A "powerful" endorsement of Vice President Kamala Harris from a fiscally conservative publication has stunned the host and guest of MSNBC's "Morning Joe."
New York Times financial columnist Andrew Ross Sorkin and anchor Mika Brzezinski both expressed surprise Thursday morning that the Economist editorial board chose not to endorse former President Donald Trump.
"This is not considered some liberal bastion or anything," said Sorkin. Added Brzezinski, "I did not see this coming."
The endorsement from the United Kingdom-based publication surprised Sorkin because of its historic dedication to conservative economic ideals such as free trade and characteristic support for conservative fiscal policy.
The Economist argued that Trump supporters were “deluding themselves” about the dangers a second Trump administration presented to the global economy and national security.
"You cannot imagine [Harris] bringing about a catastrophe," the endorsement reads. "We hope that a second Trump presidency would avoid disaster, but Mr. Trump poses an unacceptable risk to America and the world."
Brzezinski argued the Economist's case against Trump, that he presented a global threat, was significant for the message it sent.
"That's powerful," said Brzezinski. "The impact of a Trump presidency, the disastrous consequences of a Trump presidency on our allies and on the world economy."
Sorkin admitted one element of the Economist's decision did not surprise him.
"This, again, goes back to the math," he said. "Currently, no matter how you do the math, it is hard to justify Trump on economic policies."
Former President Donald Trump's return to the White House in 2025 could doom American citizens to an early death for a surprising reason revealed by a Washington Post contributor Thursday.
Health columnist and emergency physician Dr. Leana S. Wen expressed concern that Trump would task anti-vaccine advocate Robert F. Kennedy with choosing health agency chiefs who could face a major viral threat hovering on the horizon.
"I shudder to imagine how those agencies could be further weakened during a second Trump presidency," Wen wrote. "What will happen if another terrible virus starts spreading?"
Wen then warned readers, "This is not pure speculation."
The columnist has been keeping an eye on a "worrisome" viral disease with a mortality rate as high as 50 percent that as already begun to spread among a specific group of Americans.
The disease? Bird flu.
"It is entirely possible for avian influenza to become the next major infectious disease threat," wrote Wen. "If that were to happen, who would you want to be president?"
For Wen, the answer is Vice President Kamala Harris and the reason is Covid-19.
Wen detailed Trump's various actions she argued contributed to the deaths of 220,000 Americans by October 2020, before a vaccine had been developed and our lone protections were tests, social distancing and masks.
"It was during those tumultuous times that then-President Trump himself fell ill from Covid," Wen wrote. "His White House repeatedly refused to answer basic questions about when he contracted the coronavirus or who could have been exposed, though more than a dozen members of his inner circle ended up testing positive during this period...During his car ride back, he made a show of being maskless, exposing Secret Service agents to a potentially fatal disease."
Wen predicted Trump would only become more determined to flout safety regulations during his second administration with Kennedy at his side promoting vaccine deregulation and misinformation.
"I’d expect vaccine uptake to further decline, laying the groundwork for previously eliminated diseases such as polio and measles to make a comeback," Wen wrote. "I’d expect public health officials trying to do their jobs to be silenced, demoted or fired."
Wen does not have the same expectations for Harris.
"The administration in which she served as vice president did a remarkable job shepherding the United States out of the pandemic," Wen concluded.
A New York Times columnist wants Arab-Americans frustrated at the Israel-Hamas war to know he shares their pain — but that turning their back on the election and letting former President Donald Trump win will make everything much worse.
The lack of progress on peace in the region, as the U.S. tries to broker ceasefire talks between Israel and Hamas but continues to supply weapons to Israel, has led a number of prominent Arab and Muslim leaders to reject the Democratic Party out of anger over President Joe Biden's lack of course correction — and many see Vice President Kamala Harris as complicit.
However, Nicholas Kristof wrote Wednesday night, if this rift leads to Trump getting elected, they will sorely regret it.
"To those so upset about Biden’s policies in the Middle East that they are thinking about voting for Trump, staying home or voting for a third-party candidate — I understand," he wrote. "But don’t allow this anger to elect Trump, for that would amplify the suffering abroad that rightly upsets you. Refusing to vote may seem a noble gesture, but it’s a self-marginalization that could mean even more starving children, even more displacement and even more death."
Trump has a long history of unquestioningly supporting far-right leadership in Israel, including those leading the war effort, to the extent he even had a settlement named after him in the Israel-controlled Golan Heights. In office, he moved the U.S. embassy in Israel to Jerusalem, unilaterally recognizing the divided city as solely Israel's capital. He has called for the war to end but has made no indication of wanting to exact any conditions on Israel, saying instead they should "finish the job," and has even used "Palestinian" as a slur.
Additionally, Kristof reminded readers, "Trump is also the person who instituted the so-called Muslim ban, seeking to block travel to America by citizens of seven Muslim-majority countries."
"So by all means weigh Harris’s shortcomings. But remember that this election is not a referendum on one candidate, but a choice between two," he concluded. "If you’re throwing away your vote, don’t envision yourself on a moral mountaintop above the fray, but rather be willing to look into the eye of a woman whose health and life are at risk because of your principles."
A CNN poll expert on Wednesday night flagged what he called "a bit of a warning sign" in a key battleground state that could decide the election.
