Harris pressed on key issues by undecided Pennsylvania voters in CNN town hall

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Vice President Kamala Harris participates in a CNN Presidential Town Hall moderated by CNN’s Anderson Cooper in Delaware County, Pennsylvania, on Wednesday, October 23.

Over and over, Vice President Kamala Harris argued at a CNN town hall Wednesday night that Republican rival Donald Trump is “unstable” and “unfit to serve.”

The Democratic nominee’s message in the closing weeks 2024 presidential race is squarely focused on warning Americans — particularly undecided independents and moderate Republicans — that Trump poses a threat to the nation’s core principles.

Here are some takeaways:

Read more takeaways from Harris’ CNN town hall.

A suspect has been arrested in connection with three separate shootings in 20 days that damaged a Democratic National Committee campaign office in suburban Phoenix, authorities said Wednesday.

Tempe police said Jeffrey Michael Kelly, 60, also is accused of hanging several political signs lined with razor blades on Tuesday in Ahwatukee, an affluent suburb of Phoenix where most voters have chosen Democrats in recent elections.

Authorities said the hand-painted signs were attached to palm trees and appeared to criticize Democrats and their presidential nominee, Vice President Kamala Harris.

Kelly was being held on three felony counts of acts of terrorism and four other counts related to the shootings, according to police.

Police said Kelly allegedly fired BB pellets and then gunshots at the glass front door and a window of the Arizona Democrats’ field office in the early morning hours of September 16, September 23 and October 6. Nobody was inside during the shootings.

Kelly had more than 200 guns and over 250,000 rounds of ammunition in his home, leading law enforcement to believe he may have been planning a mass casualty event, Maricopa County prosecutor Neha Bhatia said at his initial court appearance on Wednesday.

Former President Bill Clinton speaks at a campaign event supporting Democratic presidential nominee Vice President Kamala Harris in Phoenix, Arizona, on October 23, 2024.

Former President Bill Clinton has criticized Donald Trump over immigration, saying that the Republican presidential nominee wants to keep Americans “torn up and upset” over the US-Mexico border rather than solve the issue.

“But Donald Trump, he admitted, he said … we can’t go into this campaign solving a problem like this. I made my bread and butter telling people the border was a mess,” Clinton said while campaigning in Phoenix, Arizona, on Wednesday night.

He said that the “record shows that Trump sent more fully documented immigrants home than undocumented.”

Clinton then said “diversity is an asset” and “undocumented immigrants are an asset” to the nation.

The former Democratic president spent the day campaigning in battleground Arizona for Harris as early voting is underway.

He called the US Senate race between Democratic Rep. Ruben Gallego, who introduced him at tonight’s event, and GOP nominee Kari Lake a “a beautiful microcosm of the campaign that Kamala Harris is running for president.”

Republican presidential nominee, former President Donald Trump welcomes Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to the stage at a Turning Point Action campaign rally at the Gas South Arena in Duluth, Georgia, on October 23, 2024.

Former President Donald Trump said the US “will spend more money on health care than any other nation” if he is reelected, at a campaign event in Georgia on Wednesday.

Trump brought Robert F. Kennedy Jr. — whom he said is going to help him “make America healthy again” — on stage with him.

“Under the Trump administration, we will get the toxic chemicals out of our food supply and we will make our children healthy again. We will spend more money on health care than any other nation,” he said.

He went to say that the US spends more on health care than any other nation. CNN previously reported that the US spends more on health care than any other high-income country.

RFK Jr, who suspended his presidential campaign in August and endorsed the former president, is currently serving on Trump’s transition team.

Vice President Kamala Harris will travel to Georgia on Thursday, where she will deliver remarks at a campaign rally with former President Barack Obama.

She will then travel to Houston, Texas, where she’s expected to speak on reproductive freedom.

The former president campaigned alongside Harris’ running mate, Tim Walz, in Michigan earlier this week.

People listen as Vice President Kamala Harris speaks in a CNN Presidential Town Hall moderated by CNN’s Anderson Cooper in Delaware County, Pennsylvania, on Wednesday, October 23.

Some voters who stayed to talk with CNN after the town hall with Kamala Harris on Wednesday in Pennsylvania said they have made up their mind. Two of five of the voters who spoke with CNN’s John King are leaving the town hall planning to vote for Harris — but others said they still have major policy concerns.

