Mr. Walz initially burst into national prominence over the summer through his well-regarded television appearances and quippy Midwestern jabs at Republicans. But since joining the national ticket he has faced criticism for running a bubble-wrapped campaign, avoiding taking many questions from reporters or sitting for tough interviews.

Those critiques ramped up after Tuesday night, when Mr. Walz appeared nervous and — perhaps — a bit rusty onstage during the vice-presidential debate with Senator JD Vance of Ohio, who frequently spars with reporters and seems to welcome contentious interviews.

Mr. Walz stumbled over some answers at the debate, acknowledging that he had been “a knucklehead at times” as he struggled to explain why he had falsely claimed he had been in Hong Kong during the June 4, 1989, Tiananmen Square protests in Beijing. But he also created a memorable moment when he asked Mr. Vance whether Mr. Trump had lost the 2020 election, prompting Mr. Vance to dodge and say he was “focused on the future.”

Snap polls of viewers suggested the debate was essentially a draw, but Mr. Walz’s hesitance caused some concern among Democrats and Saturday Night Live spoofed him, making fun of his shaky answers and missteps alongside Mr. Vance’s dodges.

On Sunday Mr. Walz parried tough questions from Shannon Bream of Fox News and focused many responses on Mr. Trump.

Pressed about the degree to which Minnesota allows late-term abortions, Mr. Walz pivoted to the effects of the Supreme Court’s decision overturning Roe v. Wade. “This is a distraction from the real issue here, is women being forced into miscarriages, women being forced to go back home, get sepsis, potentially die,” he said.

On immigration, he faulted Mr. Trump for helping kill a bipartisan bill that would have tightened border security, and argued that Mr. Trump had been ineffective on the issue during his presidency.

“Donald Trump told us for four years he would deal with it,” Mr. Walz said. “He didn’t.”

Confronted by a series of misstatements he has made — including on China, where he traveled in August 1989, and indicating he and his wife had used in vitro fertilization when they in fact used a different fertility treatment called intrauterine insemination — Mr. Walz acknowledged that he sometimes misspeaks.

Viewers “heard me the other night speaking passionately about gun violence and misspeaking,” he said, referring to the awkward moment when he said at the debate that he had “become friends with school shooters.” (His campaign later clarified that he had meant to say he had befriended the families of school shooting victims.)

Mr. Trump’s campaign, in a news release, suggested Mr. Walz’s appearance had gone poorly, saying he “cracked under the mildest of pushback” and was “unable to offer a coherent response to anything because he has no response for the insanity of his record and the Harris-Walz agenda.”

Mr. Walz is expected to make other prominent media appearances in the coming days. The Harris campaign said he would appear Monday on “Jimmy Kimmel Live!”

Ms. Harris’s campaign announced on Sunday that she would appear on Tuesday on ABC’s “The View”; Howard Stern’s satellite radio program; and “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert.”

Ms. Harris and her running mate, Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota, had generally avoided news media interviews for weeks after she replaced President Biden as the Democratic nominee and added Mr. Walz to the ticket.

Last month, Ms. Harris’s top aides said she would soon embark on a robust media tour, though one unlikely to place her in front of many aggressive inquisitors. Her campaign, like that of former President Donald J. Trump, believes that the traditional strategy of interviews with broadcast networks and national newspapers is outdated and not worth the accompanying risks, because swing voters tend to get their political news from less traditional sources.

Indeed, Ms. Harris’s first cable television sit-down was with Stephanie Ruhle of MSNBC, a friendly face who days earlier had expressed her preference for Ms. Harris over Mr. Trump.

Likewise, many of those interviewing Ms. Harris this week have openly backed either her or Mr. Biden.

Mr. Colbert hosted fund-raisers for Mr. Biden in 2020 and again this year. Mr. Stern endorsed Mr. Biden in 2020 and hosted him for a warm interview in April.

Mr. Walz will appear on Monday on ABC’s “Jimmy Kimmel Live.” Mr. Kimmel last month endorsed Ms. Harris for president.

Ms. Harris’s campaign had already announced that she and Mr. Walz would appear in an interview with the CBS News program “60 Minutes” that is set to air on Monday night. The campaign had also said that Ms. Harris would participate on Thursday in a Univision town-hall event in Las Vegas.

The vice president has also recorded an interview on Call Her Daddy, a popular podcast about sex, dating and relationships. The interview, which focuses on abortion rights and other women’s issues, is set to be released on Sunday evening.

