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2024 Elections

Conservative warns MAGA fans Trump 'could very well get smoked' in debate with Harris

Now that Donald Trump has agreed to at least one — and possibly three— debates with Vice President Kamala Harris, the editor of the conservative National Review Online, is cautioning supporters of the former president to not get their hopes up too high.

In his column, Philip Klein reminded readers that the postmortems following the first debate focused on President Joe Biden's age-related struggles while little attention was paid to Trump's nearly equal poor performance.

Against Harris, who is both 19 years younger and a former prosecutor, it will be a completely different ballgame, he argued.

With the first debate just weeks away, Klein wrote the former president has lots to do in the meantime lest he "very well get smoked when they face off."

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Noting that in the Biden debate, Trump was "often incoherent" and used "a sort of MAGA shorthand that is comprehensible to those who already support him," the conservative editor suggested the former president won't escape the type of scrutiny that helped drive Biden out of the race.

Pointing to Trump's much-derided Mar-a-Lago press conference on Thursday as an example of what to expect, Klein wrote, Harris would likely "... come to the debate well-equipped with many talking points on all of the issues most likely to come up and she will stick largely to script."

"There are a lot of avenues for Trump to challenge Harris and get her off her game, but that requires a command of details that he can use to make arguments in a comprehensible way," he wrote before predicting, "If Trump decides to wing it and thinks he can get away with the type of performance he did at the first debate or Thursday’s press conference, he will get his clock cleaned."

You can read more at the link.

'I did this thing called journalism': Minnesota writer debunks Megyn Kelly's smear of Walz

For the past several days, many Trump supporters have claimed that Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz signed a bill mandating that schools place women's sanitary products in both boys' and girls' school bathrooms to accommodate transgender students.

The claim was also spread this week by former Fox News host Megyn Kelly, who claimed that Walz "forced 4th grade boys to have tampons in their school bathrooms."

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'At least be a normal person': J.D. Vance buried for fumbling softball question

On Friday morning, MSNBC's Joe Scarborough, Jonathan Lemire and Katty Kay couldn't stop laughing at Sen. J.D. Vance's inability to answer a reporter's simple question about what makes him smile or be happy.

With Donald Trump's presidential campaign pushing back against accusations that it's bogged down with grievances and feelings of doom for America, Vice President Kamala Harris' campaign is being lauded for spreading hope and joy.

That led to 2024 GOP vice presidential nominee Vance to be asked about what makes him smile, to which he replied, "Well, I smile at a lot of things, including bogus questions from the media, Dan. I mean, look, I think if you watch, if you watch a full speech that I give, I actually, I’m having a good time out here, and I’m enjoying this."

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"It wasn't a hard question," Scarborough told his laughing co-hosts as Kay suggested, "Anything normal."

"You have to know when to turn it off for a second and say, 'Yeah, kids, puppies..."

"Ohio State football!" Lemire joked.

"Ohio State football, yeah," Scarborough replied before adding, "Wearing the little techie vest that he likes to wear."

"Maybe he can't be the joyful warrior that we're seeing on the Democratic ticket, but you could at least be a normal person and, at least in that moment, he very much did not," Lemire claimed.

Watch below or at the link.

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'Major concerns': Trump team reportedly fearful of mental decline after press conference

Donald Trump's campaign team has "major concerns" about the Republican presidential nominee's mental decline after he was exposed to the media for an hour of fielding questions, according to a controversial former associate of Rudy Giuliani.

Lev Parnas, the Soviet-born businessman who figured in Trump's first impeachment investigation, told followers on X Trump's disproven story about a perilous helicopter ride with California politician Willie Brown has the campaign in panic mode.

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'Bravery in a helicopter:' Trump insult comes back to bite him after 'bizarre' tale

An old insult from Donald Trump found new significance this week when the former president shared a questionable story about a perilous ride with Willie Brown that the California politician says never happened.

Trump has been subjected to ridicule, raised eyebrows, and fact-checks since he told a later-disproved story to a gaggle of reporters summoned to Mar-a-Lago Thursday for a press conference.

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'Rage channeled into inciting fear': Therapist breaks down Trump's Mar-a-Lago presser

Psychotherapist Nick Carmody on Friday delivered an analysis of former President Donald Trump's Thursday press conference at Mar-a-Lago in which the ex-president claimed America was on the brink of both an economic depression and World War III, while also going off on angry tangents about Vice President Kamala Harris' rally crowd sizes.

Writing on Twitter, Carmody said that Trump's press conference shows that he's "raging" about the state of the 2024 presidential race, which was upended when President Joe Biden dropped out and endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris.

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'I was in the room': Trump admin official confirms ex-president praised Tim Walz

Donald Trump once praised Tim Walz for his handling of protests in 2020, a former Trump administration official confirmed Friday.

Trump has hurled several attacks at Walz for his purported conduct during protests that stemmed from the murder of George Floyd, but it was later reported that the then-president had hailed Walz when Kamala Harris' current pick for V.P. was on Trump's board of governors.

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Morning Joe panel laughs its way through dismantling Trump's 'weird' helicopter tale

ON MSNBC's "Morning Joe" Friday morning, the panel reacted with laughter as fill-in host Katty Kay took apart Donald Trump's "weird" tale of almost dying in a helicopter crash that reportedly never happened.

During the ex-president's rambling press conference on Thursday at his Mar-a-Lago resort he used a recollection of visiting California to view wildfire damage from a helicopter as a reason to attack Vice President Kamala Harris.

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'Dump those traitors': MAGA fans revolt and demand Trump fire top campaign managers

Donald Trump is being asked by some supporters to "fire" his top campaign advisors — so much so that it has affected what topics are trending on the former president's social media network, Truth Social.

On Friday morning, the former president's Truth Social platform was deluged with complaints about campaign managers Chris LaCivita and Susie Wiles with #DumpLaCivita and #DumpWiles becoming top topics.

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'Trump seems to be stuck' and debate gambit 'shows how desperate he is': reporter

Puck News senior political correspondent Tara Palmeri on Friday said that former President Donald Trump's sudden flip-flop on debating Vice President Kamala Harris on ABC showed that he's "desperate" for an event to turn around his presidential campaign.

Appearing on CNN Friday, Palmeri argued that Trump would not have changed his mind on debating Harris on ABC if he felt confident at the moment that he was heading toward victory.

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Fani Wills slaps back at Trump dismissal effort: 'They again fail to persuade'

Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis this week slapped back at former President Donald Trump's attempt to toss her election racketeering case in a sweeping brief that hits heavy on a single word: fail.

Willis on Aug. 5 responded to Trump's motion to dismiss charges linked to his attempts to overturn results of Georgia's 2020 presidential election, court records show.

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'Thin gruel': WSJ editorial page slaps down GOP attacks on Tim Walz's military record

Republicans this week have been lobbing attacks on Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz's 24-year-record of service in the National Guard -- but the conservative Wall Street Journal editorial page is decidedly unimpressed.

Writing about the campaign to accuse Walz of "stolen valor," the editors make the case that Republicans would be better off training their fire elsewhere in the Minnesota governor's record.

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'Something is amiss in Georgia': Legal expert flags Trump loyalists' likely unlawful acts

Donald Trump's loyalists have infiltrated a Georgia election board and are now wreaking havoc, a legal analyst said on Friday.

MSNBC's Lisa Rubin, a former litigator, highlighted the actions of three pro-MAGA members of the local board, and how some of them may be illegal.

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