Gov. Tim Walz (D-MN) made news this month when he stopped a huge rally when an attendee fell ill. From the podium, he asked other rallygoers to pass bottles of water to the individuals who were bringing in medical care.
Out of concern for other rally attendees, Walz asked a staffer to pass out water to anyone in the packed crowd who might need it.
Walz earned some positive press for his actions at the rally, as some online influencers said his actions demonstrated a "Big Dad Energy," while local news station Minneapolis Fox 9 called it going "into dad mode to help."
Former President Donald Trump's allies have been lobbing attacks at Gov. Tim Walz's military service record, despite the fact that Walz served 24 years in the Army National Guard, while Trump has been accused of dodging the draft during the Vietnam War.
Speaking to CNN's Brianna Keilar on Wednesday, Republican campaign surrogate Rep. Mike Waltz (FL) defended the attacks on Walz's record by alleging that the Minnesota governor deliberately exaggerated his achievements during his decades of service.
"I'm attacking the lies about his service," said Waltz.
"Let me say what is in the letter," replied Keilar, whose husband is a Green Beret. "The comment about the gun, the weapon of war he obviously didn't carry into war, and he should answer a question about that. And how he represented his retired rank, which is obviously different than what he was promoted to and what he retained after retirement. But also the issue of whether he abandoned his unit for a deployment to Iraq and did not go."
She then played her interview with conservative Sgt. Maj. Joseph Eustice, who attacked the GOP allegations about Walz's service. He explained that he didn't share Walz's politics, but he knew Walz as a soldier and defended the service they shared in the unit.
"I mean, that man hates Tim Walz's politics. Despises them. Is not going to vote for him. But he served with him, and he knows his service. So, why are you and other Republicans doing this?" she asked.
Waltz insisted that he wasn't attacking Walz's service, but rather purported falsehoods that Walz has told about it.
"If he's so damn proud about it, why does he have to continue to embellish it and to lie about it?" the Republican said. "Because the facts are clear. He was promoted to sergeant major, but he didn't do the things necessary to retire at that rank and was demoted, and yet there are ample, hundreds, hundreds of incidences where he is describing himself as a retired command sergeant major."
He went on to call it a "lie" and "a misrepresentation and exaggeration."
Yet, the letter that Waltz put his name on accuses Walz of "abandoning the men and women under your leadership just as they were getting ready to deploy."
Keilar said that this was clearly an attack on his service. She then went on to fact-check the lawmaker saying that Walz filed to run for Congress in early February. His unit was told they might be deployed a month later. In July they were sent to Iraq, a PBS fact-check explained.
Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump complained about former President Barack Obama and former First Lady Michelle Obama a day after the couple spoke about him at the Democratic National Convention (DNC).
During a campaign speech in North Carolina on Wednesday, Trump went off-topic while talking about President Joe Biden's withdrawal from Afghanistan.
"Did you see Barack Hussein Obama last night?" he asked the crowd. "Take little shots. He was taking shots at your president. And so was Michelle."
"You know, they always say, sir, please stick to policy," the former president said of his advisers. "Don't get personal. And yet they're getting personal all night long, these people."
"Do I still have to stick to policy? Sir, you must stick to policy."
MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell was met with hostility this week when he tried to sell his sleep products to pro-Palestinian protesters at the Democratic National Convention (DNC).
While recording an interview with his Frank Speech network amid protesters in Chicago, Lindell was heckled by demonstrators on Tuesday.
"40,000 dead Palestinians, no one cares what the MyPillow guy has to say!" one protester shouted.
Lindell tried to convince the group of protesters to buy his products.
"Do you need a pillow?" he asked. "Do you need a good night's sleep?"
"What do you sleep on?" Lindell continued. "Do you sleep on a MyPillow?"
"I think you need to get your s--t together and realize what side of history you're f--king on," another protester shot back.
"You have quite a mouth on you," Lindell said. "You need some sleep, I think."
"You have quite a mouth on you, motherf---er," the protester countered.
One demonstrator asked Lindell if he supported Palestinians.
A former grocery executive told a progressive media outlet in a video released Tuesday that "people f------ need to go to jail" over a long-running scheme in which dominant U.S. meat industry players have used information provided by a little-known data analytics company to increase prices and pad their bottom lines.
"This is probably one of the top five food scandals of the 21st Century, and we can't underplay it," said Errol Schweizer, the former vice president of Whole Foods' grocery division. "People need to go to jail for this s---."