Both Ms. Harris and Mr. Walz will campaign on Wednesday in Arizona on the first day of the state’s early voting period. Ms. Harris will return to Arizona for an event on Friday.

At each of her stops, Ms. Harris is expected to urge supporters to return their ballots without delay, an exhortation she made on Friday during a rally in Flint, Mich.

“If you have received your ballot, please do not wait,” Ms. Harris said. “Fill it out and return it today.” She added, “Folks, the election is here.”

A correction was made on

Oct. 6, 2024

:

An earlier version of this article misstated the day Gov. Tim Walz’s was scheduled to appear on “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” His appearance was scheduled for Monday, not Tuesday.

When we learn of a mistake, we acknowledge it with a correction. If you spot an error, please let us know at nytnews@nytimes.com.Learn more

For Mr. Trump, who has been jarred by the changes in the presidential race since he was attacked in Butler on July 13, the rally served another purpose: It offered him a chance to seek something of a do-over after a series of major events reshaped the contest just as the Republican convention in Milwaukee ended.

The rally’s stagecraft and programming — with singers, family members and friends serving as “character witnesses” — echoed the convention’s grandiosity, down to the same opera singer who closed out the proceedings in Milwaukee performing a handful of songs.

President Biden announced he was dropping his 2024 bid three days after Mr. Trump’s nominating convention, swamping all news coverage of the former president’s near-death experience and resetting the race with a new, younger Democratic opponent almost immediately.

So in Butler on Saturday, Mr. Trump sought to recapture the same spirit that engulfed him in Milwaukee, where he was riding high in the polls as he was nominated for a third time just five days after the shooting.

The rally — which Mr. Trump was intent on holding — was marked by intense security, a sprawling crowd and some anxiety, with Mr. Trump having faced a second attempt on his life since July.

Mr. Trump, at a rally where other speakers bemoaned the overheated rhetoric in the campaign as leading to violence, seemed to focus on his victimhood, making a baseless suggestion at one point that the attempt on his life could have been the work of the same political opponents he has repeatedly accused of weaponizing impeachments and the criminal justice system against him.

For a significant part of the day, Mr. Trump’s team used the rally to honor Mr. Comperatore, who was killed during the assassination attempt in July as he shielded his wife and daughters from the gunfire. Mr. Comperatore’s firefighter coat and helmet were placed in the stands behind the stage.

Many in the crowd wore T-shirts reading “Fight! Fight! Fight!” — quoting what Mr. Trump said right after his ear was grazed by a bullet in July. People stood in line for hours on Saturday in order to be part of the day, and were visibly delighted to be there.

Several speakers mentioned Mr. Comperatore, with early speakers offering a somber reflection of the horror that had taken place at the fairgrounds less than three months earlier. And Mr. Trump, who met with Mr. Comperatore’s family before his speech, opened his remarks by paying tribute to him.

“Some people just don’t die in vain, and what he’s left behind is incredible,” Mr. Trump said. Later, he told his thousands of supporters how excited Mr. Comperatore had been to attend the rally in July.

“Corey had the best seat in the house,” Mr. Trump said. “And he was telling his wife and family on the way over, he said, ‘I’m telling you, he’s going to invite me up on the stage.’” Then, Mr. Trump added, “little did anyone realize that Corey would be on the stage three months later in an almost immortal position.”

The efforts to humanize Mr. Trump — whose advisers were livid that Mr. Biden had ended what momentum they might have had coming out of their convention — began midway through the speaking program earlier in the day.

Sally Sherry, a paramedic who helped treat Mr. Trump at Butler Memorial Hospital in July, said she was moved to tears by his demeanor after the shooting as he reassured his family he was OK.

Mr. Trump’s running mate, Senator JD Vance of Ohio, commended Mr. Trump for returning to Butler. Mocking Ms. Harris, he asked the crowd who they would rather have dealing with foreign affairs: “someone who is afraid of interviews with the friendly American media or someone who faces down two assassins and returns triumphantly to the very place he got shot?”

Two of Mr. Trump’s friends in the business world, John Paulson and Steve Witkoff, offered testimonials. Then, Mr. Trump’s son, Eric, and daughter-in-law, Lara Trump, gave speeches that had highlights of what they said at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee. Mr. Trump entered to a live rendition of “God Bless the USA,” the typical walk-on music played at his rallies, another moment borrowed from his convention.

