Akayla Gardner | (TNS) Bloomberg News

WASHINGTON — Raucous crowds, musical guests and grand entrances: Kamala Harris’ campaign events are looking a lot like Donald Trump’s.

As Harris, the new Democratic nominee, barnstorms the country, her rallies have increasingly taken on the atmosphere once seen at Trump’s signature events — highlighting the divergent fortunes for the two presidential campaigns in recent weeks.

The vice president’s ascent to the top of the ticket has seen a surge in enthusiasm from Democrats fully on display at her rallies, while Trump this week has largely been off the trail, relying instead on news conferences and interviews to seize the spotlight.

Harris’ swing-state blitz took her to Wisconsin on Wednesday, where she held a rally outdoors — the first time either of the two presidential candidates have done so since the failed assassination attempt on Trump last month.

Parallels with the showcase features of Trump’s rallies, which defined his first run for the presidency in 2016 and were a moneymaker for his operation, were apparent — streams of people and cars lined up, a packed crowd in place hours before the candidates arrived, and loud, upbeat music to rile up an already ebullient audience.

Harris has been taking the stage to speakers blaring pop superstar Beyonce’s song with rapper Kendrick Lamar, Freedom – similar to how Trump has long appeared before audiences to country singer Lee Greenwood’s iconic God Bless the USA. Songs by groundbreaking female artists such as Diana Ross and Whitney Houston have been played regularly at events for a candidate who is seeking to become the first Black woman and Asian-American president in U.S. history.

One-upping their GOP rivals, the Democratic campaign has trotted out live acts. Wisconsin eventgoers were treated to a performance by folk rock band Bon Iver, who donned a camouflage cap emblazoned with the names of Harris and her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz. Past rallies have seen rappers Megan Thee Stallion and Quavo take the stage in Atlanta and in Philadelphia the audience was kept on its feet by local artist DJ Diamond Cuts.

At a Wednesday rally in Detroit, Harris took another page from Trump’s once emblematic, showy rallies – pulling up in her plane. As Harris and Walz walked off Air Force Two, 15,000 people cheered from an open-air hanger. The attendance, shared by the campaign, marked the largest of Harris’ run.

While Trump rallies are a sea of red, with supporters donning hats, shirts and signs with his “Make America Great Again” slogan — Harris’ campaign has sought to match him in showcasing themes of Americana — decking out their events with red, white and blue signage for their candidate. A camouflage cap the campaign offered sold out online Tuesday in 30 minutes after Walz shared a photo of himself wearing it.

In Philadelphia, Harris’ team also handed out blinking wristbands with red, white and blue bulbs — similar to the bands that became a spectacle at pop star Taylor Swift’s concerts, where they were used to create stunning light shows.

And Harris’ own stump speech has been heavy on patriotic themes — touching on her life story and Walz’s and the unique nature of a ticket that pairs the Oakland-born child of immigrants with a running mate who grew up as a Nebraska farm boy.

The rallies are also a sharp contrast with the often subdued events President Joe Biden held during his campaign — staid, sparsely attended speeches on the economy or protecting democratic norms, generally lacking an aura of excitement.

And in a show of party unity, Democrats once seen as potential replacements for Biden have been given top billing, including Govs. Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan and Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania.

The co-opting of Trump’s campaign stylebook comes at a pivotal point in the race with the candidates facing a three-month sprint to Election Day. Harris’ swing-state tour is aimed at capitalizing on a wave of momentum that has seen her erase Trump’s polling lead and overtake him in the critical money race.

Alongside the rallies have been more traditional campaign events. On Thursday, Harris and Walz visited a union hall outside Detroit joined by United Auto Workers President Shawn Fain, where they met with rank-and-file labor members. Winning over those voters will be crucial in states such as Michigan.

“The true strength of a leader is not based on who you beat down, it’s based on who you lift up,” Harris said.

While there’s growing similarities, differences remain. Where crowds at Trump rallies regularly chanted “lock her up” in reference to his 2016 opponent Hillary Clinton, crowds at Harris events have responded with “lock him up,” mocking the first former president to be convicted of a felony. But in contrast to Trump, Harris has sought to tamp down those chants.

When the crowd took up the refrain Wednesday in Wisconsin, Harris told supporters “hold on.”

“The courts are going to handle that part of it. What we’re gonna do is beat him in November,” she said to cheers.

