CNN Anchor Cuts Away From Kamala Harris Rally and Fact-Checks Claims

CNN anchor Jake Tapper pulled away from Vice President Kamala Harris’ rally in Arizona while on air Thursday and offered “two teeny little fact checks” on the Democratic nominee’s speech.
Harris is campaigning in the Grand Canyon State as Democrats seek to hold onto their momentum in the swing state. Many election forecasts predict that former President Donald Trump has the upper hand in Arizona, although the race remains incredibly tight.
CNN played a clip of Harris’ rally in Phoenix toward the top of Thursday’s The Lead with Jake Tapper, in which Harris attacked Trump’s economic policies and his rhetoric surrounding reproductive rights.
Harris told supporters that Trump’s “20 percent national sales tax” would “cost the average American an additional $4,000 a year,” referring to Trump’s proposal for a 20 percent tariff on all imported goods. She also attacked Trump’s policies on abortion, saying that the former president “hand-selected three members of the United States Supreme Court with the intention that they would undo the protections of Roe v. Wade.”
“And Donald Trump’s not done. Did everyone hear what he just said yesterday?” Harris continued. “That he will do what he wants, quote, and here’s where I’m going to quote: ‘Whether the women like it or not.'”
Tapper cut out of Harris’ rally shortly afterward and fact-checked her two claims.
“First of all, she keeps referring to the Trump proposal on tariffs as a sales tax,” Tapper said. “It’s not a sales tax. You can dispute the tariffs and whether or not they’re a good idea, but it’s not a sales tax.”
The anchor added that “when Trump said he was going to do something for women, whether they like it or not, whether the women like it or not, he was talking about protecting women.”
“Certainly, you can take issue with the language,” he added. “But it wasn’t—he wasn’t saying he was just going to do whatever he wanted.”
Trump made the statement about protecting women during a rally in Green Bay, Wisconsin, on Wednesday, and told supporters that his campaign had advised him against making the statement.
“And my people told me, about four weeks ago, I was saying, ‘no I want to protect the people, I want to protect the women of our country,'” Trump said on stage. “‘Sir, please don’t say that.’ ‘Why?’ They said: ‘We think it’s very inappropriate for you to say.’ ‘Why? I’m president, I wanna protect the women of our country.’ They said: ‘Sir, I just think it’s inappropriate for you to say.'”
“I pay these guys a lot of money, can you believe it?” he added. “I’m gonna do it whether the women like it or not, I’m gonna protect them. I’m gonna protect them from migrants coming in, I’m gonna protect them from foreign countries that want to hit us with missiles and lots of other things.”
Trump previously said at a rally in Pennsylvania in September that he would “protect” women to be “happy, healthy, confident and free. You will no longer be thinking about abortion.”
Polls show that Trump is trailing Harris by a large margin with women voters, who often turn out to the polls at a higher rate than men. Some Republicans, such as former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley, have raised concerns that the former president’s rhetoric may be driving away women supporters.
“This is not a time for them to get overly masculine with this bromance thing that they’ve got going,” Haley said of the Trump campaign during an appearance on Fox News Tuesday night. “Fifty-three percent of the electorate are women … You’ve got affiliated PACs that are doing commercials about calling [Harris] the ‘C’ word. You had speakers at Madison Square Garden referring to her and her ‘pimps.’ That is not the way to win women.”
Economists have also raised red flags about Trump’s tariff proposals. While adding steep tariffs could benefit companies that make their products in the United States, the plan would also raise prices for U.S. businesses that buy materials abroad, which would inevitably raise costs for the consumer.
“It’s very simple: It’s a really bad idea,” Mark Zandi, chief economist at research firm Moody’s Analytics, told The New York Times in an article published Monday. “You’re going to push this exceptionally good economy into a ditch, and it’ll stay there until the tariffs are normalized.”
A group of 23 Nobel Prize-winning economists have also wrote in a letter earlier this month that a second Trump presidency would “lead to higher prices, larger deficits, and greater inequality.”
Some of Trump’s allies, such as Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, have warned that the former president’s economic policies would come with some “temporary hardship” but that America would benefit in the long run.
“We have to reduce spending to live within our means,” Musk said during a town hall event on X this week. “And, you know, that necessarily involves some temporary hardship, but it will ensure long-term prosperity.”
Trump’s running mate, U.S. Senator JD Vance of Ohio, said during an interview with NBC News in August, “Anything that you lose on the tariff from the perspective of the consumer, you gain in higher wages, so you’re ultimately much better off.”
Newsweek reached out to Harris’ campaign via email on Thursday for comment.
Update 10/31/24, 8:24 p.m.: This article was updated with further information and context.