Vice President Kamala Harris joined talk show icon Oprah Winfrey on Thursday night for a presidential campaign event that was much like an episode of Winfrey’s longtime, much-loved daytime show.

The event gathered hundreds of people, the leaders of dozens of supporter affinity groups, handfuls of celebrities and thousands of viewers to support the Democratic presidential nominee.

“This grassroots, people-powered movement behind Kamala Harris has unleashed a unifying force unlike anything we’ve seen in politics in a very long time. And I know lots of people are feeling it,” Winfrey said. 

More than 200,000 people RSVP’d for the event through campaign channels, per sources. The “Unite for America” program was streamed across most mainstream platforms, including the YouTube, Facebook, TikTok, Twitch and Instagram accounts for both Harris and Winfrey. And combined, the pair have a reach of more than 133.6 million followers across their platforms.

The Harris campaign’s YouTube livestreams (one horizontally oriented, another vertical) alone indicated more than 275,000 concurrent viewers within minutes of Harris joining Winfrey on the stage.

The show itself, “Unite for America” — which Winfrey shouted in her trademark brassy bellow at the top of the stream — was also a gathering of affinity group leaders that have organized and raised money to back Harris.

Hours after President Joe Biden stepped away from the campaign for the White House and offered his endorsement to Kamala Harris, Win With Black Women brought 47,000 together people onto one Zoom call, raising more than $1.6 million. That led to dozens of affinity groups assembling around their own shared interests: Cat Ladies for Harris, Train Lovers for Harris/Walz, Chefs for Kamala, White Dudes for Harris, White Women Answer the Call, South Asians for Harris, Swifties for Kamala and Republicans for Harris-Walz, among so many others that organized to raise money and get out the vote.

The show, produced by Winfrey’s Harpo Productions, was appropriately reminiscent of an episode of her eponymous talk show. Oprah held court, playing to the crowd and her guests and reaching out to the audience for questions to the vice president. As the night moved on, video packages cut between the segments, moving from topic to topic, leading to discussions with people emotionally sharing their stories — some mournfully, some hopefully, some still bearing literal and metaphorical wounds.

Harris then often responded to their stories, and questions from Winfrey that were spurred by those stories, leading to a policy discussion — and, often, a jab contrasting the vice president with her Republican rival, former President Donald Trump.

Winfrey and Harris spoke with a Pennsylvania couple, Rachel and Garrett, who shared that they’re trying to make ends meet to make sure they can own a home and have a second child, then Shelby, a 24-year-old graduate student in Virginia, currently living with her parents.

Both asked Harris how she hopes to lower the cost of living. 

Harris recounted her longstanding policies, pledging to tackle price gouging by grocery stores and other retailers, as well as her plan to offer $25,000 down payment assistance to first-time homebuyers. She also pledged to expand the child tax credit to $6,000 in the first year of a child’s life, then to expand small business startup tax deductions to $50,000.

She then jabbed at Trump’s pledge to append additional tariffs on foreign imports, a plan she’s labeled the “Trump Sales Tax,” because of the tendency of businesses to pass increased import costs onto consumers.

Trump has fought that characterization, arguing that his tariff plan will encourage companies to build factories and producing goods in America. 

A raft of economic analysts, including Goldman Sachs, the Peterson Institute for International Economics, the left-leaning Center for American Progress and others, have suggested that Trump’s tariffs would harm economic growth and see the costs of goods passed on to consumers, with Peterson estimating a typical household’s taxes increasing $1,700 each year.

Emotions came to a head when a video package told the story of Amber Nicole Thurman, a 28-year-old woman who died after doctors refused to perform a dilation and curettage for fear of violating a Georgia abortion ban that made it a felony to perform the procedure.

Thurman, a medical assistant and mother to a six-year-old son, suffered complications from taking abortion pills — complications that could have been remedied by a D&C. She died on the operating table, 20 hours after being admitted to the hospital. Her last words, reportedly, were a plea asking her mother to promise to care for her son.

Harris was visibly emotional after the video, and more-so after hearing from Thurman’s mother and sisters.

“You have to hear me. Women around the world, people around the world, need to know that this was preventable,” Thurman’s mother, Shanette, told Harris and Winfrey. “You’re looking at a mother that is broken. The worst pain, ever, that a mother, that a parent, could ever feel. Her father and myself, and our family — you’re looking at it.”

Harris listened to her, then the testimony of Thurman’s two sisters, pausing before mournfully responding.

“I’m just so sorry,” she said. “Amber’s mom shared with me that the word, over and over again in her mind, is ‘preventable.’” Harris lamented similar abortion bans, some of which only allow action when a mother is in danger.

“Here’s the problem with that: So, is she on death door before you actually decide to give her help? Literally, a doctor or a nurse has to say, she might die any minute…this, literally, in Amber’s story, highlights the fact that among everything that is wrong with these bans — and what has happened in terms of overturning Roe v. Wade — is it’s a health care crisis.”

Fifteen-year-old Natalie Griffith was twice wounded in the Atlanta-area shooting at Apalachee High School earlier this month. Four people were killed, and eight others were injured alongside Natalie. She was joined at Thursday’s event by her mother, Marilda and father Doug, and the trauma was still evident in their faces and voices.

“The first thing I did is drop my knees on the floor and just start praying,” Marilda said, powering her way through tears. “The whole world needs to hear that we women that have our children, we have a job. That job is to protect our children. That job is to protect our nation. That job is to protect our country…I’m ready to make a noise about this, and I’m ready to stop it, because no one knows what it feels when you can’t find your child.”

Harris said that her opponents have pushed a false choice, “to suggest that you’re either in favor of the Second Amendment or you want to take everyone’s guns away. I’m in favor of the Second Amendment, and I’m in favor of assault weapons bans, universal background checks, red flag laws. And these are just common sense.” 

A moment of levity peeked though when Winfrey noted that Harris, during her debate with Trump, confirmed that the vice president is a gun owner herself.

“If someone breaks in my house, they’re getting shot,” Harris said, then laughing. “Probably should not have said that,” she added, “but my staff will deal with that later.”

Finally, actress Meryl Streep asked Harris what she believes will happen should Donald Trump not accept the results of an election loss come November.

“I think you’re going to win. I’m sure you’re going to win. But what happens when you win and he doesn’t accept it, and you know there’s going to be this long slog of shenanigans?” Streep said. “I’m really worried about it, and I wonder if we’re ready for Jan. 7, 8, 9, and what happens then?”

“We will be ready,” Harris said, before observing “more Americans than we may realize who voted for Trump before have decided Jan. 6 was just a bridge too far… and we have, sadly, now seen how far he could go. And I think there is absolutely no tolerance whatsoever for the vast majority of Americans for that.”