Donald Trump at his rally on Saturday lashed out at sound engineers handling a video he played at the event, insisting to his campaign: "Don't pay the bill!"
Trump played a video about Vice President Kamala Harris and tax proposals. After the video ended, Trump said the sound was "lousy."
"I tell my people immediately, don't pay the bill for the guy that did that," he said. "Then they get a story that says, 'Trump doesn't want to pay the bill.' No, when people do a lousy job -- they did a lousy job with the sound, but the good news is you understand it."
Harris' campaign posted the video of the outburst, saying, "Trump announces he’s not going to pay the staff at the venue he’s speaking at."
Donald Trump's "curious strategy" to reach women in the waning days of the presidential election is "incredibly surprising," according to Alexi McCammond, who serves as an opinion editor focusing on the 2024 election for the Washington Post.
McCammond appeared on MSNBC on Saturday to discuss Trump's efforts to reach women.
The host played a clip of the former president calling Vice President Kamala Harris a "dope," and asked what McCammond thinks of Trump airing his "grievances" on rally stages.
"I was just shaking my head," McCammond said. "That was the first time I had heard him talking like that. It's incredibly surprising that, in the final days of an election where Roe is on the ballot, reproductive rights are on the ballot, rather, he is attacking and degrading and demeaning women and reminding women of all the ways he talks about us and feels about us and will go out of his way to attack and belittle us. And I just think that is a curious strategy if you want women to vote for you."
The host, Alex Witt, said she, too, was "shaking her head."
Donald Trump isn't actually masculine, but he is using men's fears against them in his presidential campaign, an expert said.
Liz Plank, the author of the book For the Love of Men: A Vision for Mindful Masculinity, appeared on MSNBC on Saturday to discuss the gender gap in the current presidential election and how men are looking at the candidates.
The host asked Plank about Vice President Kamala Harris' recent comments directed at her male supporters, and what her running mate Tim Walz has done regarding his own masculine image.
"Tim Walz uses his masculinity for good and Donald Trump exploits it for his own gain," Plank responded.
She then continued:
"Can we talk about masculinity, right? Trump is putting on a performance of masculinity. Because he's not actually masculine. This is a guy who spends more time with his make-up artists than with his own advisors. But even setting aside that he probably wears more make-up than Kamala Harris, masculine men aren't afraid of women. They're not afraid to debate women. Masculine men don't have meltdowns on stage because a woman that they didn't like asked them a question that they didn't like. Masculine men aren't manipulated by people who give them compliments."
She added that masculine men "actually protect women."
"They don't enact abortion bans that endanger women," she said.
Donald Trump's longest-serving chief of staff recently called his former boss a "fascist," and said Trump wished his generals were more like Adolf Hitler's generals, but one conservative analyst has had it with tying the former president's fans to Nazis.
Brendan Buck, a former key adviser to ex-House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI), appeared on MSNBC Saturday, where he spoke up about what he thinks is an unfair comparison regarding Trump. Buck, a conservative critic of the former president, said Hillary Clinton went too far when she compared Trump's upcoming rally at Madison Square Garden to a Nazi event.
"I do have to say, I find that Madison Square Garden conversation a bit silly," Buck said. "Look, what Hillary Clinton said there is completely obnoxious."
Buck continued, saying, "I am as critical of Donald Trump as anybody but people going to Madison Square Garden that night are not gathering for a Nazi gathering. It is an arena."
"I don't think setting foot in Madison Square Garden makes anybody who goes there a Nazi," he added. "That is the kind of rhetoric that just tells people it doesn't matter. They are going to say anything they want. Now all of a sudden going to Madison Square Garden you are a Nazi. I can't tell you how much that upsets people who are on the fence on Donald Trump and say they are just out to get him and they will say anything. I don't know why it has to go that level."
After a short protest from the MSNBC show's host, Buck got louder.
"I don't think Madison Square Garden has anything different to do with the rally he is having right now as it relates to Nazism. What Hillary Clinton said is that people who gathered that day were there to pledge allegiance to Nazism and that's what's going to happen again at Madison Square Garden. That is so disrespectful to a lot of people, I don't support Donald trump, I think he's a bad guy, but people who go there are not pledging their support to Nazism, which is what Hillary Clinton said."
Former Obama campaign advisor Ameshia Cross, on the other hand, argued in response to Buck that Trump knows exactly what he's doing when he plans his events at famous sites of racist leaders.
Donald Trump is expected to take the stage in Novi, Michigan Saturday afternoon, the day after he made his MAGA fans wait for him for hours on a cold tarmac in Traverse City on Friday night.
With the election down to ten days away, the former president has attempting to pack in as many appearances as possible in the waning days in the key battleground states that hold the key to a November victory.
On Friday night, the former president left his fans waiting while he finished up an interview with podcaster Joe Rogan in Austin.
