“Make no mistake: we will win,” she says.
“It is time for a new generation of leadership in America,” says Harris. “And I am ready to offer that leadership.”
Harris, who recently turned 60, is a generation younger than Donald Trump, her opponent, who is 78, and Joe Biden, 81, who she replaced on the Democratic ticket.
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The comments by Trump come as he has struggled to connect with female voters and as Harris courts women in both parties with a message centered on freedom. She’s making the pitch that women should be free to make their own decisions about their bodies and that if Trump is elected, more restrictions will follow as both campaigns sprint toward Tuesday’s presidential election.
At a rally Wednesday evening near Green Bay, Wisconsin, Trump told his supporters that aides had urged him to stop using the term protector because it was “inappropriate.”
Then he added a new bit to the protector line. He said he told his aides: “Well, I’m going to do it whether the women like it or not. I am going to protect them.”
Those comments shaped much of Harris’ Thursday as the two campaigns jostled over the remarks.
More detail on Harris’s remarks: she said that Donald Trump’s comment that he would protect women whether they “like it or not” shows that the Republican presidential nominee does not understand women’s rights “to make decisions about their own lives, including their own bodies.”
“I think it’s offensive to everybody, by the way,” Harris said before she set out to spend the day campaigning in the western battleground states of Arizona and Nevada.
She followed up those remarks at her rally in Phoenix: “He simply does not respect the freedom of women or the intelligence of women to know what’s in their own best interests and make decisions accordingly. But we trust women.”
Meanwhile in Arizona, we’re now taking quite the trip down political memory lane, as Trump recounts his opposition to the Iraq war, and takes a swipe at George W Bush, the last Republican to occupy the White House before he got in.
“Anybody that went into the Middle East, I thought was stupid,” Trump said.
“Bush, oh, he was just, he was another beauty,” he continued, appearing to hold himself back from insulting the ex-president.
There are five days left, and “no one can sit on the sidelines” Harris says.
People should reach out to friends and family and neighbours and co-workers.
“In these next days let us please be intentional about building community,” she says
Harris reminds supporters in Las Vegas that she has spent her life fighting for people who “have been hurt”.
She has lived the promise of America, she says, and sees it in everyone there tonight.
Donald Trump, in Arizona, is now insulting Kamala Harris, saying she isn’t as smart as Hillary Clinton.
The invective came as he recounted his path to the White House in 2016, saying, “All of a sudden I’m fighting against crooked Hillary Clinton, who’s a smart woman, much smarter than Kamala, but doesn’t lie as much. Hillary was a liar, a horrible scoundrel, but this one lies so much, and she’s a low IQ individual.”
Another one about Harris, from Trump: “She’s dumb as a rock. And you can’t have that.”
At the Harris event, the crowd is chanting “We’re not going back! We’re not going back!”
“We’re not going back because ours is a fight for the future, and a fight for freedom. The freedom for a woman to make decisions about her own body.”
She reminds voters that changes to abortion laws under Trump mean that one in three women now lives in a state with an abortion ban.
Tucker Carlson then teed-up a question about the CIA and FBI conspiring against Trump, but the former president didn’t seem interested in answering it.
Instead, he proposed firing anyone involved in the Biden administration’s withdrawal from Afghanistan.
“You mentioned the enemy within. . … It’s a fact that the CIA and the FBI, which are absolutely not allowed by law to have any influence in American politics, because that’s the end of democracy. Both of them and a bunch of other intel agencies worked against you on behalf of the Democratic Party from the minute you got elected in 2016 and they’re still doing it. They’re working against you. Now, what will you do about that?” Carlson asked.
Trump didn’t quite say, instead talking about how succeeding in Washington was all about finding the right people. Then he brought up the chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan, the point at which Joe Biden’s approval ratings began dropping to levels from which they have not recovered.
“By the way, every one of those people having to do with Afghanistan should be fired immediately. Every general should be fired immediately. You know, Biden doesn’t fire anybody,” Trump said.
Meanwhile at Trump’s event:
Donald Trump doubled down on his insistence that “the enemy from within”, as he called his political opponents, are a true threat to the country.
Kamala Harris has seized on his remarks to argue that he is a fascist looking for “unchecked power”, but Trump doesn’t appear bothered.
“We do have an enemy from within. We have some very bad people, and those people are also very dangerous. They would like to take down our country. They’d like to have our country be a nice communist country or fascist in any way they can, and we have to be careful of that. But they’re the greatest con artists, because [as] soon as I said an enemy from within, they said … oh, he’s saying an enemy from within. These are sick puppies, I’m telling you.”
More detail on J Lo’s appearance a few moments ago, from the press pool report:
Jennifer Lopez took to the stage at 9.02, wearing a long olive-colored dress. The crowd sounded very pleased.
The event is being livestreamed but here are a couple of quotes:
“You are the ones who are going to send a message – that Las Vegas is Harris country
“Kamala Harris gets it …. As president of the United States Kamala will fight for us … And the freedom to choose to do what we do with our bodies.”
On Trump and Madison Square Garden:
“It wasn’t just Puerto Ricans who were offended that days. It was every Latino”
Shouts of ‘thank you’ and ‘we love you J-Lo’
