Harrisburg, Pa. — There was something striking about watching Donald Trump’s rally Wednesday evening on the Jumbotron here outside the event arena.
Eighteen days ago and a couple hundred miles away in Butler, Pa., the GOP nominee survived a brush with death at an outdoor rally that immediately altered the fundamentals of the presidential race. Moments after a bullet grazed his ear that afternoon in a spray of gunfire that killed one rallygoer and injured two others, Trump raised his fist in the air in a stunning moment that injected a jolt of seriousness and sobriety into a competitive contest that was already trending in his favor.
Funny how quickly things can change. These days, Trump is only rallying indoors. And if you buy into the post–Joe Biden–dropout media narrative of the race — bolstered by some post-debate polls — the momentum has now shifted away from him and toward his new opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris.
Wednesday’s rally kicked off with a moment of silence for Corey Comperatore, the firefighter who died at that fateful rally in Butler. “I should not be here with you,” Trump told the crowd, echoing the genuinely somber tone that he struck at the top of his convention acceptance speech a little more than a week ago in Milwaukee.
Then in characteristic fashion, he took the crowd on a more than hour-long oratorical journey that hit Harris on policy but — like most of his speeches — seemed like it would never end. He put some points on the board by reminding Americans that her ascension to the ticket undermines the 14 million Democratic voters who cast their ballots for the current guy in the West Wing. “Kamala Harris got zero votes,” Trump said of his new opponent, who is scheduled to hit the campaign trail next week with her still-unannounced running mate. She’s “totally scripted, owned, and controlled” by Democratic power brokers, Trump said, who “created” her presidential campaign after her boss finally got the hint that maybe bowing out of the race could save his party from another four years of Trump.
Wednesday’s rally came just one day after Harris made her debut appearance Tuesday evening in Atlanta as the Democratic Party’s new presumptive nominee. She apparently spoke for less than 19 minutes.
That discipline may play to her favor as the GOP continues to hammer her for the Biden-Harris administration’s handling of immigration, inflation, and chaos overseas, as well as the liberal positions she staked out during the 2019 Democratic primary.
“Four weeks ago,” Trump said, Harris was considered the “worst vice president in history.” But the “personality makeover” she’s getting thanks to a relieved Democratic base and a sympathetic press means that “all of a sudden she’s the new Margaret Thatcher.” Harris is “actually” worse than Biden, she “destroyed San Francisco,” she is the “architect of the border invasion,” Trump said, and is far too liberal on electric cars, public safety, health-care policy, and more.
That’s with help from a teleprompter. The less disciplined Trump isn’t so on message. Earlier Wednesday, during a National Association of Black Journalists panel interview with three black reporters, the GOP nominee went scorched-earth on how Harris talks about her heritage as the daughter of Jamaican and Indian immigrants.
“I didn’t know she was black until a number of years ago when she happened to turn black, and now she wants to be known as black,” he said. “Is she Indian or is she black? Because she was Indian all the way and then all of a sudden she made a turn and she went, she became a black person.”
This made-for-TV swipe from the same guy whose running mate has gotten heaps of negative press in recent days for comments he made in 2021 disparaging “childless cat ladies” he believes are running the show in the Democratic Party. So much for post-assassination-attempt assurances from Trump allies that the country would soon see a new, calm, and disciplined GOP nominee.
Before Trump kicked off his remarks Wednesday evening, one of his supporters expressed hope that he would spend the rest of the campaign keeping the focus on policy — not personality and ad hominem attacks on his opponent.
“When he was debating Joe Biden, it was easy to say ‘Joe Biden’s too old to be in office,’” says Connor McCormick, an Ohio native and a rising junior at Hillsdale College in Michigan. “But for Kamala Harris, he’s not focusing on talking about her policies and her issues and why she is unfit to be president.” The president is spending too much time saying “her laugh is stupid,” and he would be better-served if he kept the focus on policy, he said.
Like many Americans, McCormick is still in disbelief over the fact that Biden dropped by way of social media statement and didn’t publicly address the country about his decision for several days, let alone the swiftness with which the Democrats rallied behind Harris. And like many rally-goers, he said the situation surrounding Biden’s decision to bow out of the race seemed “fishy,” and her campaign rollout seemed “staged.”
That sentiment was widespread at Wednesday night’s rally here in Pennsylvania. “The liberal media is pushing her,” says Neal Barrick, a self-employed remodeling contractor. This is his first Trump rally, and he feels confident the momentum is on his party’s side. “I just think unless they cheat and pull it off again, he’ll win — and he’ll win in a landslide.”