As CBS reported, "Minutes before Trump's Michigan rally was scheduled to begin at 7:30 p.m. Eastern, his spokesman posted on the social media platform X that Trump was just leaving Texas, more than two hours away by air. Trump recorded a video from his plane urging his supporters to stay, noting it was Friday night and promising, 'We're going to have a good time tonight,'" adding, Trump eventually took the stage at the Traverse City airport, where temperatures dipped to about 50 degrees Fahrenheit (10 degrees Celsius). The crowd erupted into cheers as video screens showed Trump's plane arriving and then him walking off his plane and down the steps."
Reacting to a Wall Street Journal report that billionaire Elon Musk has been having secret talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin, conservative Reihan Salam attempted to downplay the idea that anything nefarious has been going on which led to him being rebuked on CNN.
During the discussion on CNN's Chris Wallace show, host Wallace mentioned the private Putin talks that have alarmed government officials because the Donald Trump ally is also a government defense contractor.
The nation's security seemed unconcerning to Salam, who told the host, "I honestly don't know about the content of these conversations, but what I will say is that Elon Musk is someone who has been greatly enriched by Biden-Harris policies, by the Inflation Reduction Act. "
After pointing to Musk's increased Tesla profits, he continued, "So I think that the idea that he is doing this to enrich himself, there's a little bit of a wrinkle here. "
"Oh, come on, come on" the New York Times Lulu Garcia-Navarro interrupted.
"This is with Vladimir Putin. Elon Musk is actually involved with Ukraine and has American contracts to actually give them internet with their Starlink," she lectured Salam.
"This is not just some guy having discussions over his head," she continued. "This is someone who is integral to a lot of the things that the United States is doing. And to be having private conversations with one of the premier enemies of the United States without coordinating with [the State Department] –– I mean this is highly inappropriate."
"Do you know that he is not coordinating", the conservative panelist shot back.
"We don't know what he's doing," podcaster Kara Swisher interjected.
She then added, "This is precisely what people accuse George Soros of doing and everything else, but it is perfectly fine when Elon Musk does. Elon Musk does better in a Trump presidency."
Former Republican National Committee chairman Michael Steele went off on a brutal attack on Amazon billionaire Jeff Bezos for his part in spiking a Washington Post endorsement of Vice President Kamala Harris, telling the owner of paper to sell it if he's afraid of Donald Trump.
Reacting to the furor of the venerable paper which broke the Watergate break-in story that led to President Richard Nixon's resignation on Aug. 8, 1974, Steele, from his perch on MSNBC's "The Weekend" bluntly stated Bezos has no idea what he is doing.
Noting the paper's "Democracy dies in darkness" now-diminished slogan, Steele ranted, "You just turned out the lights, Jeff Bezos, you just turned out the lights on the Washington Post because you were so afraid, my god, 'Donald Trump will come after my business.'"
"Here's the deal," he continued. "If you can't handle it, sell the paper! Because why did you own it if you are going to do this with that? Same with the L.A. Times. If you can't take that heat, get out of that business because it is not a business for you."
"You cannot bring that mindset, you don't have a journalistic mindset, you don't understand what the First Amendment means to the men and women who actually do that job every day," he stated before exclaiming, "There is a reason your newsroom right now is pissed off at your dumb behind because you buckled. You put it on your masthead and then you took it down because you are afraid of Donald Trump ."
"I don't get what the hell everybody is so afraid of this guy for," he told his co-hosts. "There are more of us willing to stand in the light so it doesn't go dark and you are turning out the lights on your own newspaper"
"Go ahead. See what happens. He is still going to come after you if he wins, right?" he concluded.
During an appearance on MSNBC's "The Weekend," billionaire entrepreneur Mark Cuban was asked what appears to be moving voters away from Donald Trump and into Vice President Kamala Harris' camp in the waning days of the 2024 presidential campaign.
Cuban, who has been hitting the campaign trail to boost Harris, was specifically asked, "What are you finding to be the most persuasive closing argument?"
"Most recently, deportation," he quickly answered.
"People didn't want to believe he would do something like that but now he is talking more and more about it," he continued. "When he talks about the enemy within, when he has signs behind him that say mass deport. When Stephen Miller is being more emboldened to speak out ––it is starting to resonate with people."
"I talked earlier about trying to convert that into business terms, cultural terms, into community terms, " he said of his Harris advocacy. "You know, I asked an immigration lawyer, 'Look, tell me, are there examples of grandparents who have been there 20, 30 years that are still undocumented? Why are they still undocumented?' Well because they were afraid, now they are terrified. She has people coming up to her as an attorney asking what they should do, they may have American kids, American grandkids, it doesn't matter."
"People are terrified, business people," he added. "You talk about restaurants, business people are terrified if their parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, nieces and nephews are not documented. You know, are they able to go to work? Will they have to move? How will they deal with that? It is terrifying people."
"I'm from Pittsburgh. I talked to some folks and I got an email from someone who is Polish-American and said the Polish community is getting behind Vice President Harris because of support for Ukraine because if Ukraine is taken over by Russia, Poland is next," he concluded.
