DNC 2024 Live updates: Trump to counter-program Harris as Walz hones his ‘freedom’ speech

Trump attacked the DNC for presenting its party platform as an agenda for President Biden‘s second term, rather than updating it for the Harris campaign.

“In the JUST RELEASED Democrat Platform, they mention Crooked Joe Biden’s ‘second Term’ over 20 times,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “It shows that the Platform is not that important to them when they won’t even make the change.”

The DNC Platform Committee on Sunday released its 92-page policy document, which it had written and passed on July 16, five days before Biden dropped out of the race. The document highlights Biden’s first-term achievements and plans for his now-abandoned reelection bid.

The document refers to Biden’s second term at least 20 times.

Trump has repeatedly attacked Biden on the campaign trail even though his election opponent is now Kamala Harris.

When Trump was running as an incumbent in 2020, the RNC decided not to adopt a new policy platform and said it would instead renew its proposals in 2024.

— Rebecca Picciotto

Trump is countering the DNC kickoff and the recent unveiling of Harris’ economic plan with an announcement about his own agenda to “unleash American energy and lower costs for American families,” the Republican’s campaign said Monday morning.

The campaign said in a press release that Trump would preserve the tax cuts he signed into law in 2017, while accusing Harris of wanting to let the cuts expire after 2025.

The press release also claimed Harris wants to ban gas-powered cars. Both accusations included links to articles from 2019, when Harris was a Democratic presidential candidate.

Trump is scheduled to hold an economy- and energy-focused campaign event at an equipment manufacturer in York, Pennsylvania, on Monday at 3 p.m. ET. Trump’s running mate, Sen. JD Vance of Ohio, will speak about energy and the economy in Philadelphia earlier Monday afternoon, the Trump campaign said.

— Kevin Breuninger

Shares of Trump’s social media company on Monday touched their lowest price since they began trading on the Nasdaq after a merger nearly five months ago.

The recent slide of Trump Media stock came after Harris replaced Biden as the Democratic nominee, upending the race that Trump had previously been favored to win.

The company, which owns the Truth Social app platform and trades under the stock ticker DJT, this month reported a loss of over $16 million for the fiscal quarter ending June 30, while posting just $837,000 in revenue in the same period.

Trump, the majority owner of Trump Media, has also resumed periodically posting on the social media site X.

Trump last week participated in a live-streamed interview on X with the platform’s owner, Tesla CEO Elon Musk.

— Kevin Breuninger

The following VIPs will deliver speeches tonight, according to a spokesperson who just briefed reporters at a convention press conference:

• UAW President Shawn Fain
• Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y.
• Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton
• Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md.
• Rep. Jasmine Crockett, D-Texas
• Rep. Grace Meng, D-N.Y.
• Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear
• Sen. Raphael Warnock, D-Ga.
• Sen. Chris Coons, D-Del.
• First lady Jill Biden
• President Joe Biden

– Josephine Rozzelle

Walz delivered brief remarks at the Pennsylvania delegation breakfast, where he focused on protecting freedoms, one of the primary themes of this year’s DNC.

“We keep talking about freedom. Freedom to make your own health-care decisions, freedom to read your own books, freedom to send your kids to school without them being shot dead in their classroom. Those are freedoms, too,” Walz said.

Walz did not mention Trump by name, but still hinted at contrasts between the Democratic and Republican tickets.

“Picture the other side trying to do these things, showing a little kindness, showing a little decency, talking to a child, lifting up someone, comforting someone who comes to a rally and say they just lost their parents, whatever it might be.”

— Rebecca Picciotto

Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg is pushing back on some of Trump’s frequent economic talking points, including that the stock market performed better during his presidency.

“The Dow and the S&P were worse under Donald Trump than they were under Biden-Harris,” Buttigieg told MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” this morning. “Energy production, one of the things you hear Republicans talk the most about, domestic energy production is higher under Biden-Harris than it was under Trump.”

Both indexes hit record highs in July, and the United States produced more crude oil in 2023 than any country in history, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

“He can’t afford for us to be talking about that, so every couple of days he’s going to blurt out something outrageous so that we’re talking about that instead,” Buttigieg said.

– Josephine Rozzelle

Independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is planning on spending much of this week in court, not on the campaign trail, as he fights for ballot access in several states for his long-shot White House bid.

Kennedy is scheduled to testify Tuesday in a Harrisburg, Pennslyvania, court, where a Democratic Party-aligned group has challenged the signatures of his ballot petitions and the legitimacy of his stated home address in New York.

Pennsylvania is seen as a key state — and possibly the key state — to win for the candidacies of Harris and Trump.

