Madison Square Garden versus the White House Ellipse: where Trump and Harris are making their final pitches
By Eric Bradner, CNN
(CNN) — Donald Trump and Kamala Harris have honed their closing arguments – and now they’re both turning to famous venues to try to help those messages break through just 10 days from Election Day.
The former president is returning to his hometown on Sunday for a rally in one of New York City’s most iconic landmarks, Madison Square Garden. Two days later, the vice president is holding an event at the Ellipse, the park just outside the South Lawn of the White House, where Trump’s fiery speech nearly four years ago set in motion the attack on the US Capitol.
The two events could deliver key moments in a race that is on a razor’s edge, with CNN’s final nationwide poll showing each candidate with the support of 47% of likely voters.
Both campaigns are urging supporters to cast their ballots early and attempting to reach the vanishingly small pools of undecided voters – or those who know which candidate they prefer but are not sure whether they will vote.
Harris and Trump have made clear the issues they’re highlighting in the campaign’s last days. Harris is leaning into her support for abortion rights, a political winner for Democrats since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022. She’s also contrasting her character with Trump’s – a strategy aimed at reaching independents and moderate Republicans.
“Either you have the choice of a Donald Trump, who will sit in the Oval Office stewing, plotting revenge, retribution, writing out his enemies list,” she told reporters Thursday, “or what I will be doing, which is responding to folks, like the folks last night, with a to-do list.”
Trump is hammering the vice president on border security, using dehumanizing language aimed at undocumented immigrants as he focuses on an issue that’s been at the core of his political identity for all three of his presidential runs. It’s part of his broader case that Democrats in four years have undercut the stability and economic successes of his tenure in the Oval Office.
In staging a rally at Madison Square Garden, Trump is betting on his own showmanship and celebrity – expecting he can fill the arena in the deep-blue city and hoping that the spectacle will reach television and phone screens in all seven battleground states.
“I will rescue every town across America that has been invaded and conquered,” he said Thursday in Las Vegas.
Harris’ two lists
Previewing the final sprint to Election Day, a senior Harris campaign official said to “expect to see more” of the vice president invoking the former president’s description of political opponents as “enemies within” while also describing the race as a decision between Trump’s “enemies list” and her own “to-do list.”
Her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, also deployed that framing for the first time Thursday, as he campaigned in North Carolina.
“She’s got a to-do list. He’s got an enemies list,” Walz said.
Harris’ star-studded rally Thursday night in Georgia – her first campaign appearance with former President Barack Obama, and one that featured several other celebrities – kicked off what the senior campaign official described as the homing in of the campaign’s closing argument. That argument illustrates what a Harris administration would look like compared with the threat Harris says Trump poses, the official said.
The vice president continued that celebrity-fueled push Friday night in Texas – a rare visit to a state that is not a presidential battleground.
Still, Harris detoured from the seven states expected to decide the election (the Great Lakes swing states of Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, and the Sun Belt battlegrounds of Arizona, Georgia, Nevada and North Carolina) for two big reasons. First: Beyoncé and Willie Nelson appeared with her.
And second: Texas, the nation’s second-most populous state, has one of the strictest abortion laws. The procedure is banned after six weeks – before many women know they are pregnant — with exceptions only in cases to save the life of the mother.
Harris told the Houston crowd the Lone Star State was “ground zero in the fight for reproductive freedom.”
Harris’ campaign paired her trip Friday with an ad that highlighted Trump taking credit for his role in ending the constitutional right to an abortion.
The contrast between Harris and Trump on abortion rights is one that the vice president’s campaign is highlighting as it looks to capitalize on what polls show could be a historic gender gap.
“Our message right now is to keep the foot on the gas on early voting,” the senior campaign official told CNN, adding: “All these events down the stretch are about mobilization.”
Harris is expected to continue to hit those themes alongside her highest-profile supporters on Saturday, when she campaigns in Michigan with former first lady Michelle Obama.
Trump goes to Madison Square Garden
A key moment for the former president comes Sunday when he returns to New York City – his home for more than seven decades – for his rally in Madison Square Garden.
It’s an iconic venue in an iconic city. But New York is also a deep-blue state that virtually no Republican believes Trump can win.
Still, his campaign sees upside for Sunday’s event. The Madison Square Garden rally will be one of the most-covered moments of the race – with media coverage reaching into all seven swing states. It’s also being paired with a pre-event fundraiser. And it could help the GOP in the battle for control of the US House of Representatives, with several New York-area seats currently held by vulnerable Republicans.
Trump also said Wednesday he thinks he can win New York, in part because, he claimed, migrants are “taking over the city.”
“We think there’s a chance of winning New York first time since, well, long time, many, many decades. And we think there’s a real chance with what’s going on, with the migrants taking over the city, taking over, the whole state, frankly,” he said on Fox News Radio. Ronald Reagan in 1984 was the last Republican presidential nominee to carry the Empire State.
Trump’s comments demonstrated that, just as Harris is focused on abortion rights, he is attacking his Democratic rival on border security.
He also visited Austin, Texas, on Friday, to highlight an issue that’s been a cornerstone of his political campaigns since the day he launched his first run for the presidency in 2015. Trump has vowed to expand his hard-line immigration policies – including conducting mass deportations – if he wins another term.
“Kamala is here in Texas to rub shoulders with woke celebrities. Isn’t that exciting? But she’s not going to meet with any of the victims of migrant crime while she’s here,” Trump said in Austin.
While the economy remains the most pressing priority for voters, polls show why Harris and Trump are leaning into these competing issues for their closing arguments. The latest survey from The New York Times and Siena College shows that the former president continues to hold an advantage on who is more trusted to handle immigration – 54% to 43% – while Harris leads by double digits when it comes to abortion.
Much like Harris, Trump’s campaign is fully focused on turning out supporters – particularly those who vote irregularly.
Trump’s running mate, Ohio Sen. JD Vance, visited the Oakland County GOP office in Michigan on Thursday – the party’s home base in a sprawling suburban county northwest of Detroit that Harris is expected to win, but where Trump could significantly boost his chances statewide by keeping the margins close.
“What we’re really focused on is the people who are going to vote for us. They’re pissed off about the direction of the country, but only if they actually show up to the polls,” Vance said. “Every time you guys bank a vote, what that allows us to do is then put more resources to banking the next vote and the next vote and the next vote.”
He added: “We bought all the TV time that we’re going to buy. We bought all the radio time that we’re going to buy. But the most important thing here is just this turnout operation.”
CNN’s Priscilla Alvarez, Kit Maher, Aaron Pellish, Terence Burlij, Kate Sullivan, Kevin Liptak and Samantha Waldenberg contributed to this report.
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