On Saturday morning, MSNBC political analyst Elise Jordan expressed astonishment and anger over Donald Trump's ignorance about Nazis and Adolf Hitler which was revealed in his conversations with his former White House chief of staff.
During an appearance on MSNBC's "The Weekend," Jordan — a former speechwriter in President George W. Bush's administration — was asked about the impact of Gen. John Kelly's admission that Trump found admirable qualities in the Nazi leader.
According to the analyst, she believes it has given an assist to Vice President Kamala Harris as she makes the case that her presidential opponent is a fascist.
That, in turn, led her to point out that Harris seems to be getting under Trump's skin with the attacks before she turned back to Trump's lack of knowledge about the Nazis.
"I thought the Hitler comment was just, I mean, jaw-dropping, even though we have heard it several iterations of that over the years," she told the panel. "It is not new he denigrates the military and sympathizes with authoritarians and dictators. What I thought was so effective is she [Harris] used it in the CNN town hall in the way she actually said, he is a fascist, saying what she thinks, being authentic, just putting it out there."
"You know, the Trump campaign, I think it had impact," she reported. "They got up an ad immediately of the Holocaust survivor. You know Republicans, you know they are on top of it and did not waste any time getting that out."
She then exclaimed, "John Kelly has to explain to Trump, 'No, you don't want generals like Hitler. They killed millions of innocent people by sending them to the gas chambers.' Jesus Christ, why are we having this conversation?"
Former Fox News and NBC News host Megyn Kelly went toe-to-toe with liberal HBO comedian Bill Maher on Friday night as she tried to insist a second Trump administration will look a lot like the first.
The debate kicked off with Maher noting to Kelly and his "Real Time" audience that America mistakenly thought Russia would stand alone when it invaded Ukraine. Instead, Russian President Vladimir Putin has become "chummy" with Chinese President Xi Jinping, as well as North Korea and Iran.
"These are the dictator countries. This is a very World War II feeling here," Maher remarked to his guest. "The dictator countries are getting together."
He added that the world appears to be "uniting" with "good guy" Democratic countries against the "autocracies."
"And if your guy gets in, we're going to be on the wrong side of this one," he said, to applause.
But Kelly disagreed, responding that if Trump wins, she thinks America will return to what it was like when he was in office, when the country didn't get involved or start a war.
"Putin did not invade Ukraine until Biden took over," she said.
Kelly pointed to the withdrawal in Afghanistan that "projected weakness through the world."
"That is what's proactive," said Kelly. "Weakness is proactive."
She insisted that Trump "destabilized" dictators while in office because he was unpredictable, such as what she called a "strategic strike" that killed Iranian Major General Qasem Soleimani in January 2020. This kept these countries on their heels, she said.
Maher interjected, "It's what he might do to us that I'm a little more worried about."
Not to be deterred, Kelly doubled down, noting Trump was in office for four years and didn't go after political enemies with the Department of Justice.
Trump supporters in Traverse City, Michigan got tired of the former president keeping them waiting for hours behind schedule for his rally — and many walked out before he arrived.
The exodus was first flagged by CBS News' Ed O'Keefe, who posted video footage of the restless crowd and some heading for the exits.
"Trump’s decision to spend hours with @joerogan not going over well with Michiganders, some of whom are leaving as they learn the former president is still More than an hour away."
Trump's interview with the famous podcaster, which came together after rumors of a potential interview between Rogan and Vice President Kamala Harris apparently fell through, lasted longer than anticipated — with Trump explaining in a video broadcast to his supporters from his plane that he was going to be at least three hours late, when he was already an hour late.
"I think you will" understand the hourslong delay, Trump told his supporters.
Trump supporters bailing on his rallies early has become a frequent occurrence, with many media commenters observing it happens regularly.
At their presidential debate, Harris attacked Trump over the matter, saying that they are leaving out of "exhaustion and boredom." The former president lost his composure at that line, segueing into a rant about how Haitian migrants are supposedly eating people's dogs and cats in Ohio.
Mega chart-topper Beyoncé delivered a simple message to Americans while rallying supporters of Kamala Harris at a packed Houston stadium on Friday: “We need you.”
“For all the men and women in this room and watching around the country: We need you,” the Houston native said during her short remarks that immediately followed a speech by her one-time Destiny’s Child bandmate Kelly Rowland. The group’s popular 1999 hit “Independent Woman, Part 1” welcomed the pair as they took the stage.
“We must vote, and we need you,” Beyoncé continued. “It’s time for America to sing a new song. Our voices sing a chorus of unity, they sing a song of dignity and opportunity. Are you all ready to add your voice to the new American song? Because I am.”
Beyoncé told the crowd the country was “at the precipice of an incredible shift, the brink of history” and added that it was “impossible not to feel the energy in this room, the positivity, the community, the humanity.”
As she introduced Harris, the singer’s 2016 track “Freedom," which has become the campaign's anthem, played in the background.
“Kelly and Beyonce!” Harris said as she took the stage at the rally focusing on reproductive rights.
