Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee for president, gave her “closing argument” speech for the 2024 presidential election on the Ellipse by the White Home, the situation former President Donald Trump spoke at on Jan. 6, 2021, earlier than a mob of his supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol.
Harris repeatedly condemned Trump, tried to outline herself as totally different from President Joe Biden, and offered herself as a conciliator when her report suggests the alternative.
Listed below are 6 truth checks of statements from her speech.
“Armed Mob”
Harris started her speech by referencing the Jan. 6 protest at the Capitol.
She mentioned of Trump, “He’s the one who stood at this very spot almost 4 years in the past and despatched an armed mob to the US Capitol to overturn the need of the folks in a free and truthful election, an election that he knew he misplaced.”
She went on to say that “Individuals died because of that assault,” and he or she famous that 140 legislation enforcement officers had been injured.
The declare that the Jan. 6 protesters were “armed” has been disputed. A number of carried pepper spray or bear spray. Some wielded flagpoles as golf equipment and attacked legislation enforcement officers.
Prosecutors charged at least three protesters with having firearms “on Capitol grounds,” or stashed close by, that means not essentially contained in the Capitol.
Harris is right that folks died, however solely two folks died straight from the Jan. 6 violence. Seven others died not directly from occasions of the day, in accordance with The New York Times. A Capitol Police officer fatally shot protester Ashli Babbitt when she was attempting to interrupt by a door, and one other protester died in a stampede of fellow rioters. Others died of pure causes or suicide, however the stress from the violence and commotion of the day might have contributed to these deaths.
Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick, initially thought to have died from an assault, truly died of natural causes, though the stress from the day’s occasions might have prompted his strokes.
Abortion Lies
Harris repeated three lies about Trump’s agenda on abortion.
“He would ban abortion nationwide, prohibit entry to contraception and put IVF therapies in danger, and power states to watch girls’s pregnancies,” Harris mentioned. “Simply Google Challenge 2025.”
Trump has pledged to go away the difficulty of abortion up to the states, even saying he wouldn’t signal a federal legislation limiting the apply.
Though Trump briefly talked about that he would consider restrictions on contraception, he instantly reversed his place and has not returned to it.
As for IVF, an acronym for “in vitro fertilization,” Trump has not solely not opposed it, however pledged to subsidize it with federal tax {dollars}.
As for Project 2025—a mission launched by The Heritage Basis in partnership with over 100 conservative organizations to empower a conservative president to undermine the deep state and restore the Structure—Trump has acknowledged that he has not learn it and doesn’t help it. The mission consists of three main components: “Mandate for Management,” an inventory of insurance policies Heritage recommends; a database of conservatives who can be concerned about becoming a member of a conservative administration; and trainings for these within the database.
The declare about forcing states to watch girls’s pregnancies comes from a twisting of a coverage advocated within the Mandate for Management. Even left-leaning shops like PolitiFact have rightly branded this declare false. The Challenge 2025 doc doesn’t name for the federal authorities to power states to watch girls’s pregnancies. It does, nevertheless, urge the Facilities for Illness Management and Prevention to require each state to submit abortion information. At the moment, the CDC doesn’t require states to submit abortion information, however a lot of them do.
‘Value Gouging’
When in search of to differentiate herself from Biden, Harris mentioned, “My presidency will probably be totally different as a result of the challenges we face are totally different.”
“Our high precedence as a nation 4 years in the past was to finish the pandemic and rescue the economic system. Now, our greatest problem is to decrease prices,” she mentioned.
But Harris appeared to not take into account inflation her high precedence. Her speech largely targeted on Trump, abortion, and some different points. She did briefly return to prices when she pledged to chop down on value gouging, nevertheless.
“I’ll enact the first-ever federal ban on value gouging on groceries,” she pledged. She additionally pledged to cap the prices of medicine like insulin.
By focusing her value remarks on alleged value gouging, Harris urged that inflation is essentially resulting from grasping corporations jacking up costs too excessive.
But as Heritage Basis analysis fellow EJ Antoni pointed out, there’s a much more apparent wrongdoer: authorities spending.
As Antoni famous, “One of many features of cash is that of a measuring instrument. If a yardstick had been to shrink from 36 inches down to simply 30, it will take 120 of those shortened yardsticks to cowl the space of a soccer discipline, as an alternative of 100. Because the greenback has misplaced worth, it takes extra {dollars} to measure the worth of the issues we purchase.”
Whereas Individuals feel the pain of inflation, so do companies. Based on information from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, “companies have gotten the quick finish of the stick,” Antoni defined. “The producer value index is used to measure inflation on the services companies purchase—typically known as wholesale inflation—and that index has risen 17.5% since Biden took workplace. Conversely, the patron value index, the broadly cited metric for inflation confronted by American households, is up 17.1% over that very same time.”
“Companies have truly been sheltering shoppers from some value will increase in an effort to keep up market share and never lose prospects,” he wrote. “That additionally explains why, in accordance with the Biden administration’s Census Bureau, whole company income have fallen for the final six quarters after adjusting for inflation.”