Schweizer's comments come at the start of a nine-minute video produced by More Perfect Union, which tells the story of how Indiana-based Agri Stats, the seemingly bland data firm, "built a network used by the nation's largest meat companies," including Tyson Foods, Hormel, and Cargill.
"Inside that network, America's meat barons share secret data," says More Perfect Union's Eric Gardner, the video's narrator. "It's alleged that Agri Stats organizes and then launders that information across the industry. Companies weaponize it, restricting output, manipulating the market, ultimately raising your prices."
Watch the full video:
Last September, the U.S. Department of Justice filed a civil antitrust suit against Agri Stats for allegedly "organizing and managing anticompetitive information exchanges among broiler chicken, pork, and turkey processors."
"The complaint alleges that Agri Stats violated Section 1 of the Sherman Act by collecting, integrating, and distributing competitively sensitive information related to price, cost, and output among competing meat processors," the DOJ said. "This conduct harms customers, including grocery stores and American families."
Less than two months later, Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison led a bipartisan coalition of states in joining the Justice Department's lawsuit, which Agri Stats tried unsuccessfully to dismiss earlier this year.
Ellison told More Perfect Union that while an update to U.S. antitrust laws is long-overdue, "the Sherman Act, passed in 1890, is enough to stop Agri Stats from this illegal information-sharing that it's doing."
"I want to get to trial on this fast," said Ellison. "I believe we've got a great case, and I believe that what we're fighting for is a fair economy so that all Americans can aspire to prosperity."
More Perfect Union released its video days after Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harrisproposed a first-of-its-kind federal ban on price gouging in the food and grocery sectors and called for new rules to "make clear that big corporations can't unfairly exploit consumers to run up excessive profits."
The meat industry was among the corporate forces that pushed back on Harris' proposed price gouging ban. Julie Anna Potts, president and CEO of the Meat Institute—a lobbying group for the meatpacking industry—accused the Harris campaign of "unfairly" targeting the meat and poultry industry.
While Potts said that "avian influenza, a shortage of beef cattle, and high input prices like energy and labor are all factors that determine prices at the meat case," Tyson, Cargill, JBS S.A., and National Beef are each facing lawsuits accusing them of illegally colluding to fix prices.
Admitting that he is trying to not get caught up in the excitement while attending the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, conservative pollster Frank Luntz told CNN that there is definitely a shift underway in the country towards Vice President Kamala Harris.
Speaking with host Briana Keilar, the 62-year-old Luntz noted that the ascension of Harris since Biden stepped aside was the "best launch" he's ever seen.
"Frank, how is it looking? How was this race looking in those few states that she was talking about these key battleground states," the CNN host asked.
"There's been a shift over the last four weeks and that shift is significant," he replied. "You see in the polls, you see in the focus groups, Joe Biden was definitively losing those states by a narrow margin. But she is now definitively even or up in the key states, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, those are the states that absolutely matter most."
"And these last two nights, you actually can, I've been in the hall, I can see the level of intensity, the level of passion," he continued. "I don't want to go overboard because these are the people who care the most about a Democratic victory but it is palpable."
Republican critics are quibbling over the fertility treatment that Tim and Gwen Walz were forced to use when they were trying to have children.
Gov. Tim Walz (D-MN) and his wife have told the story several times about their difficulty having children and the procedures they were forced to go through. In the past, Walz has referred to it as IVF, in vitro fertilization, which has been banned in Alabama because embryos can be destroyed in the process.
In fact, the fertility treatment was IUI, intrauterine insemination.
Speaking to MSNBC on Wednesday, Dr. Kavita Patel explained that both are types of fertility treatments that fall under a broader umbrella.
"IVF is more of a medical procedure," she said. "You take out a person's eggs and have that combined with sperm to create embryos, usually in a lab setting, and then put that embryo back into a uterus in order to hopefully facilitate a live birth and pregnancy. That's the outcome of also IUI."
IUI is just a different procedure that uses less anesthesia, she said, and "it still must be done under a doctor's supervision, in an office-case office-based setting."
"When I talk to patients about these fertility treatments, they often say 'Oh, yeah, I saw my IFV doctor.' Or, 'I got IVF.' Because, you're right, it is technically different but under the same umbrella. We're talking about access to healthcare, and the irony is that any of these treatments are under threat from the plan that Vance and Donald Trump have put together along with Project 2025."
A spokesperson for the Harris Walz campaign clarified Walz's comment, saying that IFV is a commonly understood shorthand for fertility treatments.
