.) In recent months, the network has also welcomed a string of Harris supporters, including Gov. Gavin Newsom of California, Gov. Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania, and Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, who is now such a regular that he cheekily told Democratic convention-goers, “You might recognize me from Fox News.”

Mr. Baier’s interview with Ms. Harris is scheduled to air on the same day that Fox is set to broadcast an unusual town hall in which Mr. Trump plans to field questions on subjects like abortion, child care and day care from an all-female audience.

Ms. Harris has appeared across a range of traditional and niche media outlets in recent weeks.

On Monday, she used interviews with Roland Martin and The Shade Room, an online entertainment publication, to further her pitch to Black voters, arguing that Mr. Trump had engaged in a decades-long pattern of racist behavior.

On Tuesday, she is set to record a live interview in Detroit with Charlamagne Tha God, host of the syndicated morning radio show “The Breakfast Club,” which is particularly popular with Black millennials.

Last week, she sat for interviews with “The View,” “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert” and “The Howard Stern Show.” Ms. Harris sat for a “60 Minutes” interview that aired on CBS last week. Mr. Trump refused to appear on the program and accused CBS of bias; the network said he had committed to an interview and then reneged.

Mr. Trump is a frequent presence on partisan Fox News shows like “Hannity”; he has also kept up a heavy schedule of interviews on podcasts and other alternate media, including a video game celebrity’s streaming page. On Tuesday, he will be interviewed by the editor in chief of Bloomberg News, John Micklethwait, at the Economic Club of Chicago.

The study, which interviewed roughly 1,000 women nationwide in June — before President Biden stepped aside in the race in July and Ms. Harris ascended to the Democratic Party’s nomination — and then again in September, found that women are now more enthusiastic about voting and more satisfied with their choices — even if they’re not switching.

The survey from KFF, formerly known as the Kaiser Family Foundation, also found a rise in the share of women who said abortion was their most important issue, and that women have grown to trust Ms. Harris’s reproductive rights policies.

But for Black and Hispanic women the economy remains issue No. 1, by a wide margin. Both groups were roughly 30 percentage points more likely to mention inflation and rising costs as their top issue.

But Ms. Harris’s ascent to the top of the ticket has also made women more comfortable on those issues. A slim majority of Hispanic women said Ms. Harris is more trusted on the economy, compared with 35 percent saying they trusted Mr. Trump more. Black women trust Ms. Harris to handle the economy by a much wider margin, which also grew from June, when many Black and Hispanic women said they did not trust either party to do a better job addressing household costs.

Overall, more women now say that they trust Ms. Harris over Mr. Trump to do a better job addressing rising costs, 46 percent to 39 percent. Mr. Trump was previously ahead on this metric, when Mr. Biden was the presumptive nominee.

The study also dug into the social nature of voting among women. Among Ms. Harris’s supporters, 63 percent said most of their friends would be voting for Ms. Harris, while 7 percent said most of their friends would pick Mr. Trump.

Among Mr. Trump’s supporters, 59 percent said most of their friends were voting for him, while just 4 percent said most of their friends would pick Ms. Harris.

But women who were planning to vote for Mr. Trump were more likely than those supporting Ms. Harris to say they were not sure about their friends’ political allegiances (34 percent vs 28 percent).

Among women with either a spouse or partner, 80 percent said their partner votes the same way, and just 7 percent said their spouse or partner votes differently. More than one-in-10 said they do not discuss politics with their spouse or partner.