But while the lead-up speeches before Mr. Trump took the stage were distinct for one of his rallies, and he made a dramatic entrance by taking the stage and declaring, “As I was saying,” a reference to when he felt something strike his ear at the July 13 rally, his speech was mostly a fairly standard collection of his rally remarks.

The most dynamic moment of Mr. Trump’s remarks came when he invited Mr. Musk to the stage. The billionaire, who endorsed Mr. Trump minutes after the assassination attempt, bounded up to the microphone, complained about a lack of laws requiring voter identification and warned ominously that November’s election “will be the last election” if Mr. Trump does not win.

Mr. Trump eased slightly off the starkly dark rhetoric with which he often describes the country, but frequently made exaggerated claims about immigration. At the start of his speech, he displayed a chart about the issue that he has credited with saving his life after he turned his head to look at it in July. But aspects of the graphic are highly misleading.

Mr. Trump also criticized Ms. Harris’s previous support for a ban on fracking, an issue his campaign is hoping will energize voters in Pennsylvania, a critical battleground state. He repeated debunked claims about cheating in elections and fired up his base by talking about transgender athletes.

And he mocked Ms. Harris as being insufficiently interested in those affected by Hurricane Helene, despite the fact that she spent Saturday on a trip to storm-ravaged North Carolina.

Kate Kelly contributed reporting.

“As you can see, I’m not just MAGA, I’m dark MAGA,” he said.

Mr. Musk publicly endorsed Mr. Trump in the minutes after a gunman tried to kill the former president on July 13 in Butler, Pa., in a post on X, the social media platform he owns. So when Mr. Trump returned Saturday to hold a rally at the same venue where he was attacked, he brought Mr. Musk along.

In addition to bouncing up and down onstage, he urged the crowd to “Fight! Fight! Fight!” — an echo of the words Mr. Trump had uttered after the attack.

The crowd seemed to know Mr. Musk, who drew cheers as he was introduced by the former president. Mr. Trump lavished praise on Mr. Musk, the world’s richest man, for building an American car company and saving “free speech” with X.

"President Trump must win to preserve the Constitution,” Mr. Musk said, after bounding to the mic with his hands in the air. “He must win to preserve democracy in America.”

At one point, urging people to vote, he claimed, darkly: “If they don’t, this will be the last election. That’s my prediction.”

While Mr. Musk posts about Mr. Trump frequently on X, his speech on Saturday was his first at one of the Republican nominee’s rallies. His short address recalled some of what he has already said online, like his baseless claim that Democrats want to take away people’s right to vote. (In fact, Republicans have filed lawsuits in several states seeking to shrink the electorate, largely by disqualifying voters more likely to be Democrats.)

“The other side wants to take away your freedom of speech,” Mr. Musk said at the rally. “They want to take away your right to bear arms. They want to take away your right to vote, effectively.”

Typically a subdued public speaker, Mr. Musk, who has a net worth exceeding more than $260 billion according to Forbes, raised his energy. He repeatedly asked those watching to ensure that they were registered to vote and urged listeners to be “a pest” when it came to reminding others to vote.

Mr. Musk has been closely involved with that effort, having founded the America PAC, a super PAC that has been focused on ground game strategies to support the Trump campaign in key battleground states.

While they once criticized each other in the past, Mr. Musk and Mr. Trump have built a close alliance in recent months, with Mr. Musk lending his star power and his large platform on X to the Trump campaign.

In August, he interviewed the president on a live audio conversation on the platform. That was when Mr. Musk, whose companies have received billions of dollars in federal contracts and subsidies, proposed that he could run a “government efficiency commission” in a future Trump administration. The plan to cut federal spending and bureaucracy has become a pillar of Mr. Trump’s economic plan.

During the meeting, which took place backstage at a rally in Flint, Mich., Muslim and Arab leaders pressed Ms. Harris to work toward ending the war in Gaza, expressed concerns about the civilian casualties and about tens of thousands of people being displaced in Lebanon, Mr. Alzayat said.

He added that Ms. Harris, who was joined by her campaign manager, Julie Chavez Rodriguez, and Gov. Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan, said she understood the frustrations in the community and was committed to finding a path to peace. The meeting was originally scheduled for 10 minutes but ran for 20, sending a strong message about “the gravity of the current moment we’re in,” he said.

Ms. Harris’s campaign said in a statement that she expressed her concern for the “scale of suffering in Gaza,” and outlined her goal to end the war in Gaza, which started after Hamas attacked Israel nearly one year ago, on Oct. 7. The vice president also expressed her desire to secure the release of hostages taken during the attack, and continue to ensure Israel’s security while also seeing to it that Palestinian people can “realize their right to dignity, freedom, self-determination.”

