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 introduced herself as a conciliator when her document suggests the other.
Listed here are 6 reality checks of statements from her speech.
“Armed Mob”
Harris started her speech by referencing the Jan. 6 protest on the Capitol.
She mentioned of Trump, “He’s the one that stood at this very spot practically 4 years in the past and despatched an armed mob to the USA Capitol to overturn the desire of the folks in a free and honest election, an election that he knew he misplaced.”
She went on to say that “People died on account of that assault,” and he or she famous that 140 regulation enforcement officers had been injured.
The declare that the Jan. 6 protesters had been “armed” has been disputed. A number of carried pepper spray or bear spray. Some wielded flagpoles as golf equipment and attacked regulation enforcement officers.
Prosecutors charged at the least three protesters with having firearms “on Capitol grounds,” or stashed close by, which means not essentially contained in the Capitol.
Harris is appropriate that individuals died, however solely two folks died instantly from the Jan. 6 violence. Seven others died not directly from occasions of the day, in accordance with The New York Instances. A Capitol Police officer fatally shot protester Ashli Babbitt when she was making an attempt to interrupt by means of 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, really died of pure 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, limit entry to contraception and put IVF therapies in danger, and drive states to observe ladies’s pregnancies,” Harris mentioned. “Simply Google Venture 2025.”
Trump has pledged to depart the difficulty of abortion as much as the states, even saying he wouldn’t signal a federal regulation limiting the apply.
Though Trump briefly talked about that he would take into account 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 Venture 2025—a undertaking 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 undertaking consists of three main elements: “Mandate for Management,” an inventory of insurance policies Heritage recommends; a database of conservatives who could be involved in becoming a member of a conservative administration; and trainings for these within the database.
The declare about forcing states to observe ladies’s pregnancies comes from a twisting of a coverage advocated within the Mandate for Management. Even left-leaning retailers like PolitiFact have rightly branded this declare false. The Venture 2025 doc doesn’t name for the federal authorities to drive states to observe ladies’s pregnancies. It does, nonetheless, urge the Facilities for Illness Management and Prevention to require each state to submit abortion knowledge. At present, the CDC doesn’t require states to submit abortion knowledge, however lots of them do.
‘Worth Gouging’
When looking for to differentiate herself from Biden, Harris mentioned, “My presidency might 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 largest problem is to decrease prices,” she mentioned.
But Harris appeared to not take into account inflation her high precedence. Her speech largely centered on Trump, abortion, and some different points. She did briefly return to prices when she pledged to chop down on worth gouging, nonetheless.
“I’ll enact the first-ever federal ban on worth gouging on groceries,” she pledged. She additionally pledged to cap the prices of medicine like insulin.
By focusing her worth remarks on alleged worth gouging, Harris steered that inflation is essentially as a consequence of grasping corporations jacking up costs too excessive.
But as Heritage Basis analysis fellow EJ Antoni identified, there’s a much more apparent offender: authorities spending.
As Antoni famous, “One of many features of cash is that of a measuring device. If a yardstick had been to shrink from 36 inches down to simply 30, it might take 120 of those shortened yardsticks to cowl the space of a soccer discipline, as a substitute of 100. Because the greenback has misplaced worth, it takes extra {dollars} to measure the worth of the issues we purchase.”
Whereas People really feel the ache of inflation, so do companies. In keeping with knowledge from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, “companies have gotten the brief finish of the stick,” Antoni defined. “The producer worth index is used to measure inflation on the services and products companies purchase—generally known as wholesale inflation—and that index has risen 17.5% since Biden took workplace. Conversely, the patron worth index, the extensively cited metric for inflation confronted by American households, is up 17.1% over that very same time.”
“Companies have really been sheltering shoppers from some price will increase in an effort to take care of market share and never lose prospects,” he wrote. “That additionally explains why, in accordance with the Biden administration’s Census Bureau, complete company income have fallen for the final six quarters after adjusting for inflation.”
“If alleged worth gouging had been actually the reason for inflation, did businessmen magically develop into grasping when Biden took workplace?” Antoni requested. “Had been firms by no means grasping within the 40 years main as much as Biden’s inflationary growth of presidency? Companies haven’t even handed all their greater prices on to shoppers; in the event that they’re making an attempt to be grasping, they’re doing all of it improper.”
Harris accused Trump of cynically utilizing immigration as a marketing campaign situation fairly 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 regulation the border safety invoice that Donald Trump killed.”
“We’ll rapidly 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 move 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 12 months, whereas he issued a number of govt orders on his first day in workplace, reversing Trump insurance policies just like the Migrant Safety Protocols (generally often called “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 12 months, and critics have warned that the invoice would have cemented Biden’s open-border insurance policies into regulation.
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 might be impacted by the selections I make, and to individuals who disagree with me,” she mentioned. “Not like Donald Trump, I don’t consider individuals who disagree with me are the enemy. He needs to place them in jail. I’ll give them a seat at my desk.”
“I pledge to be a president for all People, and to at all times put nation above get together and self,” she added.
But Harris’ document 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 exhibiting Deliberate Parenthood employees admitting to promoting aborted infants’ physique elements for revenue in 2014. (Deliberate Parenthood denied it did so.) Harris, who acquired funding from Deliberate Parenthood throughout her 2016 Senate marketing campaign, directed her workplace to look Daleiden’s residence, seizing his video footage and getting ready a authorized case towards him. Her successor as California lawyer common, Xavier Becerra (now secretary of Well being and Human Providers), filed 15 felony prices towards Daleiden and his heart in 2017.
“I might say that is an abuse of the felony course of,” Peter Breen, particular counsel on the Thomas Extra Society, instructed 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 could be felonies.”
In Might 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 People for Prosperity and American Freedom Legislation Middle. Her workplace demanded that these teams flip over their IRS Schedule B tax kinds, which embody donor data. Each teams refused at hand over the kinds, citing considerations for donor anonymity.
Harris’ workplace threatened to droop their nonprofit registrations and positive their leaders. The Supreme Courtroom in the end 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 towards abortion. She additionally joined her colleagues in urgent Allison Speeding, 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, first rate 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 instructed 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 Day by day Sign and the writer of two books: “Making Hate Pay: The Corruption of the Southern Poverty Legislation Middle,” and “The Woketopus: The Darkish Cash Cabal Manipulating the Federal Authorities.”
Syndicated with permission from The Day by day Sign.
