Are Both Trump and Harris Fumbling Their Closing Arguments?

As the contentious 2024 election draws to a close, Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump have had a series of unforced campaign trail errors that political strategists say reflect both fatigue and the candidates’ own foibles.

The missteps span from racist jokes told by speakers at Trump’s Madison Square Garden rally on Sunday to Harris’ answers during a recent media blitz that some commentators called “word salad.”

The television personality Geraldo Rivera, a former Fox News host and on-time Trump supporter, said Monday that Trump’s New York rally on Sunday could spell the end of his 2024 bid.

“I think it will be famous for ending President Trump’s meteoric campaign to be reelected,” Rivera told CNN‘s Wolf Blitzer. “I think that the surveys, the polls will show that this was the time, this was the moment where things turned on Donald Trump.”

Trump’s rally made headlines after the comedian Tony Hinchcliffe described Puerto Rico as a “floating island of garbage,” in addition to making a number of racist jokes about Hispanics, Jews, and Black people. Trump himself also doubled down on his anti-immigrant rhetoric, describing the United States as being “occupied” by migrants.

Chapin Fay, a Republican strategist and the founder of Lighthouse Public Affairs, told Bloomberg News that Trump’s policy platform was overshadowed by the racist comments made at his rally over the weekend.

Trump’s running mate, Ohio Sen. JD Vance, who said he hadn’t heard Hinchcliffe’s comments, pushed back on that idea.

“I’m not worried about a joke that a comedian who has no affiliation with Donald Trump’s campaign told,” Vance said at a campaign event in Racine, Wisconsin.

A senior advisor for the Trump campaign said in a statement, “This joke does not reflect the views of President Trump or the campaign.”

Meanwhile, according to the New York Times, officials at Future Forward, a leading super PAC supporting Harris, are worried that her tripling down on Trump’s fitness for office and calling him a “fascist” diverts attention from her policy proposals and is a misstep at this stage in the campaign.

And, coming out of her much-hyped media blitz last week, Harris’ answers, at time, came off as stale, said political commentators said.

David Axelrod, who was Barack Obama’s chief strategist during his 2008 and 2012 campaigns, called Harris’ answers during last week’s townhall with CNN “word salad city” and also said she avoided answering tough foreign policy and immigration questions.

“She would acknowledge no concerns about any of the administration’s policies,” he said. “And that’s a mistake. Sometimes you have to concede things, and she didn’t concede much.”

The political commentator Chris Cillizza said Harris’ assertion that she wouldn’t have done anything differently than President Joe Biden in the last four years “an unforced error” that could hurt her campaign.

“In a single sentence, she, on camera, owned every policy Biden has pushed over the last four years,” Cillizza wrote on X, formerly Twitter. “It’s a ready-made TV ad for Donald Trump. A gift. And it’s an unforced error by Harris. One she can’t have in this final month with the race so close.”

Trump’s and Harris’ fumbles come as polls show them within striking distance of each other. Harris currently has a slim lead over Trump nationally, with 48.1 percent support compared to Trump’s 46.6 percent, according to FiveThirtyEight, which averages statistically reputable polls from across the country.