The Harris rally crowds also trend younger and more diverse — but lack the roving groups of Trump loyalists like the “Front Row Joes” who seek to attend each of the former president’s rallies and provide regular fodder for back-and-forths with the candidate. At recent events, Trump has marveled at what the husbands of a devoted pack of female superfans who have attended dozens of rallies must think.

But Walz has also looked to add an element of audience engagement. After delivering a sharp attack on Trump’s running mate, Sen. JD Vance of Ohio, during a rally in Philadelphia that left the crowd roaring, Walz grinned and offered: “You see what I did there?”

The vice president, however, rarely strays from the teleprompter at her events and has kept her speeches short, allowing her to copy Trump’s showmanship without venturing into gaffes.

But like Trump, whose own stump speech is full of stock lines known to animate his base, she’s settled on a number of crowd-pleasing hits.

Harris regularly references her career as a prosecutor who took on “perpetrators of all kinds” and who knows “Donald Trump’s type,” putting the spotlight on the former president’s many legal woes. And her phrase “we’re not going back” – a pointed rebuttal to Trump’s “Make America Great Again” slogan – is often chanted by attendees.

The events have also not always been pristinely choreographed showcases. In Detroit, Harris was interrupted by hecklers critical of the administration’s handling of the Israel-Hamas war.

After the demonstration continued, Harris addressed the demonstrators directly, saying, “You know what? If you want Donald Trump to win, then say that. Otherwise, I’m speaking.”

(Josh Wingrove and María Paula Mijares Torres contributed to this report.)

___

©2024 Bloomberg L.P. Visit bloomberg.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

By MEG KINNARD Associated Press

CINCINNATI (AP) — Republicans are questioning Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz’s military record after Vice President Kamala Harris named him as her running mate this week.

Here’s a look at the issue:

He retired before his unit’s deployment to Iraq

Walz served a total of 24 years in various units and jobs in the Army National Guard. But it’s his retirement in 2005 that’s prompting criticism from some Republicans who are suggesting he abandoned his team to pursue a campaign for Congress.

As he ramped up for a congressional bid in 2005, Walz’s campaign in March issued a statement saying he still planned to run despite a possible mobilization of Minnesota National Guard soldiers to Iraq. According to the Guard, Walz retired from service in May of that year.

In August 2005, the Department of the Army issued a mobilization order for Walz’s unit. The unit mobilized in October of that year before it deployed to Iraq in March 2006.

There is no evidence that Walz timed his departure with the intent of avoiding deployment. But the fact remains that he left ahead of his unit’s departure. In a statement, the Harris campaign pushed back on GOP characterizations of Walz’s service, and also noted that he advocated for veterans once he was elected to the U.S. House.

“After 24 years of military service, Governor Walz retired in 2005 and ran for Congress, where he chaired Veterans Affairs and was a tireless advocate for our men and women in uniform — and as Vice President of the United States he will continue to be a relentless champion for our veterans and military families,” the campaign said.

Before leaving Detroit, where she and Walz played up their support for organized labor, Harris on Thursday responded to a question about the criticism of her running mate’s record.

“Listen, I praise anyone who has presented themselves to serve our country,” she said. “And I think that we all should.”

Walz didn’t serve in a combat zone

Earlier this week Harris’ campaign circulated on X a 2018 clip of Walz speaking out against gun violence, and saying, “We can make sure that those weapons of war, that I carried in war, is the only place where those weapons are at.” That comment suggests that Walz portrayed himself as someone who spent time in a combat zone.

According to the Nebraska Army National Guard, Walz enlisted in April 1981 — just two days after his 17th birthday — and entered service as an infantryman, completing a 12-week Army infantry basic training course before graduating from high school.

Related Articles

Harris takes page from Trump with large-scale rallies

Who do independents favor in the presidential election? New poll finds big change

FACT FOCUS: A look at claims made by Trump at news conference

Tim Walz depicted as rural champion at Farmfest by Heidi Heitkamp and Peggy Flanagan

Trump recommits to a Sept. 10 debate at news conference and lashes out at Harris

While attending the University of Houston in 1985, he was reclassified as a field artillery cannoneer as a member of the Texas Army National Guard, later serving as an instructor with the Arkansas Army National Guard.

