By james art By Eric Bradner, CNN
(CNN) – Donald Trump and Kamala Harris have honed their closing arguments — and now both are turning to famous places to try to help those messages get across just 10 days after Election Day.
The former president returns to his hometown on Sunday for a rally at one of New York’s most iconic landmarks, Madison Square Garden. Two days later, the vice president held an event at the Ellipse, the park just off the South Lawn of the White House where Trump’s fiery speech nearly four years ago launched the attack on the US Capitol.
The two events could provide key moments in a race that is on a razor’s edge, with the latest CNN nationwide poll showing each candidate with the support of 47 percent of likely voters.
Both campaigns are urging supporters to vote early and trying to reach the vanishingly small groups of undecided voters — or those who know which candidate they prefer but aren’t sure whether they will vote.
Harris and Trump clarified the issues they highlighted in the final days of the campaign. Harris is leaning on her support for abortion rights, a political winner for Democrats after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022. She also contrasts her character with that of Trump, a strategy aimed at reaching independent and moderate Republicans.
“Either you have a choice between Donald Trump sitting in the Oval Office, suffocating, plotting revenge, retribution, writing his enemies list,” she told reporters Thursday, “or what I’m going to do, which is to answer to people, like people last night, with a to-do list.’
Trump has slammed the vice president for border security, using dehumanizing language aimed at undocumented immigrants while focusing on an issue that has been central to his political identity in all three of his presidential runs. Part of his larger point is that Democrats have, in four years, undermined the stability and economic successes of his tenure in the Oval Office.
By holding a rally in Madison Square Garden, Trump is banking on his own exposure and celebrity — anticipating that he can fill the arena in the dark blue city and hoping that the spectacle will reach television and telephone screens in all seven battleground states.
“I will save every city in America that has been attacked and conquered,” he said Thursday in Las Vegas.
Harris’s two lists
Previewing the final sprint to Election Day, a senior Harris campaign official said he “expects to see more” of the vice president referencing the former president’s description of political opponents as “enemies within” while describing the race as a decision between Trump’s ‘enemies’ list’ and her own ‘to-do list’.
Her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Waltz, also used the framing for the first time Thursday while campaigning in North Carolina.
“She has a to-do list. He has an enemies list,” Waltz 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 a senior campaign official described as the start of the campaign’s closing argument. That argument illustrates what a Harris administration would look like compared to 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 isn’t a presidential battleground.
Still, Harris strayed from the seven states expected to decide the election (the Great Lakes 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 second most populous state in the country, 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 mother’s life.
Harris told the Houston crowd that the Lone Star State is “ground zero in the fight for reproductive freedom.”
Harris’ campaign paired her trip Friday with an ad highlighting Trump taking credit for his role in ending the constitutional right to 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 suggest could be a historic gender gap.
“Our message right now is to keep our foot on the gas on early voting,” a senior campaign official told CNN, adding, “All of these events down the line are about mobilization.”
Harris is expected to continue to touch on those topics alongside his most prominent supporters Saturday when he 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 – his home for more than seven decades – for his rally at Madison Square Garden.
It is an iconic place in an iconic city. But New York is also a deeply blue state where virtually no Republican believes Trump can win.
Still, his campaign sees a positive direction for Sunday’s event. The Madison Square Garden Rally will be one of the most covered moments of the race – with media coverage in all seven swing states. It also pairs with a pre-event fundraiser. And it could help the GOP in the battle for control of the U.S. House of Representatives, with several New York-area seats currently held by vulnerable Republicans.
Trump also said Wednesday that he thinks he can win New York, in part because, he says, migrants are “taking over the city.”
“We think we have a chance to win New York for the first time in, well, a long time, many, many decades. And we think there’s a real chance with what’s going on, with the migrants, to take over the city, to take over the whole state, frankly,” he said on Fox News radio. Ronald Reagan in 1984 was the last Republican presidential candidate to carry the Empire State.
Trump’s comments showed that just as Harris focused on abortion rights, he attacked his Democratic rival on border security.
He also visited Austin, Texas, on Friday to highlight an issue that has been a cornerstone of his political campaigns since the day he launched his first bid for president in 2015. Trump has vowed to expand his tough immigration policies — including holding mass deportations – if he wins another term.
“Kamala is here in Texas to rock with woke celebs. Isn’t it exciting? But she’s not going to meet with any of the victims of immigrant crime while she’s here,” Trump said in Austin.
Although the economy remains the most pressing priority for voters, polls show why Harris and Trump are targeting these competing topics for their closing arguments. The latest poll by The New York Times and Siena College shows the former president continues to hold the lead in who has more confidence in managing immigration — 54 percent to 43 percent — while Harris leads by double digits when it’s about abortions.
Like Harris, Trump’s campaign is entirely focused on picking up supporters — especially those who vote irregularly.
Trump’s running mate, Ohio Sen. Jay D. Vance, visited the Oakland County Republican Party office in Michigan on Thursday — the party’s main base in a sprawling suburban district northwest of Detroit where Harris is expected to win but where Trump could significantly increased its chances at state by keeping the fields close.
“What we’re really focusing on is the people who are going to vote for us. They are angry about the direction of the country, but only if they actually show up at the polls,” Vance said. “Every time you store a vote, what it allows us to do is put more resources into securing the next vote and the next vote and the next vote.”
He added: “We’ve bought all the TV time we’re going to buy. We’ve bought all the radio time we’re going to buy. But the most important thing here is exactly this turnout operation.”
CNN’s Priscilla Alvarez, Keith Maher, Aaron Pellish, Terrence Burledge, Kate Sullivan, Kevin Liptak and Samantha Waldenberg contributed to this report.
The-CNN-Wire
™ & © 2024 Cable News Network, Inc., a Warner Bros. Discovery Company. All rights reserved.