During an appearance on MSNBC on Wednesday morning, NBC national political analyst John Heilemann singled out former First Lady Michelle Obama's star return at the Democratic National Convention and explained to the hosts of "Morning Joe" why her reappearance on the national scene is yet another blow to Donald Trump.
With the former president's re-election bid reeling from the ascension of Vice President Kamala Harris as the Democratic Party's 2024 presidential nominee, Heilemann stated that Michelle Obama's nationally televised DNC speech was yet another set-back for Team Trump.
"I think Michelle Obama — as a piece of political communication, I can't think that I've seen anyone do it better than I saw her do it last night," he began. "And she's in the upper echelon of any convention speech ever been given. I think it's important that this the notion of the reluctant warrior, her credibility, people say she is one of the most popular political figures in the Democratic Party or political figures in the country."
"Her power comes from she is not a political figure; she is beyond politics," he elaborated. "Her credibility comes from the fact that people rightly, correctly believe that she takes the stage reluctantly because she doesn't see politics as a game, as something she wants to take partake in. She only comes out that she thinks the stakes are so high."
"And the fact that she speaks, Michelle Robinson from working-class Chicago speaks in a vernacular that is different than her husband's and different from anybody else," he continued. "The directness of her message to a lot of people in the Democratic coalition which was there is no time for fooling around here, none of this Goldilocks stuff where we have to have the perfect candidate. Don't get precious about whether anybody has asked you enough times to go out and do what you have to do here. I'm telling you that the stakes are really high. I need, you need, to work now. stop screwing around."
"Her directness, very powerful, I thought," he concluded.
Reacting to Donald Trump's rambling and subdued speech in Howell, Michigan, on Tuesday, MSNBC host Joe Scarborough claimed it is apparent to him that the former president is still attempting to grapple with both his legal problems and the attempt on his life.
As Scarborough sees it, the ex-president is currently off his game which could be the cause of his flailing campaign that goes beyond having to face Vice President Kamala Harris.
As he explained to his "Morning Joe" panel, Trump has made a series of unforced errors in interviews and speeches and, when given a chance to walk them back, has instead doubled down and made matters worse for his campaign.
"Trump is off balance, and he's off balance because he has been a disrupter all his life and his campaign has been disrupted and he's off balance," the MSNBC host began before warning, "There are 80, 85 days left, and if Democrats think this is the Donald Trump they are going to get for the next two or three months, they are sadly mistaken."
"It's her [Harris'] convention right now and he's off balance for a variety of reasons," he continued. "Let's also remember, so much has happened that, you know, that assassination attempt has to be weighing on his mind and it would be weighing on anybody's mind right now. This summer he went through a trial where he was found guilty, and he's -- but he had to sit there for, what, weeks and weeks."
"34 felony counts," co-host Mika Brzezinski contributed.
"Yeah, so again, I'm just saying he's off balance right now. Democrats would be making a huge mistake to think that this is the Donald Trump they are going to get between now and election day," Scarborough replied.
"Way Too Early" host Jonathan Lemire added, "Yeah, people I talk to confirm that, that he is off balance and adjusting to the change of the top of the ticket and spent years thinking he's running against Joe Biden and now he's not," Lemire remarked. "The trial did weigh on him — and he still has a sentencing coming up in a couple weeks — and the assassination attempt as well and they are trying to figure out how to hold the outdoor rallies again and it's something that does weigh on him as he was inches away from death."
During an appearance on MSNBC's "Morning Joe" on Wednesday, NBC national affairs analyst John Heilemann focused on Donald Trumps low-key speech in Howell, Michigan on Tuesday and claimed it was a bad sign for the Republican party going into November's elections.
Pointing out that the former president has been accused of "cognitive decline" for months, as evidenced by his "glitch-filled" speeches at rallies, the analyst claimed the GOP has pinned all of its election hopes on a faltering candidate.
"It's going to be a close race in the other direction," he told MSNBC host Joe Scarborough. "And that means that, you know, all of these people who are around Donald Trump trying to desperately over the course of the last five weeks now, since Kamala Harris became the presumptive Democratic nominee saying to Trump we need to be focused and you need to get it together, man."
"And it's now five solid weeks where he is not able to be disciplined, he is not able to be focused he is not able to be energetic," he added. "My Puck column last week raised this question which is, is it not clear now that Donald Trump's cognitive decline, his mental acuity, the failing mental acuity, age-related diminishment, the lack of energy, the things that, whether you like Donald Trump or not, back in 2016, there were times when he could be a feral beast as a political athlete."