In 1987, Walz returned to Nebraska’s Guard detachment, continuing field artillery assignments while he completed a college degree. By 1996, he transferred to the Minnesota Army National Guard. In 2003, he deployed to Italy in a support position of active military forces in Iraq and Afghanistan. But he was not in a combat zone himself.

“Do not pretend to be something that you’re not,” Republican vice presidential nominee JD Vance said Wednesday as he campaigned in Michigan. “I’d be ashamed if I was saying that I lied about my military service like you did.”

Vance enlisted in the Marine Corps after graduating high school, serving four years as a combat correspondent, a type of military journalist, and deploying to Iraq in that capacity in 2005.

Neither Trump nor Harris has served in the U.S. military. Trump received a series of deferments during Vietnam, including one attained with a physician’s letter stating that he suffered from bone spurs in his feet.

The Harris campaign statement said Walz “would never insult or undermine any American’s service to this country” and “thanks Senator Vance for putting his life on the line for our country. It’s the American way.”

What about his rank?

Harris’ campaign has referred to Walz as a “retired Command Sergeant Major,” one of the top ranks for an enlisted soldier. He did in fact achieve that rank, but personnel files show he was reduced in rank months after retiring. That left him as a master sergeant for benefits purposes.

Minnesota National Guard officials have said that Walz retired before completing coursework at the U.S. Army Sergeants Major Academy, along with other requirements associated with his promotion.

Associated Press writers Darlene Superville, Trenton Daniel and Richard Lardner contributed to this report.

The Associated Press

In his first news conference since Vice President Kamala Harris became the Democratic nominee for president, former President Donald Trump said he would debate her on Sept. 10 and pushed for two more debates. The Republican presidential nominee spoke for more than an hour, discussing a number of issues facing the country and then taking questions from reporters. He made a number of false and misleading claims. Many of them have been made before.

Here’s a look at some of those claims.

CROWD SIZES

CLAIM: “The biggest crowd I’ve ever spoken — I’ve spoken to the biggest crowds. Nobody’s spoken to crowds bigger than me. If you look at Martin Luther King when he did his speech, his great speech, and you look at ours, same real estate, same everything, same number of people, if not we had more. And they said he had a million people, but I had 25,000 people.”

THE FACTS: Trump was comparing the crowd at his speech in front of the White House on Jan. 6, 2021, to the crowd that attended Martin Luther King Jr.’s famous “I Have a Dream” speech on Aug. 28, 1963, at the Lincoln Memorial.

But far more people are estimated to have been at the latter than the former.

FILE – Crowds are shown in front of the Washington Monument during the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, Aug. 28, 1963, in Washington. (AP Photo, File)

Approximately 250,000 people attended the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, at which King gave his speech, according to the National Park Service. The Associated Press reported in 2021 that there were at least 10,000 people at Trump’s address.

Moreover, Trump and King did not speak in the same location. King spoke from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, which looks east toward the Washington Monument. Trump spoke at the Ellipse, a grassy area just south of the White House.

JAN. 6

CLAIM: “Nobody was killed on Jan. 6.”

THE FACTS: That’s false. Five people died in the Jan. 6, 2021, riot and its immediate aftermath. Pro-Trump rioters breached the U.S. Capitol that day amid Congress’ effort to certify Democrat Joe Biden’s 2020 election victory.

Among the deceased are Ashli Babbitt, a Trump supporter shot and killed by police, and Brian Sicknick, a police officer who died the day after battling the mob. Four additional officers who responded to the riot killed themselves in the following weeks and months.

Babbitt, a 35-year-old Air Force veteran from San Diego, was shot and killed by a police officer as she climbed through a broken part of a Capitol door during the violent riot. Trump has often cited Babbitt’s death while lamenting the treatment of those who attended a rally outside the White House that day and then marched to the Capitol, many of whom fought with police.

DEMOCRATIC NOMINATION

CLAIM: “The presidency was taken away from Joe Biden, and I’m no Biden fan, but I tell you what, from a constitutional standpoint, from any standpoint you look at, they took the presidency away.”

THE FACTS: There is nothing in the Constitution that prevents the Democratic Party from making Vice President Kamala Harris its nominee. That process is determined by the Democratic National Committee.

Harris officially claimed the nomination Monday following a five-day online voting process, receiving 4,563 delegate votes out of 4,615 cast, or about 99% of participating delegates. A total of 52 delegates in 18 states cast their votes for “present,” the only other option on the ballot.

