By ATLANTA — Vice President Harris, the likely Democratic presidential nominee, held a raucous rally here Tuesday night and challenged Republican Donald Trump to debate her, as both the Harris and Trump campaigns are refocusing attention on this pivotal Southern state amid a political map that could be reshaped by newfound Democratic energy.
Trump and his running mate, Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio), will appear at a rally in the same venue Saturday, the Trump campaign said, marking two dueling rallies in a state increasingly at play. President Biden, who narrowly captured Georgia in 2020, had been considered by many Democrats a long shot to win it again, but that calculus could change if Harris can energize the state’s voters.
“I am very clear: The path to the White House runs right through this state,” Harris said. “You all helped us win in 2020, and we’re going to do it again in 2024.”
In a sign of the shifting landscape, the organizers of Project 2025, which was intended as a blueprint for an incoming Trump administration but has become a rallying cry for Democrats, announced it was ending its policy work. Democrats have seized on Project 2025 in an effort to tie Trump to policy proposals such as eliminating the Education Department and limiting access to abortion pills, while the Trump campaign has sought to distance itself from the document.
In a new interview, Trump also suggested that Harris cannot hold her own with world leaders.
“They’ll walk all over her. She’ll be so easy for them. She’ll be like a play toy,” Trump said in an interview with Laura Ingraham of Fox News. “They’re going to walk all over her. And I don’t want to say as to why, but a lot of people understand it.”
Harris is planning a tour of battleground states next week with her soon-to-be-named running mate, according to a campaign official, with plans to stop in Philadelphia; Detroit; Raleigh, N.C.; Savannah, Ga.; Phoenix; Las Vegas; and western Wisconsin. Her campaign has signaled that she would announce her vice-presidential pick by Aug. 7, though her choice could be unveiled sooner.
“Not yet,” she said, when asked as she boarded Air Force Two to fly to Atlanta if she had chosen her running mate.
Ahead of Harris’s rally, crowds snaked around the Georgia State Convocation Center for hours, with sweaty attendees moving at a snail’s pace in the 90-degree heat — a scene that until recently was more familiar at Trump’s rallies. The Harris campaign ultimately announced a crowd count of 10,000 people.
It was the campaign’s largest rally to date, boisterous and energetic in ways the Democratic Party has arguably not seen for years. If not for the “Harris for President” signs everywhere, the convention hall could have been mistaken for a concert venue. The crowd did the wave. Chalie Boy, Frankie Beverly and Maze, and Beyoncé thumped from the speakers. Attendees “dougied,” a hip-hop dance. The event featured Georgia’s most prominent politicians as well as rappers Quavo and Megan Thee Stallion.
Where Biden often quotes Irish poets in his speeches, Harris quoted Quavo in hers.
She mentioned Trump’s name often, a dozen times or more, but never mentioned Biden, even as she brought up many of the policy aims of the Biden-Harris administration. She chastised Trump for urging Republicans to vote against a bipartisan immigration package this year and vowed to pass it if she is elected.
“He tanked — tanked — the bipartisan deal because he thought it would help him win an election,” Harris said, “which goes to show, Donald Trump does not care about border security. He only cares about himself.”
She mocked his policy positions — called him and his running mate “just plain weird” — and mocked him for not fully committing to a debate. “Donald, I do hope you’ll reconsider, to meet me on the debate stage,” she said. “Because as the saying goes, ‘If you’ve got something to say, say it to my face.’”
Recent days have seen a remarkable shift in the dynamics of the 2024 presidential campaign, since Biden announced July 21 he was ending his bid for reelection and endorsing Harris as his replacement. Few states reflect that change more than Georgia.
Biden narrowly won the state in 2020, becoming the first Democrat to do so since Bill Clinton in 1992, while Democrats Jon Ossoff and Raphael G. Warnock secured the state’s two U.S. Senate seats.
But as the 2024 campaign ramped up, many Democrats privately admitted they saw Georgia as a lost cause, especially after Biden’s dismal debate performance June 27. Harris has reoriented the campaign, and Democrats hope she can motivate young, non-White and college-educated voters, notably in the Atlanta area, and close the gap with Trump.
As both sides recalibrated to adjust to the new landscape, Anita Dunn, a top adviser in Biden’s White House and architect of his 2020 campaign, announced she would leave the White House next week to advise Future Forward, the largest super PAC supporting Harris.
Harris’s campaign unveiled its first television ad Tuesday in what it said would be a $50 million buy in battleground states ahead of the Democratic National Convention on Aug. 19-22. The new ad — which will run during coverage of the Olympics, as well as popular shows such as “The Bachelorette,” “Big Brother” and “The Simpsons” — begins by flashing images of Harris from childhood to adulthood before focusing on her track record in public office.
