Welcome back for Al’s Afternoon Tea. With just one week to go until Election Day, we finish up our special series on the 10 key moments from the campaign trail.

Part 1 detailed:

• Former President Donald Trump’s visit to East Palestine, Ohio, in February;
• The lawfare against Trump, which backfired and turned the billionaire former president into a folk hero; and
• The lawfare against Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. which pushed him out of the Democratic Party and onto Team Trump.

Part 2 detailed

• How going with The Big Guy failed big-time;
• The disastrous first presidential debate and the dumping of Biden from the Democratic ticket;
• The running mate choices. One chose wisely; one chose poorly; and
• The second presidential debate, in which canned Kamala and the moderators failed to take out Trump.

We finish with the final three key moments, including the single most decisive moment of the 2024 election. 

3. “Nothing Comes to Mind”: Kamala Finally Speaks, and It’s a Disaster

After pushing Joe Biden off the Democratic electin ticket, Kamala Harris refused to do any interviews or take questions from voters for weeks on end. She was such a ghost that the media needed a medium to talk to her.

Finally, under prodding from Barack Obama and a restless liberal media, Harris agreed to a series of friendly interviews. Unfortunately, the more she spoke, the worse her polling got. Her post-convention bounce and “joy” immediately vanished. With every single appearance, Harris created another ad for the Trump campaign.

Perhaps the biggest nail in her coffin was when she went on The View and was asked the most simple of questions: What would she have done differently than Joe Biden? Given that 70% of Americans feels the nation is heading the wrong direction — in fact, straight over a cliff — you’d think she’d have a ready answer.

But what did she say? “There is not a thing that comes to mind.” So the “new way forward” is the same ol’, same ol’? Meet the new boss, same as the old boss? To this day, she cannot say what she would do differently than Biden.

Kamala Harris appears with the ladies of The View. (Facebook/Kamala Harris)

When Hurricane Helene ravaged western North Carolina, where was Harris? Yucking it up on the “Call Me Daddy” podcast, a program best known for its graphic talk about sex. Perhaps that’s fitting given the role sex has played in her career advancement. But it’s certainly no place for someone in desperate need of proving she is a serious candidate capable of sitting behind the Resolute Desk.

Plus, hanging out at elite fundraising dinners and with raunchy podcasters while North Carolinians drowned was an awful look.

While Harris has been fumbling from interview to interview, leaving even partisan talking heads rending their garments, Donald Trump has been scoring with appearances on influential podcasts, generating a new generation of support. For that, he gives credit to his son Barron, who urged him to appear on a series of podcasts hosted by those with millions of followers but little mainstream recognition.

At 18, Barron is head-and-shoulders better at campaign strategy than whoever’s advising Harris. (Yes, the pun was intended.)

2. Kamala Bashes Christians: Blows Off Catholic Al Smith Dinner, then Declares “You’re at the Wrong Rally”

In 2016, Donald Trump’s fortunes turned during his second debate with Hillary Clinton. Evangelicals were extremely iffy about Trump from the jump, and the release of a tape from Access Hollywood in which he said some deplorable things about women a few days before the debate went off like a bomb in the evangelical community.

However, during the debate, Trump offered a spontaneous, withering assault on Clinton’s pro-abortion position. He was graphic, he was passionate, and spoke with a directness on abortion no GOP candidate had until that moment. With that, the dynamic shifted in the race. A spark was lit whereby many previously hesitant evangelicals became more comfortable with taking a chance on the blustery, imperfect billionaire. As one evangelical leader put it, “We aren’t sure what we’ll get with Trump, but we know what we’d get with Hillary.”

Eight years later, we now know what we get with Trump. On Thursday, October 17, we learned without a shadow of a doubt what Christians will get with Kamala Harris: Mocking, derision, and open hostility.

That evening, Harris blew off attending the traditional Al Smith Memorial Foundation Dinner — an event that not only honors the first Catholic presidential candidate, but which raises money for Catholic charities and is a highlight on the New York Catholic social calendar. Choosing not to attend was a deliberate snubbing of Catholics.

Instead, Harris sent along a video featuring former SNL star Molly Shannon as her long-forgotten Catholic schoolgirl character Mary Catherine Gallagher. The awkward, unfunny video was a dud with the audience and left many feeling that Harris was mocking Catholic students.

So what was Harris doing that evening? Delivering a pro-abortion speech. When a La Crosse University student in the crowd yelled, “Jesus is Lord!” Harris instantly and instinctively replied, “Oh, you are in the wrong rally.”

Say what? Christians are not welcome at her rallies? For a candidate obsessed with not revealing her true positions and motivations, this was moment of pure revelation. Out of the heart, the mouth speaks.

Kamala Harris could pop up at black churches in Atlanta all day long (when polls showed she was losing black support left and right), but those two incidents on that one October night demonstrate her hostility toward Christianity. Several incidents throughout her career had already raised the question of whether she’d crack down on people of faith; her administration’s persecution of pro-life advocates went a long way toward answering it. However, her own words and actions that one night sealed the deal.

Christians cannot sit this election out.

And that brings us to …

1. “Fight! Fight! Fight!”

If Kamala Harris loses this election, friendly historians will write that she never had a chance. Nor would any Democratic candidate in the wake of this one moment. And I suspect those historians would be right.

I believe history will forget what an atrocious candidate Kamala Harris has been, or even how issues like illegal immigration, inflation, and the economy relative to Trump’s first term determined the victor.

Instead, it will record that Donald Trump won the 2024 election on July 13 in a field in Butler, Pennsylvania. Professors and grandparents will declare that his victory was sealed the minute he was shot in the ear, then forced his way to his feet and pumped his fist, yelling “Fight! Fight! Fight!”

Former President Donald Trump pumps his fist as he is rushed offstage during a rally on July 13, 2024 in Butler, Pennsylvania. (Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)

How on earth could any candidate compete with that image of Trump, blood smeared across his face, fist in the air, with Secret Service agents hanging all over his frame?

That’s America, baby. That’s the America we love, the America we want to be.

The America that got knocked around by the most powerful army in the world, licked its wounds, and shouted at the British, “Is that the best you’ve got?” and won the Revolution. The America of “come and take it.” The America that suffered a sneak attack by Japan, yet heard the mastermind of that attack warn, “I fear all we have done today is awaken a sleeping giant.” The America that saw three astronauts incinerated on the launch pad during a rocket test, and three years later had others walking on the moon. The America that on 9/11 said, “Let’s roll.”

The America where Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. could be bombed and lambasted, his followers pounded with water cannons, and still share a dream of peace and brotherhood. The America of Rocky and rock-n-roll. 

The America where a man could put aside his enviable life and fortune only to be slandered, silenced, sued, arrested, and shot — yet who still cuts up at a McDonalds and dances (sort of) to “YMCA.”

Donald Trump is not a perfect character. But in that one indelible moment in July, he proved to perfectly embody the American character.

Al Perrotta is The Stream’s Washington bureau chief, coauthor with John Zmirak of The Politically Incorrect Guide to Immigration, and coauthor of the counterterrorism memoir Hostile Intent: Protecting Yourself Against Terrorism.