Harris warns Trump is out for ‘unchecked power’ during Erie rally

Kamala Harris tried something new at her rally in Erie, Pennsylvania, on Monday night: She put Donald Trump on the big screen.

Midway through her stump speech, the vice president asked to “roll the tape” on short videos of Trump, featuring several recent clips of the former president speaking about “enemies from within,” suggesting in a Fox News interview that the military could be deployed on Election Day, and speaking in Erie just weeks earlier when he suggested “one rough hour” of policing as an antidote to crime.

The Trump interlude in the middle of an otherwise standard rally address from Harris showed the vice president highlighting the potential dangers of a second Trump term. Her approach mirrored the “threat to democracy” rhetoric long used by President Joe Biden to characterize Trump but that Harris has leaned into less frequently.

Putting Trump on blast at one of her own rallies reflected how Harris seeks to draw sharp contrast with the former president in the final three weeks of the election — but also how she has relatively few opportunities to do so directly, as the GOP nominee has ruled out future debates.

“Donald Trump is increasingly unstable and unhinged, and he is out for unchecked power, that is what he is looking for. He wants to send the military after American citizens,” Harris told the crowd at Erie Insurance Arena in Pennsylvania’s fifth-largest city.

The Monday night rally marked Harris’ seventh visit to western Pennsylvania but her first to Erie since she replaced Biden at the top of the Democratic ticket in July. The blue city surrounded by red in the northeast corner of the state has made Erie County decidedly purple; it was among those that Trump flipped in 2016 but lost to Biden four years later. Democratic Sen. John Fetterman, who spoke before Harris, characterized Erie as “the ultimate bellwether county, not just in Pennsylvania, but in the nation right now.”

Trump, meanwhile, was on the other side of Pennsylvania on Monday evening. He held a town hall with South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem in the community of Oaks in Montgomery County, one of the rapidly blueing Philadelphia collar counties where Trump needs to claw back votes to win in November.

Speaking about Harris, the former president declared, “We have to beat her. She’s not for this job” and later characterized the vice president as “not a smart woman.”

He also hammered Biden and Harris over the 2021 Afghanistan withdrawal that left 13 U.S. troops killed and told the father of one of the deceased soldiers who attended the town hall that his administration would dig into what happened in the “first week” of his presidency.

On inflation and high everyday costs, Trump blamed Harris, though he largely replied with meandering answers about his own plans, saying he wanted to “drill, baby, drill” to lower energy costs and then dipped into other topics, such as the border. He also highlighted illegal immigration as something that was hitting Black and Hispanic families especially hard, while saying he is polling better with both demographics this cycle.

Trump, who was interrupted by several people fainting in the heat, eventually veered away from the town hall-style audience questions and turned the event into a sort of concert, with the former president directing staff to play “Ave Maria” and others tracks from his rally playlist.

In Erie, meanwhile, Harris ran through her standard stump speech, including promises to sign a bill restoring Roe v. Wade, reduce costs for middle class families and institute an expanded child tax credit, while blasting Trump for proposed tariffs that she characterizes as a sales tax.

Then she turned to Trump’s rhetoric, pointing to the Supreme Court’s ruling on presidential immunity earlier this year as a reason the stakes of the 2024 election are “even higher” than 2020 or 2016.

“He’s talking about that he considers anyone who doesn’t support him or who will not bend to his will an enemy of our country,” Harris said. “It’s a serious issue.”

The Harris campaign also released a new ad on Monday highlighting Trump’s “enemy from within” comments. Harris’ running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, similarly slammed the former president’s rhetoric at a rally in Green Bay, Wisconsin, earlier in the day, saying Trump’s words were “a call for violence, plain and simple,” and “pretty damn un-American to me.”

As Harris spoke about the danger of a second Trump administration in Erie, saying the former president would face “no guardrails” if reelected, the sometimes-raucous crowd broke out into chants of “Lock him up.”

The vice president, as she often has, sought to tamp down that chorus.

“The courts will handle that, let’s handle November, shall we?” she said.