Ignore the daily noise. Here are Trump and Harris’ closing arguments.

The story for both campaigns has been about the divide between paid media — what they spend money to put on air — and earned media — the interviews and events they hold to try to attract coverage and attention. The two overlap, but not always.

In Harris’ case, she’s been aggressive recently about trying to win the daily news cycle by jumping on stories that put Trump on defense, especially with disaffected Republicans and moderates. Recently, that included retired Gen. Mark A. Milley’s warning that Trump was a “fascist,” made first in Bob Woodward’s pre-election best-seller, along with related remarks from former Trump chief of staff John Kelly.

Harris and her allies have called impromptu press appearances and calls to amplify these stories throughout the day, ensuring a steady stream of chyrons and clips with new material.

“His chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, for example, said, and these are his words, that Trump is fascist to the core,” Michelle Obama said in Michigan. “So I hope you’ll forgive me if I’m a little frustrated that some of us are choosing to ignore Donald Trump’s gross incompetence while asking Kamala to dazzle us at every turn.”

But that was the only reference, at that rally, to the Milley story. Most of Harris’ prepared remarks have a closer relationship to the ads from her campaign, the Future Forward super PAC, and the down-ballot Democrats running in competitive races. They tend toward more traditional Democratic messaging on economic policy, which is often less visible in daily coverage.

The most-aired spots, with tens of millions of dollars behind them, warn that Trump would “give tax breaks to billionaires,” often with blue-collar narrators. None focus on “democracy,” though one spot in high circulation this month warned of the Trump administration veterans (including Mike Pence and John Bolton) who said that the ex-president was unfit to serve again. A new ad by Future Forward tries to connect the extremism and economic arguments, saying Trump “has plans to punish his political enemies” but “no plan to punish the corporations who rip you off.”

All of the party’s messaging focuses on new tax cuts, healthcare benefits, and an attack on price-gouging to make a recovering economy more affordable. They’ve returned to the perennial theme that Republicans would risk Social Security and Medicare, asking where else they’d get the money from when they cut taxes. And like nearly every Democratic campaign since the end of Roe, they have promised to restore it, putting forward women — almost always women who want or have families — who risked death under abortion bans.

In speeches, Harris also hits more traditional Democratic topics that have been less prevalent in paid media this cycle.

“What happened to love thy neighbor?” Harris asked in Kalamazoo. “Attacks on the freedom to be safe from gun violence, the freedom to breathe clean air and drink clean water. The freedom to love who you love openly and with pride. All of these things are at stake.”

In cities where Democrats need to rack up big margins, the campaign has pursued a more local message too. They’ve aired events during high-profile sporting events in Detroit and Philadelphia with clips of Trump disparaging each city, suggesting to voters they can get him back by turning out in response.

What the Trump campaign wants to talk about is clear enough: An instant economic comeback, tax cuts, and a “secure border,” a snap-back to the policies voters say they remember warmly from Trump’s first term. These themes are all present in his speeches, often with accompanying video clips, but often make less news than Trump’s ad-libbed taunts, impromptu music breaks, or riffs on offbeat topics.

The campaign has also looked for ways to break into the news with eye-catching events, like his recent McDonald’s visit, and increasingly are venturing outside the top seven swing states to do it. He’s seized on immigration stories that his campaign thinks can break through in what conservatives call “legacy media,” like a Venezuelan gang’s exploitation of a suburban Denver apartment complex, but only after pressure from Trump himself.

Other topics are largely confined to conservative networks. He’s spoken, at length, about gaffes by Harris or Democratic surrogates that light up MAGA-friendly podcasts and social networks.

“Did you see when she got stuck two weeks ago in the teleprompter?” Trump asked his crowd in State College, Pa. on Saturday, referring to a moment when Harris laughed after saying there were 32 days left in the election, and repeated the number. On the right, that moment got widespread coverage, with commentators baselessly claiming that a teleprompter had glitched out. It got no mainstream press coverage at all.

Onstage, Trump typically adds a promise of world peace, as his surrogates — often Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., or Tulsi Gabbard — warn that Harris could bring about nuclear war or a new military draft.

“You’re not going to have a war with me and you’re not going to have a Third World War with me,” Trump said on Sunday.

That’s one of several apocalypses Trump warns about, if he doesn’t win. (Harris calls hers the “underdog” campaign, while Trump presupposes that he’ll win unless the election is stolen.) He describes a nation wracked by crime and border chaos, weakened by Harris, who if elected would purposefully spike energy prices and allow unrestricted illegal immigration.

“It’s in freefall. We’re a nation in decline,” Trump said in State College, overstating the rise in state energy prices (it’s been 30% since he left office, but he said 50%) to describe a crisis he could end immediately. “We will give our companies the lowest taxes, the lowest energy costs, the lowest regulatory burdens, and free access to the best and biggest market on the planet.”

Trump is ending the campaign with a clear polling advantage on immigration, and a narrower advantage on which candidate can better handle the economy. His paid messaging is designed to protect that advantage; it’s echoed by super PACs, in down-ballot races, that loop footage of migrants crossing the desert or storming a border checkpoint.

More recent ads incorporate a clip from The View of Harris declining to name a break with any Biden decision, which they tie to an argument that “nothing will change” if she’s elected. Trump’s campaign and outside groups have spent tens of millions of dollars on ads about pro-trans policies, promising to end them. Some Senate candidates facing similar attacks have rebutted or responded to those spots. Harris hasn’t, focusing instead on her own main themes.

“We’re just not running against Kamala,” Trump said in New York. “I think a lot of our politicians here tonight know this. She means nothing. She’s purely a vessel.”

This may be ironic advice for someone reading a campaign newsletter anchored in DC, but I’m serious: Don’t get too obsessed with the news cycle. I see lots of advice for the candidates to pivot away from the discussions they see on TV or on X, like “democracy” and “fascism” for Harris, that are tied to the outrage of the moment from Trump. But what swing state voters are seeing is very consistent, and often closer to what the campaign’s critics say is the stronger message.