CLAWSON, Mich. – Jill Biden wasted no time after she stepped up to the microphone at a suburban Detroit restaurant.
“Now some have come to (the) Detroit area recently and thrown around some insults, but from what I’ve seen this is a vibrant, thriving city,” she said. It was a swipe at Republican Donald Trump, who aimed a recent dart at the most populous city in a critical Midwestern battleground state.
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The first lady was back on the campaign trail for the first time in months, but no longer pushing Democrats to support her husband, President Joe Biden. Instead, she is now putting her energy into boosting Vice President Kamala Harris, who Biden endorsed for president after he dropped his reelection bid. On Tuesday, the first lady wrapped up a five-day swing through five battleground states.
While the race itself has changed, what remains unchanged for Jill Biden is her effort to highlight contrasts with Trump, the Republican presidential nominee, in the hope that Democrats can keep the former president out of the White House and help preserve her husband’s legacy.
It’s one reason why she reminded the 150 or so supporters at a Harris campaign event at the restaurant in Clawson, Michigan, about 20 miles north of Detroit, that the former president had insulted Detroit days earlier by calling it “a mess” while he was there delivering a speech.
The first lady uses her campaign speeches to validate Harris
Before getting in a few digs at Trump, the first lady spends most of her speech pumping up Harris, even sharing that they have “bonded” over many things during the past four years.
“One was how we lost our mothers both to cancer, both long before we were done needing them,” Biden says.
In her campaign speech, which has been retooled to focus on the vice president, she says Harris’ background has helped make her “a tough, compassionate, decisive leader.” She cites Harris' experience in high school helping a friend who was being molested by her stepfather, and her career as a district attorney and California’s attorney general.
She promotes Harris’ plans to bring down grocery and housing costs by going after “greedy” corporations, as well as her proposal to give $25,000 in down-payment assistance to people trying to buy their first homes.
Then Biden shifts to “what’s at stake for women in this election,” recalling how “stunned” and “devastated” she was in 2022 when the three justices Trump nominated for the U.S. Supreme Court helped undo a woman’s constitutional right to an abortion.
Harris has been the administration's point person on the abortion and reproductive rights issue for the past two years.
“No one has to abandon their faith or deeply held beliefs to agree that the government shouldn’t be telling women what to do,” Biden says, echoing the vice president. “As president, Kamala Harris will proudly sign a national law to restore reproductive freedom to every woman in every state in our country.”
“As president, Kamala Harris is going to fight for you,” Jill Biden says.
Biden turns a lull in her teaching schedule into a swing-state blitz
A break in the fall schedule at Northern Virginia Community College, where the first lady teaches English and writing twice a week, allowed her to get back on the trail for the first time since the president announced in July that he was leaving the race and endorsing Harris.
She delivered speeches and met with small groups of campaign volunteers — bringing cookies to some of them — as she barnstormed through the battlegrounds of Arizona, Nevada, Michigan and Wisconsin on a five-day blitz that ended Tuesday in Pennsylvania.
She joined volunteers making calls at a phone bank in West Chester, a Philadelphia suburb, and spoke at an event at Montgomery County Community College in Blue Bell, another suburb.
The first lady is expected to head out again for Harris and her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, in the closing weeks of what remains a neck-and-neck contest.
The first lady takes on Trump
“I even hate to say it,” Biden said after the audience packed inside a small Democratic campaign office in Madison, Wisconsin, groaned at her mention of the former president's name.
“Donald Trump wakes up every morning thinking about one person and one person only. Who?” she asked. “Himself!” the audience shouted.
The first lady said a second Trump presidency “would lead to more chaos, more greed, more division. He wants to lower taxes for rich guys like him while costs go up for everyone else.”
“And this is important, the next president will likely choose new Supreme Court justices. And our children and our grandchildren will have to live with the consequences," she added.
The first lady encourages supporters to vote early.
“As you know, this election is going to be so close, every vote counts,” she told the phone bank volunteers in Pennsylvania before she sat down to make some calls herself.
After speaking at Montgomery County Community College, she met the president in Philadelphia, where, he too, was fulfilling his new mission of boosting Harris.
“Kamala Harris has been a great vice president. She'll be a great president as well,” Biden said at a Democratic Party dinner.