One of the voters, Joe Donahue, did not raise his hand when asked if he was going to vote for Harris and said there are still some “personal policy difference,” specifically on abortion.

Still, Donahue said he is still “not sold” on former President Donald Trump either because “his personality” and his actions on January 6, 2021. Harris spoke with him after the town hall, which he said meant “quite a bit” to him and appreciated given the fact that they have opposing ideas.

Pam Thistle said she left the town hall with a “a feeling of adoration” for Harris personally, but as a widow raising children, the economy and paying her bills is her top concern: “I really do have to vote for my family.”

Taneisha Spall echoed that sentiment, saying she would respect Harris more if she stayed out of the “schoolyard bulling” and ran on her policy positions. She said she doesn’t feel like Harris needs to lodge attacks and that she thinks “it’s beneath her.”

Erik Svendsen said he has decided to vote for Harris. He said hearing Harris admit that she doesn’t know the answer to everything and she has people around her that she can trust resonated with him.

Former President Donald Trump said Vice President Kamala Harris was “raising her rhetoric” as he responded to her attacks about him reportedly saying he needed the kind of generals Adolf Hitler had.

Harris has not called the former president Hitler.

During a CNN town hall on Wednesday, Harris called Trump “dangerous” as she commented on reporting by The Atlantic that Trump said “I need the kind of generals that Hitler had” during a private conversation at the White House when he was president.

Harris also said “Yes, I do,” when asked at the CNN town hall if she believes Trump is a fascist.

Vice President Kamala Harris participates in a CNN Presidential Town Hall moderated by CNN’s Anderson Cooper in Delaware County, Pennsylvania, on Wednesday, October 23.

Vice President Kamala Harris slammed former President Donald Trump for putting in place policies that benefitted the wealthy during his first term in office.

“Donald Trump, when he was president, gave tax cuts to the richest, to billionaires and big corporations,” she said at CNN’s town hall Wednesday.

Facts First: This claim needs context. While the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, which Harris is referencing, benefited the rich far more than others, it did reduce taxes for most people, according to the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center.

The 2017 law made many changes to the tax code, including temporarily lowering many individual income tax rates, notably the top rate from 39.6% to 37% for the highest earners.

The Tax Policy Center took a look at whom the law would help the most. It found that taxes would decline, on average, for all income groups.

Middle-income taxpayers earning between about $49,000 and $86,000 were expected to see a tax cut of about $800, on average, or 1.4% of their after-tax income, according to the analysis.

Still, more than 60% of the benefits were expected to go to those whose incomes are in the top 20%. More than 40% of the benefits were expected to go to those in the top 5%.

Those making between $500,000 and $1 million were expected to get an average tax cut of about $21,000, lifting their after-tax incomes by 4.3%, according to the center’s estimates. Those who earn $1 million or more would enjoy an average tax cut of about $70,000, raising their after-tax incomes by 3.3%.

Only a little more than a quarter of those in the lowest-income households would see their taxes reduced. Their tax cut would be about $200, on average. However, most would see little or no benefit.

Vice President Kamala Harris participates in a CNN Presidential Town Hall moderated by CNN’s Anderson Cooper in Delaware County, Pennsylvania, on Wednesday, October 23.

At CNN’s town hall with Kamala Harris on Wednesday, the vice president claimed that only 2% of the US-Mexico border wall was built during former President Donald Trump’s administration.

“How much of that wall did he build? I think the last number I saw was about 2%,” she said.

During his campaign and throughout his presidency, Trump pledged to build a wall with parameters evolving from 1,000 miles to over 500 miles. Using the “new primary wall” numbers from the 2021 report, one could estimate that 5.2% of his 1,000-mile promise was met or 10.4% of his 500-mile goal was completed.

Harris’ running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, made a similar claim earlier this month at the CBS vice presidential debate.

The entire US-Mexico border is roughly 2,000 miles. The 52 miles of new primary wall would amount to 2.6% of that total length, but as CNN has previously reported, Trump had pledged to build more wall, not a new wall across the entire southern border.

