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Harris’s Closing Argument: Let's Turn the Page on Trump

The crowd at Harris's Washington, D.C., rally Tuesday evening
Reuters
By Yuval Rosenberg and Michael Rainey
Tuesday, October 29, 2024

Happy Tuesday! Will the World Series end tonight? Game 4 starts at 8:08 ET, but there’s another big event scheduled for 7:30 p.m.

In Her Closing Argument, Harris Urges America to Turn the Page on Trump

Vice President Kamala Harris is about to deliver what is being billed as her campaign’s “closing argument” — a major address laying out her vision for the country and contrasting it with that of former President Donald Trump. She’ll be doing it in front of an anticipated crowd of thousands at The Ellipse near the National Mall in Washington, D.C., the same spot where Trump riled up a mob of his supporters on January 6, 2021, before they attacked the Capitol.

Harris will reportedly promise to “put country above party and above self” and be a president for all Americans, according to excerpts of her remarks released to the media by her campaign. “I pledge to seek common ground and common-sense solutions to make your lives better," she is expected to say.

She is also expected to repeat her criticisms of Trump as “unstable,” “obsessed with revenge,” “out for unchecked power” and a chaotic and divisive force seeking to instill fear in Americans. “Unlike Donald Trump, I don’t believe people who disagree with me are the enemy,” she is expected to say. “He wants to put them in jail. I’ll give them a seat at my table.”

Harris previewed her speech in a morning interview with “The Breakfast Club” radio show. “I would ask people to imagine the Oval Office — people have seen it on TV, you know what it looks like — it’s either going to be Donald Trump sitting behind that desk writing out his enemies list of who he’s going to seek revenge and retribution on, or it’s going to be me working on behalf of the American people as I always have done, working on my to-do list to see through these policies that are about homeownership, lifting up our small businesses, lifting up families with children and lifting up the discourse in a way that it is not about trashing people all of the time.”

Trump calls MSG rally a ‘lovefest’: Earlier in the day, Trump sought to get ahead of Harris’s expected attack lines by delivering remarks from his Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Florida, where he attacked Harris on immigration and the economy and accused her of allowing rampant bloodshed and squalor in U.S. cities and causing chaos and war globally. He again spread falsehoods about voter fraud and the 2020 election and charged Harris with the very same accusations that have been leveled against him and his campaign. “She’s running on a campaign of immoralization and really a campaign of destruction, but really, perhaps more than anything else, it’s a campaign of hate,” Trump said.

Those comments followed Trump’s own controversial Madison Square Garden rally on Sunday, which prompted widespread outcry over the angry, racist and misogynistic rhetoric from many speakers. Some television reporters on Tuesday wondered, perhaps naively, whether Trump would apologize for any of the comments, such as the disparaging jokes by comedian Tony Hinchcliffe, who called Puerto Rico “a floating island of garbage.”

Trump distanced himself from the comic on Tuesday. “I don't know him. Someone put him up there. I don't know who he is," he told Rachel Scott of ABC News. But he defended the MSG rally during his speech at Mar-a-Lago and said it was an honor to be at the event, despite the massive backlash it sparked and the worries it caused among GOP operatives. “The love in that room, it was breathtaking. There’s never been an event that beautiful,” Trump said. “It was a lovefest. It was love for our country.”

Trump has previously called the January 6, 2021, riot at the Capitol a “lovefest,” too.

Chart of the Day: About That IRS Money

The Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 provided roughly $80 billion for the IRS over 10 years for the purpose of modernizing operations and boosting staff, with the ultimate goal of collecting more revenues, especially from those wealthy households and corporations that had been avoiding or underpaying their taxes for years due in part to chronic underfunding of the agency. This new chart from the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center summarizes how the IRS intends to use those funds; the chart includes the roughly 25% reduction in the initial funding approved by Congress amid fierce opposition to the plan from Republican lawmakers.

“Despite the rollback, the IRS still has big goals, with plans to use about 44 percent for operations support, 41 percent for enforcement, 8 percent for modernization, and 6 percent funds taxpayer services, and less than .05 percent for a study of a direct-file system,” TPC said.

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Consumer Confidence Surges, While Job Openings Fall

Americans are feeling more optimistic about the economy, the Conference Board said Tuesday, as its consumer confidence index rose to 108 in October, up from 99 the month before. Another measure of confidence, known as the present situation index, which measures consumers’ assessment of current business and labor market conditions, rose even more sharply, climbing 12 points to 138 in October.

“Consumer confidence recorded the strongest monthly gain since March 2021, but still did not break free of the narrow range that has prevailed over the past two years,” Dana M. Peterson, the group’s chief economist, said. “In October’s reading, all five components of the Index improved.  ... Compared to last month, consumers were substantially more optimistic about future business conditions and remained positive about future income. Also, for the first time since July 2023, they showed some cautious optimism about future job availability.”

A separate report from the Labor Department on Tuesday offered a less buoyant view of the job market. The number of job openings fell to 7.4 million in September from 7.9 million in August, defying expectations for no change from month to month. It was the smallest number of job openings since January 2021. Most of the decline in vacancies was concentrated in the South, however, suggesting that recent hurricanes may have played a role in the disappointing performance.

At the same time, the number of job openings remains modestly above the level seen before the pandemic, as MarketWatch’s Jeffry Bartash noted, and the number of jobs per unemployed worker held steady at 1.1. “The labor market is no longer red hot, but it’s still pretty warm,” Bartash said.


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