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 completely different from President Joe Biden, and offered herself as a conciliator when her document suggests the other.
Listed below 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 is the person who stood at this very spot nearly four years ago and sent an armed mob to the United States Capitol to overturn the will of the people in a free and fair election, an election that he knew he lost.”
She went on to assert that “Americans died as a result of that attack,” and she or he famous that 140 legislation 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 legislation enforcement officers.
Prosecutors charged at the very 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 folks died, however solely two folks died immediately from the Jan. 6 violence. Seven others died not directly from occasions of the day, in response to The New York Occasions. A Capitol Police officer fatally shot protester Ashli Babbitt when she was making an attempt 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 may 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 may have prompted his strokes.
Abortion Lies
Harris repeated three lies about Trump’s agenda on abortion.
“He would ban abortion nationwide, restrict access to birth control and put IVF treatments at risk, and force states to monitor women’s pregnancies,” Harris mentioned. “Just Google Project 2025.”
Trump has pledged to depart the problem of abortion as much as the states, even saying he wouldn’t signal a federal legislation limiting the apply.
Though Trump briefly talked about that he would contemplate 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 challenge 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 assist it. The challenge consists of three main elements: “Mandate for Leadership,” an inventory of insurance policies Heritage recommends; a database of conservatives who could be taken with 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 Leadership. 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 information. At the moment, the CDC doesn’t require states to submit abortion information, however lots of them do.
‘Price Gouging’
When looking for to tell apart herself from Biden, Harris mentioned, “My presidency will be different because the challenges we face are different.”
“Our top priority as a nation four years ago was to end the pandemic and rescue the economy. Now, our biggest challenge is to lower costs,” she mentioned.
But Harris appeared to not contemplate inflation her prime 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, nonetheless.
“I will enact the first-ever federal ban on price gouging on groceries,” she pledged. She additionally pledged to cap the prices of medication like insulin.
By focusing her value remarks on alleged value gouging, Harris advised that inflation is basically 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 wrongdoer: authorities spending.
As Antoni famous, “One of the functions of money is that of a measuring tool. If a yardstick were to shrink from 36 inches down to just 30, it would take 120 of these shortened yardsticks to cover the distance of a football field, instead of 100. As the dollar has lost value, it takes more dollars to measure the value of the things we buy.”
Whereas People really feel the ache of inflation, so do companies. In line with information from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, “businesses have gotten the short end of the stick,” Antoni defined. “The producer price index is used to measure inflation on the products and services businesses buy—sometimes called wholesale inflation—and that index has risen 17.5% since Biden took office. Conversely, the consumer price index, the widely cited metric for inflation faced by American families, is up 17.1% over that same time.”
“Businesses have actually been sheltering consumers from some cost increases in an effort to maintain market share and not lose customers,” he wrote. “That also explains why, according to the Biden administration’s Census Bureau, total corporate profits have fallen for the last six quarters after adjusting for inflation.”
“If alleged price gouging were really the cause of inflation, did businessmen magically become greedy when Biden took office?” Antoni requested. “Were corporations never greedy in the 40 years leading up to Biden’s inflationary expansion of government? Businesses haven’t even passed all their higher costs on to consumers; if they’re trying to be greedy, they’re doing it all wrong.”
Harris accused Trump of cynically utilizing immigration as a marketing campaign challenge reasonably than trying to unravel the issue.
“Politicians have got to stop treating immigration as an issue to scare up votes in an election,” she mentioned. “I will work with Democrats and Republicans to sign into law the border security bill that Donald Trump killed.”
“We will quickly remove those who arrive here unlawfully, prosecute the cartels, and give Border Patrol the support they most desperately need,” she added. “I will work with Congress to pass immigration reform, including an earned path to citizenship for hard-working immigrants.”
But her narrative doesn’t align with actuality. Biden solely supported the “border security bill” 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 referred to as “Remain 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 legislation.
Trump, against this, directed his administration to crack down on unlawful immigration when he was in workplace, creating new insurance policies to stop unlawful entries.
Individuals Who Disagree Are Not the Enemy
Harris claimed that she doesn’t contemplate individuals who disagree along with her to be the enemy.
“I pledge to listen to experts, to those who will be impacted by the decisions I make, and to people who disagree with me,” she mentioned. “Unlike Donald Trump, I don’t believe people who disagree with me are the enemy. He wants to put them in jail. I’ll give them a seat at my table.”
“I pledge to be a president for all Americans, and to always put country above party and self,” she added.
But Harris’ document suggests she does contemplate those that disagree along with her to be the enemy.
David Daleiden and the Heart 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 obtained funding from Deliberate Parenthood throughout her 2016 Senate marketing campaign, directed her workplace to go looking 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 fees towards Daleiden and his middle in 2017.
“I would say this is an abuse of the criminal process,” Peter Breen, particular counsel on the Thomas Extra Society, informed PJ Media in 2020. “I could point you to undercover investigations that are being shown on the evening news in Los Angeles. Under the standard they are applying to David, those would 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 People for Prosperity and American Freedom Regulation Heart. Her workplace demanded that these teams flip over their IRS Schedule B tax types, which embrace donor data. Each teams refused handy over the types, citing issues for donor anonymity.
Harris’ workplace threatened to droop their nonprofit registrations and advantageous their leaders. The Supreme Court docket 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 night time, 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, referred to as Puerto Rico an “island of garbage.”
“They’re good, decent honorable people,” Biden mentioned of Puerto Ricans. “The only garbage I see floating out there is his supporters. His demonization of these people is unconscionable and it’s un-American.”
Talking about Hinchcliffe Tuesday, Trump informed ABC, “I don’t know him, someone put him up there. I don’t know who he is.”
Tyler O’Neil is managing editor of The Every day Sign and the creator 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 Every day Sign.
