Beyonce, right, and Vice President Kamala Harris embrace on stage during a campaign rally Friday in Houston.
Annie Mulligan/AP
HOUSTON — The stands were vibrating under the stomping feet of the crowd at Shell Stadium in Houston Friday night.
But Beyoncé hadn’t even come out yet.
The crowd was chanting “Beat Ted Cruz,” as Cruz’s senate challenger, Democratic Congressman Colin Allred, raised his fist behind the podium on stage, cheering the crowd of 30,000 attendees on.
Vice President Harris’ visit to Houston in the final stretch to Election Day was in part to rally support for Allred. But the focus was mainly to bring the spotlight back on reproductive rights — in the place Harris has called “ground zero” in the fight to restrict abortion rights in the country.
The Lonestar State may seem like an unusual stop with less than two weeks until voting closes — it is not a swing state and former President Donald Trump is all but certain to carry it. But Trump and Harris both campaigned there on Friday, and the messages they each brought to the state highlight the urgency of their closing themes.
“I know sometimes in Texas, folks are like, ‘Is it worth it? Doesn’t make a difference,'” Harris said, nodding to the fact that she is unlikely to take this red state. “You are making a difference. And momentum is on our side,” she said.
Harris focused on Texas’ strict abortion ban at her rally in Houston, as Democrats have spent years hammering Republicans over unpopular crackdowns on reproductive rights — to great success at the ballot box.
The rally featured dozens of OB-GYNs in white coats and women who told their personal stories about how their lives were endangered by abortion bans — and blaming Trump for the trauma.
“This is not just some theoretical concept. Real harm has occurred in our country, a real suffering has occurred,” Harris told reporters traveling with her on Friday.
Harris underscored that the kinds of restrictions seen in Texas could happen in any state if Republicans were to pass a national abortion ban. Trump said this month that he would veto such a ban.
Supporters look on as Harris at Shell Energy Stadium in Houston. The Harris campaign said 30,000 supporters were at the rally, her largest campaign event to date.
Justin Sullivan/Getty Images
Harris was introduced by hometown superstar Beyoncé, whose song “Freedom” has been Harris’ campaign anthem, and Kelly Rowland, who rose to fame with Beyoncé as part of the group Destiny’s Child.
“I’m not here as a politician. I’m here as a mother. A mother who cares deeply about the world my children and all of our children live in,” Beyoncé said.
“It’s time to sing a new song, a song that began 248 years ago,” she said. “The old notes of downfall, discord, despair no longer resonate.”
Trump joined Joe Rogan for a three-hour interview
Former President Donald Trump gives remarks on border security inside an airplane hanger at the Austin-Bergstrom International Airport in Austin, Texas, on Friday.
Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images
Trump started his Texas pit stop in Austin, where he largely focused on immigration, baselessly blaming Harris for crimes committed by undocumented migrants. “Kamala refuses to stop importing these killers into our country. Every day she brings in more,” Trump said. “She’s got no remorse at all for the innocent blood that’s on her hands.”
At one point, he invited Alexis Nungaray, to speak. Nungary is the mother of 12-year-old Jocelyn Nungaray, who was allegedly killed by two men accused of entering the country illegally earlier this year.
Trump repeated inflammatory attacks against immigrants, calling America a “garbage can for the rest of the world to dump the people that they don’t want.”
He also criticized a federal judge’s decision Friday to restore the voting rights of more than 1,600 people who had been purged from the state’s rolls, calling the ruling “un-American” and “election interference.”
While in Texas, Trump taped a podcast with Joe Rogan, who has millions of followers and an audience overwhelmingly younger and more male — a key constituency for the former president. The interview lasted three hours, making Trump three hours late for a rally in Traverse City, Michigan.
The interview touched on a wide range of topics — from Trump’s past appearances on The View and his years on The Apprentice to his thoughts on extraterrestrial life and whether he would bring Robert F. Kennedy into his administration.
Trump also spoke about tariffs, saying they’d be a better incentive to promote chip making in the U.S., rather than the federal subsidies that the Biden administration has promoted.
At one point, Trump was asked about his recent suggestion that the U.S. could eliminate income taxes altogether and replace them with tariffs. Pressed by Rogan on whether he was serious about that, Trump responded, “Yeah, sure, but why not?”
Trump’s media strategy this election cycle has relied heavily on these social media-friendly, male-heavy podcasts and influencers that largely eschew probing policy questions and paint the former president as a friendly, accessible figure.
The two appearances in Texas also underscore what could potentially be the largest gender gap in a recent presidential election, with Trump increasing support among men and Harris among women.
That gender split is reflected in the audiences each candidate will be reaching through interviews they held Friday. While Trump had Joe Rogan, Harris spoke with Brené Brown’s Unlocking Us, a podcast popular with women.
