With Election Day fast approaching, former President Donald J. Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris are accelerating their campaigns in battleground states and honing their closing arguments to sway voters and mobilize support. Two recent speeches by the candidates — Mr. Trump in Las Vegas and Ms. Harris in Wilkes-Barre, Pa. — offer a glimpse at how their approaches and messages differ.

Over an hour and 3 minutes, Mr. Trump made 64 statements that were false, inaccurate or lacking context.

Ms. Harris, in her 23-minute speech, made 6 statements that were false, inaccurate or lacking context.

POLLING
“Every poll had us up like 90, 92, 87. We had a, uh — we actually had one, 92 to six, which sounds about right.”
No reputable poll has Mr. Trump leading Ms. Harris 90 percent to 10 percent.

On the day he spoke, Sept. 13, Ms. Harris led by nearly three points in The New York Times’s polling average.

IMMIGRATION
“I’m angry about Venezuelan gangs taking over Aurora, Colo.”

A number of Venezuelan migrants, including some engaged in criminal activity, have taken up residence in dilapidated apartment buildings in Aurora, but they have not “taken over” the entire city.

“I’m angry about illegal Haitian migrants taking over Springfield, Ohio.”

Thousands of Haitian migrants are residing in Springfield, but most are there legally.

“And the Colorado governor is petrified. He’s scared. He doesn’t know what to do. ‘The Venezuelans are attacking my state,’ he said. ‘The Venezuelans have big AK-47 Supremes.’ This is Supreme. Where the hell do they get these guns? Our soldiers can’t get these guns. They’re taking over our country from within, I mean, can you believe?”

Gov. Jared Polis of Colorado has not said this. The Republican mayor of Aurora had said certain buildings — not the city, much less the whole state — had “fallen” to gangs, but he has since said suggestions that the city was unsafe were exaggerated.

“She wants open borders”

Ms. Harris had a more lenient approach to illegal immigration in 2019, but has taken a more aggressive stance since becoming vice president and since the start of this campaign. She supports increased border security and asylum restrictions if border crossings are too numerous.

“But you see the arrow on the bottom, that’s when I left office. That’s the lowest point in the history of our country for illegal immigrants to come in, but also drugs and everything else that was coming in bad. That point is the lowest.”
“That’s the lowest point in the history.”

The arrow on the chart was actually pointing to a dip in early 2020, not during his last week in office. That low did not last, nor was it the lowest point in history.

ATTACKS ON HARRIS
“She was the first one that failed. Out of all the candidates, I think they had 22.”

Ms. Harris’s exit from the 2020 primary race was preceded by a dozen other Democrats'.

“It indicates that she is a communist comrade, because she is.”
“She’s a Marxist, communist, fascist person, which is … She’s a fascist. Who the hell ever thought we'd be voting for a communist for president? She is. Look at her record.”

Ms. Harris’s campaign has said she is a capitalist. She has the support of many executives, and she has not proposed to seize the means of production.

“Now Kamala is pushing the largest individual and small-business tax increase in American history.”

Ms. Harris has proposed tax increases for the wealthy and large corporations, which would not amount to the “largest” ever. And she has promised to not raise taxes on anyone making under $400,000.

“Kamala supports states being able to take minor children and perform sex-change operations on them without their parents’ consent.”

Surgical procedures for minors receiving gender-affirming care require parental consent. Ms. Harris has not said she supports changing state laws.

“She’s already talking about bringing back the draft. She wants to bring back the draft and draft your child and put them in a war that should never have happened.”

Ms. Harris has not. The Trump campaign told PolitiFact he was referring to a Democratic senator’s proposal to require women to register for the draft; it would not restore the draft.

CRIME
“I said that crime was up massively. I didn’t want to go into the details. What’s the purpose? Crime was up massively.”

Violent crime, after increasing during the coronavirus pandemic, has since declined and remains at a decades-low.

ECONOMY
“They said they had 818,000 jobs, and it was a fraud.”

In late August, the Labor Department corrected its jobs data from the 12 months that ended in March 2024, noting that there were 818,000 fewer jobs than previously reported. This was not "fraud," but rather a regular occurrence as statisticians reconcile different data sources.

Claimed that a correction to official jobs data came before the election only because of a whistle-blower, who said “it was a total fraud.”

There is no “whistle-blower” or leaker, nor did the Labor Department try to delay its numbers update until the end of the election. The agency announced in July that it would release its preliminary 12-month revision in August — the same timeline it has followed in recent years. In August 2019, the agency’s revision reported half a million fewer jobs.

“Inflation makes everything bad anyway. They had the highest ever.”

Inflation was higher in the 1970s and the 1980s.

“The auto industry is moving to Mexico, it’s moving to China and it’s moving to other parts of the world, but not the United States.”

Car markers have invested tens of billions of dollars for manufacturing expansions and new factories — largely for electric vehicle and battery production — in the United States under the Biden administration, The Wall Street Journal reported.

“China’s building two massive auto plants in Mexico now, and they think they’re going to build cars and put them into our country. Not going to happen. It’s not going to happen. They’ve got authorization from Biden.”

Mr. Biden has no control over China’s decision to build auto factories in Mexico. Chinese companies are, in fact, taking advantage of a trade deal negotiated by Mr. Trump.

“You know, the jobs, almost every single job, was taken by a migrant worker.”

The number of native-born workers and foreign-born workers have both increased by millions under the Biden administration.

SOCIAL ISSUES
“He even signed a law that allows abortion in the ninth month. He says abortion in the ninth month and babies to be executed after birth. And that’s right. And it’s happened numerous times in the states and other states, too. There are radical left states that allow that. Nobody wants to talk about it, but they allow that, execution after birth.”

Minnesota allows abortion at any stage of pregnancy. But abortion after birth is infanticide, which is illegal in Minnesota and every other state.

DOMESTIC POLICY
“Gov. Lombardo has sent three letters to the Biden-Harris administration, asking them to open up some of this land to help alleviate the crisis. But Kamala and Crooked Joe did not even have the decency to reply to those requests.”

In his latest letter requesting more federal land for housing development, Joe Lombardo, Nevada’s Republican governor, acknowledged that the Bureau of Land Management responded to his letters on behalf of the Biden administration and that he has had “productive” meetings with the Interior Department. The administration also opened up public land in Nevada to build as many as 15,000 additional housing units.

“They said they were going to cut the school lending. When you borrow money to go to school, they were going to cut it. They were going to cut it down to nothing. Guess what? A big thud. Never happened. It never happened. You know why? Because they’re all talk and no action.”

The Biden administration’s plans to eliminate student loan debt for millions of Americans have hit legal roadblocks, but the efforts have canceled the debt of 4.75 million people.

6 Lack Evidence
ATTACKS ON HARRIS