The vice president was the only candidate eligible to receive votes after no other candidate qualified by the party’s deadline following President Joe Biden’s decision to drop out of the race on July 21.

THE ECONOMY

CLAIM: Suggesting things would be different if he had been in office rather than Biden: “You wouldn’t have had inflation. You wouldn’t have had any inflation because inflation was caused by their bad energy problems. Now they’ve gone back to the Trump thing because they need the votes. They’re drilling now because they had to go back because gasoline was going up to 7, 8, 9 dollars a barrel.”

THE FACTS: There would have been at least some inflation if Trump had been reelected in 2020 because many of the factors causing inflation were outside a president’s control. Prices spiked in 2021 after cooped-up Americans ramped up their spending on goods such as exercise bikes and home office furniture, overwhelming disrupted supply chains. U.S. auto companies, for example, couldn’t get enough semiconductors and had to sharply reduce production, causing new and used car prices to shoot higher. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in March 2022 also sent gas and food prices soaring around the world, as Ukraine’s wheat exports were disrupted and many nations boycotted Russian oil and gas.

Related Articles

Harris takes page from Trump with large-scale rallies

Walz’s military record under scrutiny as Vance, GOP question his service

Who do independents favor in the presidential election? New poll finds big change

Tim Walz depicted as rural champion at Farmfest by Heidi Heitkamp and Peggy Flanagan

Trump recommits to a Sept. 10 debate at news conference and lashes out at Harris

Still, under Biden, U.S. oil production reached a worldwide record level earlier this year.

Many economists, including some Democrats, say Biden’s $1.9 trillion financial support package, approved in March 2021, which provided a $1,400 stimulus check to most Americans, helped fuel inflation by ramping up demand. But it didn’t cause inflation all by itself. And Trump supported $2,000 stimulus checks in December 2020, rather than the $600 checks included in a package he signed into law in December 2020.

Prices still spiked in countries with different policies than Biden’s, such as France, Germany and the U.K., though mostly because of the sharp increase in energy costs stemming from Russia’s invasion.

IMMIGRATION

CLAIM: “Twenty million people came over the border during the Biden-Harris administration — 20 million people — and it could be very much higher than that. Nobody really knows.”

THE FACTS: Trump’s 20 million figure is unsubstantiated at best, and he didn’t provide sources.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection reports 7.1 million arrests for illegal crossings from Mexico from January 2021 through June 2024. That’s arrests, not people. Under pandemic-era asylum restrictions, many people crossed more than once until they succeeded because there were no legal consequences for getting turned back to Mexico. So the number of people is lower than the number of arrests.

In addition, CBP says it stopped migrants 1.1 million times at official land crossings with Mexico from January 2021 through June 2024, largely under an online appointment system to claim asylum called CBP One.

U.S. authorities also admitted nearly 500,000 migrants from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela under presidential authority if they had financial sponsors and arrived at an airport.

All told, that’s nearly 8.7 million encounters. Again, the number of people is lower due to multiple encounters for some.

There are an unknown number of people who eluded capture, known as “got-aways” in Border Patrol parlance. The Border Patrol estimates how many but doesn’t publish that number.

CLAIM: Vice President Kamala Harris “was the border czar 100% and all of a sudden for the last few weeks she’s not the border czar anymore.”

THE FACTS: Harris was appointed to address “root causes” of migration in Central America. That migration manifests itself in illegal crossings to the U.S., but she was not assigned to the border.

NEW YORK CASES

CLAIM: “The New York cases are totally controlled out of the Department of Justice.”

THE FACTS: Trump was referring to two cases brought against him in New York — one civil and the other criminal.

Neither has anything to do with the U.S. Department of Justice.

The civil case was initiated by a lawsuit from New York Attorney General Letitia James. In that case, Trump was ordered in February to pay a $454 million penalty for lying about his wealth for years as he built the real estate empire that vaulted him to stardom and the White House.

Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, a state-level prosecutor, brought the criminal case. In May, a jury found Trump guilty on 34 felony counts in a scheme to illegally influence the 2016 election through a hush money payment to a porn actor who said the two had sex.

Associated Press writers Melissa Goldin and Elliot Spagat and economics writer Christopher Rugaber contributed to this article.