“As a prosecutor, she put murderers and abusers behind bars,” a narrator says. “As California’s attorney general, she went after the big banks and won $20 billion for homeowners.”
The ad also includes a clip from a campaign rally in Milwaukee in which Harris says, “This campaign is about who we fight for.”
The Trump campaign’s first television ad of the general election, also released Tuesday, attacks Harris as an evasive, weak and distracted leader who did not protect the U.S.-Mexico border from drug trafficking, increased migrant crossings and a possible terrorism threat during the Biden administration.
“Kamala Harris. Failed. Weak. Dangerously liberal,” the ad concludes.
The Trump campaign made a two-week, $12 million purchase Monday of broadcast, cable and digital airtime across Pennsylvania, Georgia, Michigan, Arizona, Nevada and Wisconsin, according to the tracking firm AdImpact.
Equally notable were the continued efforts to distance Trump from Project 2025. The Heritage Foundation, which organized the project, said it was winding down its policy operations — a move that came after Trump senior adviser Susie Wiles repeatedly urged Heritage leaders to stop promoting Project 2025 and Trump strategist Chris LaCivita repeatedly disavowed it.
“President Trump’s campaign has been very clear for over a year that Project 2025 had nothing to do with the campaign, did not speak for the campaign, and should not be associated with the campaign or the President in any way,” Wiles and LaCivita said in a joint statement Tuesday. “Reports of Project 2025’s demise would be greatly welcomed and should serve as notice to anyone or any group trying to misrepresent their influence with President Trump and his campaign — it will not end well for you.”
But Democrats noted that many of the contributors to Project 2025 were former high-ranking Trump officials and that the effort was explicitly intended to pave the way for the next Republican administration. Harris campaign manager Julie Chavez Rodriguez said Democrats will not stop talking about Project 2025.
“Hiding the 920-page blueprint from the American people doesn’t make it less real — in fact, it should make voters more concerned about what else Trump and his allies are hiding,” Chavez Rodriguez said in a statement. “Project 2025 is on the ballot because Donald Trump is on the ballot. This is his agenda, written by his allies, for Donald Trump to inflict on our country.”
While Harris’s running mate has yet to be named, Vance is on a Western swing this week, fundraising in California and hosting rallies in battleground states Nevada and Arizona.
During remarks at a high school gymnasium in Henderson, Nev., Vance on Tuesday made several references to Trump “taking a bullet” for his country, referring to an attempted assassination this month. During his rally speech, Vance drew parallels to his own time in the Marines. Several supporters wore hats that said “Bulletproof Trump 2024.”
“Do you want a president who is disloyal to this country? Or do you want one who is willing to take a bullet for it?” Vance asked.
He also called Harris “dangerously liberal” and referred to the quick coalescing of support from Democrats as a “coup.”
“The media … for years has said the Republicans are a threat to democracy,” Vance said, referring to attempts by Trump and his allies to overturn the results of the 2020 election. “They’re calling it a coronation [of Harris]. I’ve got a different word for it: I call it a coup.”
Supporters at the rally insisted that Vance’s comments about the societal value of women without children — whom he described as “childless cat ladies” — have been taken out of context by the media and Democrats.
Lisa Cassel, 55, said Harris likely becoming Democratic nominee has only increased her support for the Trump-Vance ticket. “So many of her positions are so radical. I’m just not ready for her yet. That’s not the America I live in,” Cassel said.
Sam Brown, the Republican Senate candidate in Nevada, who took the stage before Vance, gave his full endorsement of Trump’s new running mate before turning to attack Harris.
“We’ve all been impacted by her failed leadership on the border, we’ve all been failed by the policy on our economy,” Brown said. “We’ve all been impacted by their failed policy on energy.”
Ahead of Vance’s first campaign visit to Nevada, the local Harris campaign hosted reproductive rights advocates on Monday, attacking Trump’s position that abortion laws should be left up to individual states.
“Leaving it to the states means you support the worst and the most restrictive of all the laws that have been passed,” said Rep. Dina Titus (Nev.), who alongside fellow Democrat state Assemblywoman Sandra Jauregui introduced herself as “childless cat lady.”
“I’m here to tell JD Vance, we don’t want you in Nevada,” Titus told reporters.
Abbie Cheeseman, Tyler Pager, Michael Scherer, Josh Dawsey and Isaac Arnsdorf contributed to this report.