In a back-and-forth with CNN’s Anderson Cooper on Wednesday, Vice President Kamala Harris said “No, Anderson, I pledged that I would not ban fracking,” when campaigning as the vice presidential nominee in 2020.

Facts First: This is false. Harris did not make her personal position on fracking clear during her only debate in 2020, the general election’s vice presidential debate against then-Vice President Mike Pence. Harris never explicitly stated a personal position on fracking during that debate.

Rather, she said that Joe Biden, the head of the Democratic ticket at the time, would not ban fracking if he was elected president. Harris said during the 2020 vice presidential debate:

When Harris did reference her own views on fracking earlier in the cycle during the Democratic presidential primary in 2019, she went so far as to say that “there’s no question I’m in favor of banning fracking.”

It made sense that Harris was addressing Biden’s plans at the time, given that the president sets administration policy. But contrary to her claim on Wednesday, neither of her 2020 debate comments made clear that she personally held a different view on the subject than she had the year prior.

A view of the White House in Washington, DC, on October 3.

Former President Donald Trump on Wednesday said he wished he’d recorded conversations he had while he was in the White House but didn’t because of what happened to former President Richard Nixon and how it was “not good when they found out he taped every single conversation.”

At a campaign event in Duluth, Georgia, Trump was boasting about his negotiation tactics with world leaders, including French President Emmanuel Macron, when he was president.

Trump added, “Richard Nixon, that was not good when they found out he taped every single conversation.”

Some context: It was revealed during the Watergate hearings in 1973 that Nixon had been secretly recording all of his White House conversations since 1971. The scandal ultimately led Nixon to resign. Trump, as he left office in 2021, made clear to aides in separate conversations that the mere mention of Nixon was banned and to never to bring up the ex-president ever again, CNN reported at the time.

Former President Donald Trump speaks during a campaign rally in Duluth, Georgia, on Wednesday, October 23.

Former President Donald Trump on Wednesday responded to Joe Biden’s comments in which the president said: “We gotta lock him up … politically.”

“Just like we were not running against Crooked Joe Biden, who, by the way, said yesterday about me, ‘We gotta lock him up.’ I told you. He said, then he denied it, ‘I didn’t mean that.’ Because he’s not legally allowed to say. … But I’ve been telling you that for, it’s election interference, this is all it is,” Trump said at an event hosted by Turning Point Action in Duluth, Georgia.

Biden said Tuesday at an event in New Hampshire: “I know this sounds bizarre — it sounds like if I said this five years ago, you’d lock me up. We gotta lock him up.” He then caught himself and added, “Politically lock him up. Lock him out. That’s what we have to do.”

The Trump campaign on Tuesday called on Vice President Kamala Harris to condemn Biden’s comments. Harris has previously shut down “lock him up” chants aimed at Trump, telling her supporters at multiple rallies: “The courts are gonna handle that. We’re going to beat him in November.”

Some context: Trump has been arguing since he was first indicted in March 2023 that he was being politically “persecuted” and claiming without evidence that Biden is behind his criminal charges.

When Trump was running for president in 2016, he called for Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton’s imprisonment on multiple occasions, including by using the phrase “Lock her up.”

Vice President Kamala Harris participates in a CNN Presidential Town Hall moderated by CNN’s Anderson Cooper in Delaware County, Pennsylvania, on Wednesday, October 23.

Kamala Harris faced questions from undecided and persuadable voters at a CNN town hall in Pennsylvania on Wednesday.

The vice president is looking to gain votes in the key battleground state in the waning days of the presidential election. The town hall was hosted by CNN’s Anderson Cooper in Aston, a township southwest of Philadelphia.

Pennsylvania is the most pivotal swing state in the 2024 election and Harris has made its 19 electoral vote central to her path to victory.

Here’s what she told voters:

A new survey of registered voters from The Wall Street Journal is the latest to find the presidential race within the margin of error.

Former President Donald Trump holds 47% support in the new national poll to Vice President Kamala Harris’ 45%. In the previous Wall Street Journal poll, conducted in late August just after the Democratic National Convention, Harris’ support stood at 47% to Trump’s 45%.

The survey suggests negative views of Harris have increased since late summer. In the new poll, 45% hold a favorable view of her, with 53% unfavorable. In August, those numbers were even at 49% each. Views of Trump, meanwhile have become slightly more favorable, with 48% favorable to 50% unfavorable now, compared with a 45% favorable to 53% unfavorable read in August.