Ms. Harris also expressed her concern about civilian casualties and displacement in Lebanon, and reiterated the Biden administration’s desire for a diplomatic solution and preventing a regional war, the campaign said.

The meeting came as Ms. Harris’s campaign had ramped up efforts to appeal directly to Arab and Muslim voters in the final weeks before the election.

On Wednesday, her national security adviser, Phil Gordon, met with Muslim, Arab and Palestinian American community leaders and discussed similar topics. On Thursday, Ms. Harris’s running mate, Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota, appeared at a virtual “Million Muslim Votes: A Way Forward” event, which was hosted by Emgage Action.

Battleground states like Michigan, which Mr. Trump won in 2016 but swung to Joseph R. Biden Jr. in 2020, are crucial to Ms. Harris’s hopes for November. A recent New York Times/Siena poll found that she and Mr. Trump were neck-and-neck in the state.

The state has more than 200,000 Muslim voters. (In 2020, Mr. Biden won there by 154,000 votes.) Arab American and Muslim voters also helped Mr. Biden defeat Mr. Trump in other battlegrounds, like Pennsylvania and Georgia.

In the lead-up to the election, Muslim and Arab groups have grappled with how to mobilize their communities to support Ms. Harris, even while many are unhappy with President Biden’s handling of the war in Gaza.

Ms. Harris has not signaled that she would break from Mr. Biden’s foreign policy, a conundrum that she faces as a candidate who is the sitting vice president. But she has been more vocal in expressing empathy for the plight of Palestinians and in condemning Israel’s killing of civilians and its role in fueling a humanitarian catastrophe.

Mr. Alzayat said that his group told Ms. Harris during the meeting that she needs to try to impress upon Mr. Biden that he has to end the war, and if not, commit to ending it herself, if elected. He also requested more diversity on her foreign policy team, should she win.

“At the end of the day, it’s the policy decisions that will ultimately matter,” he said. “I didn’t get a sense that she was patronizing us or just giving us platitudes. She is waiting to win this thing so she can put her own imprint on these policies.”

The vice president praised local officials and residents for their response to the storm.

“I’ve been seeing and hearing the stories from here in North Carolina about strangers who are helping each other out, giving people assistance in every way that they need, including shelter, food, and friendship and fellowship,” she said.

Ms. Harris’s trip to Charlotte was her second trip this week to assess the storm’s toll in the Southeast, and it served as a reminder that in addition to running for president she continued to have duties to fulfill as the vice president.

In addition to reviewing the official storm response, Ms. Harris visited a volunteer center, where she briefly joined them making packages of donated necessities — including things like canned food, formula, diapers and flashlights — for North Carolinians stranded by the storm.

While the deadly storm and the conflict in the Middle East have at times diverted Ms. Harris from the campaign trail as she turns to her official duties, her aides and allies have said they believe having voters see Ms. Harris act as the vice president could make her appear presidential and empathetic to voters in a key battleground state.

The vice president’s office said 74 percent of those who reported losing access to electricity during the storm have had it restored. The Federal Emergency Management Agency, which is overseeing the federal response, has more than 700 people in North Carolina, Ms. Harris’s office said.

The vice president’s trip comes as her White House rival, former President Donald J. Trump, has made a number of false statements about the federal response to the storm. Mr. Trump’s allies, including elected Republicans and Elon Musk, the owner of the social media site X, have amplified much of Mr. Trump’s misinformation.

Mr. Musk on Friday was corrected on his social media site by Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg. Mr. Musk subsequently wrote that Mr. Buttigieg was “on the ball.”

Ms. Harris did not address the misinformation in her public remarks Saturday. While she was in Charlotte, the White House released a memo addressing falsehoods it said were being spread by “scam artists, bad-faith actors and others who want to sow chaos because they think it helps their political interests.”

On Wednesday, Ms. Harris skipped a planned bus tour of Pennsylvania with her running mate, Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota, so she could visit Augusta, Ga. There, she toured a storm response command center and a residential area hit hard by the hurricane.

“In these moments of hardship, one of the beauties about who we are as a country is people really rally together and show the best of who they are in moments of crisis,” Ms. Harris said Wednesday in Augusta. “It really highlights the fact that the vast majority of us have so much more in common than what separates us, and that the best of, the strength of who we are is, we come to each other’s aid in a time of need.”