“If alleged value gouging had been actually the reason for inflation, did businessmen magically turn into grasping when Biden took workplace?” Antoni requested. “Have been firms by no means grasping within the 40 years main as much as Biden’s inflationary enlargement of presidency? Companies haven’t even handed all their larger prices on to shoppers; in the event that they’re attempting to be grasping, they’re doing all of it unsuitable.”
Harris accused Trump of cynically utilizing immigration as a marketing campaign difficulty slightly than trying to resolve the issue.
“Politicians have gotten to cease treating immigration as a problem to scare up votes in an election,” she mentioned. “I’ll work with Democrats and Republicans to signal into legislation the border safety invoice that Donald Trump killed.”
“We are going to shortly take away those that arrive right here unlawfully, prosecute the cartels, and provides Border Patrol the help they most desperately want,” she added. “I’ll work with Congress to go immigration reform, together with an earned path to citizenship for hard-working immigrants.”
But her narrative doesn’t align with actuality. Biden solely supported the “border safety invoice” earlier this yr, whereas he issued a number of government orders on his first day in workplace, reversing Trump insurance policies just like the Migrant Safety Protocols (generally referred to as “Stay in Mexico”) and instituting a system of catch-and-release.
Moreover, not each Democrat within the Senate even voted for the invoice Biden supported earlier this yr, and critics have warned that the invoice would have cemented Biden’s open-border policies into legislation.
Trump, in contrast, directed his administration to crack down on unlawful immigration when he was in workplace, creating new insurance policies to stop unlawful entries.
Folks Who Disagree Are Not the Enemy
Harris claimed that she doesn’t take into account individuals who disagree together with her to be the enemy.
“I pledge to hearken to specialists, to those that will probably be impacted by the choices I make, and to individuals who disagree with me,” she mentioned. “Not like Donald Trump, I don’t imagine individuals who disagree with me are the enemy. He desires to place them in jail. I’ll give them a seat at my desk.”
“I pledge to be a president for all Individuals, and to at all times put nation above celebration and self,” she added.
Yet Harris’ record suggests she does take into account those that disagree together with her to be the enemy.
David Daleiden and the Middle for Medical Progress launched a slew of undercover sting movies displaying Deliberate Parenthood workers admitting to promoting aborted infants’ physique components for revenue in 2014. (Deliberate Parenthood denied it did so.) Harris, who obtained funding from Planned Parenthood throughout her 2016 Senate marketing campaign, directed her workplace to look Daleiden’s dwelling, seizing his video footage and getting ready a authorized case in opposition to him. Her successor as California legal professional normal, Xavier Becerra (now secretary of Well being and Human Companies), filed 15 felony fees in opposition to Daleiden and his middle in 2017.
“I’d say that is an abuse of the legal course of,” Peter Breen, particular counsel on the Thomas Extra Society, told PJ Media in 2020. “I might level you to undercover investigations which might be being proven on the night information in Los Angeles. Beneath the usual they’re making use of to David, these can be felonies.”
In Could 2020, Daleiden sued Becerra and Harris, claiming Harris conspired with Deliberate Parenthood to violate his civil rights by prosecuting him for the undercover investigation. That case stays pending.
Harris additionally focused the conservative teams Individuals for Prosperity and American Freedom Regulation Middle. Her workplace demanded that these teams flip over their IRS Schedule B tax varieties, which embrace donor info. Each teams refused handy over the varieties, citing considerations for donor anonymity.
Harris’ workplace threatened to droop their nonprofit registrations and high quality their leaders. The Supreme Court finally upheld their rights to guard donor anonymity in a 2021 ruling.
Within the U.S. Senate, Harris served on the Senate Judiciary Committee. She aggressively questioned Trump’s nominees on points arguably unrelated to their official positions. She pressed nominees over their membership within the Catholic fraternal group the Knights of Columbus, as a result of it upholds the Catholic Church’s place in opposition to abortion. She additionally joined her colleagues in pressing Allison Rushing, one other Trump judicial nominee, about her participation in occasions with Alliance Defending Freedom, a conservative Christian authorized group.
As Harris spoke Tuesday evening, Biden rallied Latino voters and condemned a comment about Puerto Rico throughout Trump’s rally at Madison Sq. Backyard on Sunday.
Comic Tony Hinchcliffe, who spoke earlier than Trump, known as Puerto Rico an “island of rubbish.”
“They’re good, respectable honorable folks,” Biden mentioned of Puerto Ricans. “The one rubbish I see floating out there’s his supporters. His demonization of those folks is unconscionable and it’s un-American.”
Talking about Hinchcliffe Tuesday, Trump advised ABC, “I don’t know him, somebody put him up there. I don’t know who he’s.”
Tyler O’Neil is managing editor of The Each day Sign and the writer of two books: “Making Hate Pay: The Corruption of the Southern Poverty Law Center,” and “The Woketopus: The Dark Money Cabal Manipulating the Federal Government.”
Syndicated with permission from The Daily Signal.
