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. He 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.”
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