A majority of voters in the poll (52%) say they approve of the job Trump did as president, while most disapprove of the way Harris is handling her job as vice president (54% disapprove). Voters in the poll split over which candidate cares about people like you (46% say that better describes Trump, 44% Harris), and over who will stand up for the middle class (47% say Harris, 44% Trump). Trump has the advantage on being seen as bringing needed change (49% Trump to 40% Harris), and Harris has a wide lead on having the right temperament to be president (46% Harris to 39% Trump).

Vice President Kamala Harris speaks to voters after the CNN Presidential Town Hall moderated by CNN’s Anderson Cooper in Delaware County, Pennsylvania, on Wednesday, October 23.

Right as the CNN town hall officially ended, Vice President Kamala Harris moved into the audience to have an extended conversation with Pam Thistle, a Pennsylvania realtor and an undecided voter who recently lost her husband, who had earlier asked a question during the town hall.

She then continued interacting candidly with other audience members, hearing their concerns and answering their questions, for at least 10 minutes after the town hall had ended.

Vice President Kamala Harris said Wednesday that if former President Donald Trump wins the White House a second time he will be “plotting his revenge” as she called out his repeated comments about the “enemy from within.”

Trump has suggested in past interviews he would use the military to handle what he called “the enemy from within” on Election Day — referring to the “radical-left lunatics” and specifically to Democratic Reps. Adam Schiff and Nancy Pelosi.

“He’s talking about the American people. He’s talking about journalists, judges, non partisan election officials,” the vice president said during the CNN town hall.

She said that if Trump wins a second term, he is “going to sit there unstable, unhinged, plotting his revenge, plotting his retribution, creating an enemy’s list.”

Harris said that her “list” will be a “list of how I address and continue to address the issues that you all are raising this afternoon and evening. It will be a to-do list about how we can impact the American people and lift up the American people and address some of the challenges that we continue to face.”

Former President Donald Trump speaks during a campaign rally on Wednesday, October 23, in Duluth, Georgia.

Former President Donald Trump ramped up his attacks on Democratic vice presidential nominee Tim Walz at a Georgia campaign rally on Wednesday, calling the Minnesota governor a “sick guy.”

“You can’t even say, ‘Well, let’s go to the vice president.’ ’Cause he is really a sicko, right? Remember he called JD Vance and I ‘weird.’ We’re not weird, we’re very solid people. He’s a weird dude, that guy,” Trump said at an event hosted by Turning Point Action in Duluth, Georgia.

“He’s always pumping his heart,” Trump said, patting his chest three times and making an exaggerated sound as he mocked Walz. “You know, like he’s got great heart.”

Trump regularly calls Walz “Tampon Tim” on the campaign trail as the former president falsely claims Walz signed a law that forces Minnesota schools to provide free tampons in boys’ bathrooms. But Walz didn’t order Minnesota schools to put tampons in boys’ bathrooms. The law is intended to make sure students of all income levels and gender identities have ready access to menstrual products.

Vice President Kamala Harris participates in a CNN Presidential Town Hall moderated by CNN’s Anderson Cooper in Delaware County, Pennsylvania, on Wednesday, October 23.

Vice President Kamala Harris on Wednesday said one of the proudest moments of her political career was establishing the Bureau of Children’s Justice in California while she was attorney general of that state.

The bureau, according to its website, works to “safeguard equal opportunity so that every child in the State of California can meet their full potential,” with a focus on  “remedying patterns or practices of discriminatory policies or procedures.”

Harris said she was also proud of her work that sought to lower America’s maternal mortality rate.

Vice President Kamala Harris said Wednesday that “she’s been very clear” about her positions on issues such as clean energy and fracking when asked at CNN’s town hall about her authenticity.

Harris went on to say that the country “deserves a president of the United States who is not afraid of good ideas and does not stand on pride.”

“If a perspective needs to be informed by different points of view to build consensus and to have a commonsense approach, I’m never going to shy away from good ideas and I’m not going to feel the need to have pride associated with a position that I’ve taken when the important thing is to build consensus, to fix problems,” she said.