The road to the ballot box for the 2024 presidential election has been long and dramatic, complete with President Joe Biden dropping out of the race, Vice President Kamala Harris stepping in and an assassination attempt on former president Donald Trump.
Here are some of the defining moments of the 2024 presidential campaign.
Biden vs. Trump debate — the beginning of calls for Biden to step down
Hark back to June 27, when Biden squared off against Trump for their presidential debate.
For many viewers, it was a painful watch: Biden stumbled through with a raspy voice and uneven delivery, and he appeared at times unable to complete a train of thought; Trump made personal swipes and based several answers on falsehoods that went unchallenged by moderators.
Biden’s performance ignited fears among Democrats about his age and mental agility, and it prompted questions over whether he was still a fit candidate in the race for the White House.
An assassination attempt on Trump
In July 13, a gunman opened fire at a Trump rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, in what the FBI determined to be an assassination attempt against him. One attendee was killed, and two others were critically injured, while Trump was grazed on his right ear. The gunman was killed by a Secret Service sniper, and the motive remains unclear.
The photo of Trump raising his fist with blood on his face became a defining image for his campaign, with Republicans making “Fight! Fight! Fight!” — Trump’s words after the shooting — a new rallying cry.
The shooting raised questions over the Secret Service’s security cover for Trump, and the agency’s director, Kimberly Cheatle, resigned under pressure from Republicans and Democrats who were angered by its failure to prevent the assassination attempt.
On Sept. 15, a man allegedly pointed a rifle toward a Florida golf course where Trump was playing – an incident that the FBI said it was investigating as a potential assassination attempt. Biden, Harris and other Democrats have repeatedly decried the violence.
Biden pulls out of the race
After weeks of mounting public pressure — including questions from high-profile Democrats and donors over whether he should seek reelection – Biden announced his decision to end his race on July 21.
“It has been the greatest honor of my life to serve as your President,” Biden wrote in a letter posted to social media. “I believe it is in the best interest of my party and the country for me to stand down and to focus solely on fulfilling my duties as President for the remainder of my term.”
In another post on the same day, Biden endorsed Harris to replace him.
Harris starts her presidential campaign
Harris launched her presidential campaign on July 21. She secured the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination in early August, with little opposition, becoming the first Black woman to be selected as a major party’s nominee.
Democrats, relieved after weeks of infighting over Biden’s candidacy, swiftly coalesced around Harris. Biden, in his first public remarks after dropping out of the presidential race, said: “The name has changed at the top of the ticket, but the mission hasn’t changed at all.”
Harris’s campaign injected new energy into the Democratic Party in part by leaning into Gen Z jokes and references, marking a contrast to the campaigns of Biden and Trump. Harris, at 60, is younger than Biden and Trump, who at 81 and 78 respectively were the oldest major-party candidates in American history to vie for the Oval Office.
Harris and Trump pick their VPs
After much speculation over whom the two candidates would name as their running mates, Harris announced Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz as her pick, while Trump chose Sen. JD Vance of Ohio as his number 2.
Vance, the Yale-educated author of “Hillbilly Elegy,” was previously an outspoken “Never Trump” Republican. But since winning his Senate seat in 2022, Vance has become one of the former president’s most vocal champions.
Many of his comments on the campaign trail have been controversial, including his role in spreading false claims that Haitian immigrants were eating pets in his home state. His previous comments calling Democrats such as Harris “a bunch of childless cat ladies who are miserable” also became a Democratic rallying cry and prompted conservatives to argue that he risked alienating women who might have otherwise voted for Trump.
Walz, a former schoolteacher and coach, was relatively little known before becoming Harris’s VP pick. He served in the U.S. House for six terms before becoming the governor of Minnesota, where he has spoken proudly of his work in providing free lunches to public school children.
He has heavily criticized Trump, and he connects his personal life with issues that appeal to the Democratic base, such as reproductive rights and gun control. Republicans have criticized him for inconsistencies in stories he tells about his past experience.
Harris and Trump debate for the first — and only — time
After suggesting that he would not debate his opponent, Trump finally faced off against Harris in Philadelphia on Sept. 10, in what would be the only debate between the two candidates.
Harris spoke passionately about the aftermath of Roe v. Wade, and she pressed Trump on issues including democracy and foreign policy – and mocked him for regularly talking about Hannibal Lecter, his crowd sizes and for claiming that windmills cause cancer.
Trump, at the debate, repeated the false claim that he won the 2020 vote, refused to condemn the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection and echoed a false right-wing talking point that Democrats were encouraging noncitizens to vote.
The candidates were fact-checked on the spot by the moderators, David Muir and Linsey Davis of ABC News, prompting Trump advisers to implore the network to stop fact-checking for the rest of the debate, The Post reported, citing people familiar with the situation.
Polls continued to show an incredibly close race between Harris and Trump — with every swing state within a normal-sized polling error, according to The Post’s presidential polling average — as an extraordinary campaign season draws to a close.