"It's not there anymore," he elaborated. "And I think, you know, it bodes ill for the Republican campaign not on many of the moral and ethical grounds we often rightly raise but just on the level can this candidate who is so central to this campaign — there is no campaign without Donald Trump — if he is not performing at some level of basic disciplined rigor focus, there is no way the Republican candidate, given all of the momentum on the Democratic side, no way Donald Trump can win."
Barack and Michelle Obama surprised many viewers by going after Donald Trump in their convention speeches.
The former first lady famously declared at the 2016 Democratic National Convention that, "When they go low, we go high," but she and the former president took direct aim at the Republican nominee's character flaws, antidemocratic tendencies, and even his sexual insecurities rather than focus on rallying the Obama coalition around Kamala Harris.
"I think in some ways what Barack Obama was doing last night, and Michelle Obama, were doing last night, though, kind of undermining some of Trump's strengths in those places by contributing to the notion that he's not strong," said CNN's Kate Bedingfield, a former White House communications director under president Joe Biden.
"There's absolutely a gender gap in this race and we see that men, especially young men, are a key pillar of Trump's support," she added. "Some of what I think the Obamas were doing last night was sort of trying to erode that by painting him as not this strongman, he's not this big, scary threat. He's actually, you know, sort of sad, pathetic – he only cares about himself."
Conservative commentator Shermichael Singleton had been surprised that the former president didn't speak directly to younger Black men, a group that the Trump campaign has targeted, and working-class whites, many of whom voted for Obama but moved over to Trump in the last two elections.
"So I take your point that there sort of less of this affirmative layout," Bedingfield said, "but I actually think that what they were doing is sort of eroding some of Trump's strength, and on this question of working class whites, I mean, you had Michelle Obama painting Donald Trump as somebody that doesn't know the value of a hard day's work, doesn't understand what it's like to be a working person, has the benefit of generational wealth, has had things handed to him."
"So in some ways I think that what they were doing is quite smart, subtle, by kind of going at some of those strengths that we see Trump has with the electorate," she added.
MSNBC host Joe Scarborough leveled Donald Trump Wednesday morning over what some say was a scare-mongering speech the former president gave in Howell, Michigan, on Tuesday where he claimed the streets of America are too dangerous for anyone to leave their homes to buy bread.
Speaking in front of law enforcement officers, a subdued and low-key Trump claimed, "You can’t walk across the street to get a loaf of bread. You get shot, you get mugged, you get raped, you get whatever it may be,” before adding, "You’ve seen it, and I’ve seen it.”
After sharing the clip, Scarborough lectured the former president with a barrage of facts.
After joking, "Donald Trump, of course, is describing the plot of [1981's] 'Fort Apache the Bronx,' it's great movie, a great reference, but it bears absolutely no semblance to what is happening right now because he says you get shot if you walk across the street."
"Or raped," Scarborough repeated, "If you want to get a piece of bread. Crime, I know that these facts, as Ronald Reagan would say, they are such stubborn things. I know it irritates people who support Donald Trump, but if crime keeps going on the trajectory that it's going right now, it's going to be lower than it was violent crime in 1950."
"Crime is going in an extraordinarily positive direction right now," he continued. "We have seen inflation continue to go down. And, again, I just don't know how many times I can say this, but it needs to be repeated because Republicans lie so much about immigration. Illegal border crossings were at a 50-year low when Barack Obama left office and Donald Trump became president of the United States it skyrocketed after Barack Obama left office."
"So I understand that facts don't matter for so many people who support Donald Trump because how could they if you're still supporting Donald Trump?" he quipped. "We could go down the long, long list of things he said and things he has done."
The panel on MSNBC's "Morning Joe' was wowed on Wednesday morning after sharing a supercut clip from Tuesday night's DNC roll call from Chicago that was run concurrently with a jam-packed rally hosted by Vice President Kamala Harris in Milwaukee.
The clip contrasted the rowdy Harris reception with the grim roll call from the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee weeks ago, which led co-host Joe Scarborough to blurt: "wow."
Once that clip, along with a clip of comments made by Harris completed, MSNBC's Mika Brzezinski contributed "That was just the beginning."
"Just wow, Willie," Scarborough added by addressing co-host Willie Geist. "I mean, you talk about a show of force, a show of power. That was impressive, I don't think I've seen anything like that before. 15,000 in Milwaukee? Just packed! And then, you know, in Chicago also at the convention. Wow, that was crazy."
"Yeah. 20,000 in Chicago and 15,000 in Milwaukee, perfect stage-craft as well," Geist agreed.