On Wednesday and Thursday, Kennedy plans to testify at an appeal of a ballot access case in New York, where a judge last week ordered him removed from the state’s ballot after finding his claimed home address in Westchester County was not a “bona fide and legitimate residence, but merely a ‘sham’ address that he assumed for the purpose of maintaining his voter registration.”

— Dan Mangan

The president and first lady will both take the stage tonight for speeches that are vastly different from what they planned to give just a month ago.

Aiming to cement the president’s legacy of a decadeslong career in public service, the first lady will honor her husband’s “strength and character” in her prime-time speech, a person familiar with her remarks told NBC News.

The president will then make a case for electing Harris and tout their administration’s achievements, multiple Biden officials told NBC News. Biden will also emphasize what he believes to be a grave threat to democracy if Trump returns to the White House.

“After saving democracy in 2020, President Biden is determined to defeat the threat to democracy posed by Donald Trump,” one official told NBC News.

— Josephine Rozzelle

The Harris campaign has launched a new, bilingual WhatsApp channel called “Latinos con Harris-Walz,” designed to connect with the nation’s roughly 36 million voters who identify as Hispanic or Latino.

“Now more than ever, we must meet Latinos where they are, and creative programs like this WhatsApp channel are how this campaign will reach the voters who will decide this election and win in November,” said Maca Casado, the campaign’s Hispanic media director, in a statement.

WhatsApp is the #1 most popular social media platform among Hispanic and Spanish-speaking individuals, according to the Pew Research Center.

— Christina Wilkie

The “For the People” theme will be focused on President Joe Biden’s “leadership and legacy as a historic president who put the American people’s interest above his own,” the Democratic convention committee says in a statement.

The day’s lineup will also highlight the party’s view that “while Donald Trump puts himself first, Democrats are fighting for the American people.”

Convention chair Minyon Moore said the four days of events are “an opportunity to bring the story of our party to the American people — not just the story of what we’ve achieved under the Biden-Harris administration, but how the Harris-Walz ticket is planning to build on that historic record for a new way forward into the future.”

— Christina Wilkie

Harris and her chosen running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, revived the tradition of U.S. presidential campaign bus tours, riding through Pennsylvania the day before the Democratic National Convention.

Long a staple of American campaigning, bus tours have fallen out of favor in recent cycles. Neither Donald Trump nor Hillary Clinton did much bus touring during the 2016 presidential race. Four years later, bus tours were put on hold entirely due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

— Christina Wilkie

The president and first lady will depart for California late Monday after the White House leader delivers his speech at the convention.

The White House daily schedule says the Bidens will fly from Chicago to Santa Barbara, then take a chopper to Santa Ynez. A local news outlet, Noozhawk, reports that airspace is restricted around the area for the rest of the week.

The Bidens’ travel plans underscore the complicated role that Joe Biden currently occupies within the Democratic Party, which is preparing to “pass the torch” to Harris later this week.

It’s also a reminder of the broader options available to a president who does not have to spend all his or her extra time on the campaign trail running for reelection.

— Christina Wilkie

As Democrats gather in Chicago, the two Republican nominees will spend the day at separate campaign events in battleground Pennsylvania.

Trump will deliver remarks at an “economic and energy” event in York at 3 p.m. ET.

Vance will be in Philadelphia, where he will speak on the same topic at 1 p.m., according to the Trump campaign.

The New York Times polling average shows Trump and Harris neck-and-neck in the state, with Harris up one percentage point, 49% to 48%, as of Sunday.

— Christina Wilkie

As tens of thousands of protesters fill the streets, many of them pro-Palestinian demonstrators, members of the Uncommitted National Movement say the DNC has agreed to hold an official panel today at 4 p.m. ET on “Palestinian Human Rights in the Democratic Party.”

The group released this speaker list:

• Layla Elabed, founder of Uncommitted National Movement
• Hala Hijazi, a Palestinian-American party organizer
• Dr. Tanya Haj-Hassan, a pediatric intensive care surgeon
• Former U.S. Rep. Andy Levin, D-Mich.
• Keith Ellison, Minnesota attorney general
• Jim Zogby, president of Arab American Institute

“We thank the DNC for recognizing this pivotal issue and remain dedicated to pushing VP Harris to stop providing weapons for Israel’s assault on Gaza,” the movement said in a statement announcing the panel.

— Christina Wilkie

As Democrats descended on Chicago, they were greeted by messages projected onto the side of Donald Trump’s branded skyscraper, Trump Tower. NBC News reporter Alex Tabet captured several of them.

— Alex Tabet