Vance takes on clean-up duty for Trump: From the Politics Desk

Welcome to the online version of From the Politics Desk, an evening newsletter that brings you the NBC News Politics team’s latest reporting and analysis from the campaign trail, the White House and Capitol Hill.

In today’s edition, senior national political reporter Henry Gomez and campaign embed Alec Hernández explore how JD Vance often steps in to attempt to explain Donald Trump’s controversial remarks. Plus, chief political analyst Chuck Todd digs into the closing messages from Trump and Kamala Harris.

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Vance emerges as Trump’s explainer-in-chief

By Henry J. Gomez and Alec Hernández

JD Vance’s willingness to regularly take questions from mainstream news outlets has added an unofficial duty to his role as Donald Trump’s running mate: explainer-in-chief.

In interviews, at news conferences and while speaking with reporters on his campaign plane, Vance often finds himself having to defend, decode or “well, actually” whatever provocative comment Trump made most recently.

 That time Trump questioned whether Vice President Kamala Harris is really Black? “I think he pointed out the fundamental chameleon-like nature of Kamala Harris,” Vance contended.

When Trump disparaged Detroit, a majority-Black city in battleground Michigan? Trump, Vance said, “was just talking honestly about the fact that Detroit has been left behind.”

And when Trump name-dropped a Democratic congressman when he warned about an “enemy within” and stoked fears of chaos justifying military intervention on Election Day? “The enemy within,” Vance offered, “are people that Kamala Harris let into this country unvetted, unchecked and undocumented.”

All Republicans — from top Trump surrogates to down-ballot candidates in local races — are inevitably forced to answer for Trump’s most inflammatory rhetoric. Many GOP members of Congress have made a ritual in recent years out of sidestepping questions about his latest outbursts, claiming not to be aware of what he said.

But Vance is, after Trump, the campaign’s most prominent player. His willingness to Trump-splain follows a well-documented conversion from Trump critic to loyalist. Eight years ago, he was a bestselling memoirist frequently called on to analyze — and lament — Trump’s appeal to voters in distressed manufacturing towns like the one he grew up in.

Today, it often falls to Vance to explain what Trump actually means, as he sees it — or to put a finer point on something shocking or puzzling that Trump has said while, above all else, never deviating from the Trump ethos of never apologizing.

Read more →

Harris team and some Trump allies anticipate he will declare a premature election win

By Matt Dixon, Yamiche Alcindor and Carol E. Lee

Kamala Harris, her campaign team and some of Donald Trump’s own allies say they expect the former president to quickly declare victory on election night — even if the outcome is not yet settled in key swing states.

Between the time it takes to process mail ballots and deal with provisional ballots in some battleground states, votes will not be fully tabulated on election night. Projections of who won a close presidential race might not come for days, similar to the 2020 election. 

NBC News spoke to four Trump allies, all of whom speculated that the former president may be prepared to pull a repeat of 2020 and quickly declare he is the victor on election night when that is not yet certain. The sources all noted they did not have direct knowledge that this was a formal Trump campaign plan.

Others noted that this November could be different because he is surrounded by a new slate of top aides who wouldn’t push him to make such a declaration.

Seven Harris aides — and the vice president herself — said they are making preparations if Trump does indeed prematurely say he won or if he legally challenges the results if he loses. 

“Of course,” Harris told NBC News in an interview Tuesday when asked if her campaign is preparing to deal with Trump declaring an early victory. “This is a person, Donald Trump, who tried to undo a free and fair election, who still denies the will of the people, who incited a violent mob to attack the United States Capitol and 140 law enforcement officers were attacked.” 

Read more →

How Harris and Trump are making their closing arguments

By Chuck Todd

Given the tumultuous nature of the Trump era in general and the twists and turns that of the 2024 campaign specifically, it’s hard to believe we are most likely at the endgame of this historic election cycle and (knock on wood) it’s ending more normally than any campaign featuring Donald Trump has ended so far.

I accept that the phrase “so far” is doing a lot of work in the above paragraph — and to be clear, I’m talking about campaign-shaking events, not Trump’s penchant for crude or uncomfortable remarks. Clearly, something unforeseen can still happen, but I’m not sure we’ll have any new event that would dramatically affect either candidate’s vote share in this late stage of the race. But if you aren’t prepared for the unexpected in politics anymore, then you haven’t been paying attention! 

But what has been different — so far! — about this campaign in these last few weeks is how semi-, sorta, kinda conventionally both campaigns are behaving. 

For one thing, the campaigns appear to agree on who the final persuadable voter is: a Republican or Republican-leaning independent who doesn’t like Trump personally but is skeptical of Kamala Harris’ perceived liberal politics.

Both campaigns are messaging to this voter, with Trump going hard negative on Harris’ politics, hoping to convince these voters that she’s really a San Francisco liberal hiding in moderate clothing. Meanwhile, Harris is going hard negative at Trump on character and democracy, hoping to convince these voters that he’s out for himself at their potential expense, that he’s mentally off and that his inability to control his own id is a potential threat to the country.

Given how oddly the final days of the 2016 and 2020 races ended, this 2024 endgame does feel downright conventional. This campaign feels a bit more like a pre-Trump-era closely contested race. It’s less a battle to turn out the bases (though that matters a lot) and more a battle to persuade the skeptical undecideds, because even if the undecideds are a small group, they will be decisive.

Read more from Chuck →

🗓️ Mark your calendar: As part of her closing argument, Harris plans to deliver a speech in Washington, D.C., on Tuesday, four sources familiar with the preparations confirmed to NBC News.

That’s all from the Politics Desk for now. If you have feedback — likes or dislikes — email us at [email protected]

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