John King, an anchor and chief national correspondent for CNN, joined Anderson Cooper on his "AC360" to discuss a poll of likely voters showing Vice President Kamala Harris up by 6 points in Wisconsin and 5 points in Michigan — but tied with former President Donald Trump at 48% in Pennsylvania.
King initially said the polls were "largely positive" for the Harris campaign.
"They show competitive races in all three of these blue wall states," he said, noting Joe Biden flipped all three in 2020 from red to blue.
"The blue wall states have mattered, have been decisive in the last two presidential elections," he added.
But King later said there are "some concerns" for the Harris campaign "if you look in the weeds of these polls." He pointed to her polling among Black voters in Pennsylvania and Michigan but said she's seen "good numbers" in suburban areas.
Harris was polling at 83% and 76% in Michigan and Pennsylvania, respectively, among Black likely voters. Biden was at 92% in both states four years ago.
"[She's] running significantly behind Biden in 2020," said King, noting the Harris campaign doesn't believe the polls will reflect what happens on Election Day.
King then focused on Philadelphia County and it's roughly 740,000 votes cast in 2020, noting Biden won it with 81.4 percent of the vote.
"If you want to win Pennsylvania as a Democrat, you need to do that, but not just the 80% — you need the high turnout," he said.
Biden won Pennsylvania by 80,000 votes, largely on the back of a "giant margin in Philadelphia" that helped off-set Trump's dominance in the rural areas, King added.
"That is a bit of a warning sign in Pennsylvania," he said.
In Michigan, a similar story played out in 2020, with Biden winning the state with a hefty margin of 68% in Wayne County.
James Singer took to X at about 6:30 p.m. to share a video from NBC News political reporter Matt Dixon at the Resch Center in Ashwaubenon outside Green Bay.
"Resch Center in Green Bay has 10,500 capacity," Dixon wrote. "Warmup speakers are starting and probably 60%-ish full."
Dixon's video panned the upper levels of the venue to show viewers what he estimated to be thousands of empty seats. The reporter followed up his tweet to note that while the backend had "filled out," Trump could not boast of a sellout.
Commented Singer, "Lotta empty seats from Trump in Wisconsin."
Harris, also campaigning Wednesday in Wisconsin, held a rally and concert at Madison's Alliant Energy Center with performers who include Gracie Abrams, Mumford & Sons and Remi Wolf.
Both venues have about a 10,000-person capacity. Video from Harris' event appeared to show a full house.
The day before, Harris held a campaign event at The Ellipse in Washington D.C. where Trump drew roughly 53,000 people to his "Stop the Steal" rally on Jan. 6, 2021.
Harris' campaign took to Truth Social to let him know she'd drawn 75,000 people.
Former George W. Bush campaign strategist Matthew Dowd, a numbers guy, said he thinks Vice President Kamala Harris is in a stronger position heading into the election than Donald Trump.
Speaking to MSNBC's Nicolle Wallace on Wednesday, Dowd said he doesn't think Americans are actually "undecided" — "I think they're unmotivated."
Harris is working in the final days of the campaign to motivate these voters.
He said a big problem he has with polling experts such as Nate Silver and Real Clear Politics is they aggregate polls — and accept them as they are.
"If the model is off, the model is off, none of those numbers matter," said Dowd. "If you don't have the right percentage of people that are going to vote that are college educated, that are white, that are people of color that are women, all of the numbers you need and partisanship in this, if you model it based on an election that happened before 2016, 2020, 2022, whatever the election you have, you may miss the movements of people today."
Every model he's seeing today is premised on voting behavior," he said. Not "on the large pool of Americans that are potentially there, who aren't likely to vote but could vote if they are motivated properly."
He lamented that the poll models aren't premised on the current views of the American people; rather, they're looking at 2022 and 2016.
After they paused for the Kamala Harris rally in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, Dowd came back with a quick comment saying, "I would rather be her than him at this point in time. I would look at the data."
"People have to realize that when you look at a close election and analyze it, you are going to get lots of pieces of data," he told viewers. "Some will be bad. Some will be neutral. Some will be good. What you are looking for is a majority of the data points to be good. And yesterday a majority of the data points have been good for her. Some were bad, a few, some neutral, but the majority were good. Today, the majority of data points are good for her."
Republicans were shocked — shocked — that President Joe Biden might have called former President Donald Trump's supporters "garbage," and the Lincoln Project handed them their winnings.
"One of Kamala Harris's biggest donors is doubling down on calling half the country 'garbage,'" Vance wrote on X. "Will they continue to insult half of the country for the sin of thinking Kamala Harris isn't good at her job?"
The Lincoln Project replied with a video and a quote.
"It’s the people that surround her, they’re scum and they want to take down our country," Trump says in the video. "They are absolute garbage.”
Rick Wilson, a Lincoln Project co-founder, also shared the video with a jab at the media.
Vance's take on campaign scandals that include a Trump rally comedian calling Puerto Rico a "floating island of garbage" has been to call out liberals for being too sensitive.
Yet Biden's comment — which the White House later transcribed as "The only garbage I see floating out there is his supporter’s — his — his demonization of Latinos is unconscionable, and it’s un-American" — apparently shocked Trump's running mate.
"Kamala Harris and Joe Biden ought to be ashamed of themselves," Vance wrote.
Replied the Lincoln Project, “It’s the people that surround her, they’re scum and they want to take down our country. They are absolute garbage.”
South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott (R) promised Donald Trump that he would raise buckets of money, but as of Wednesday had yet to come up with the cash, a new report reveals.
Scott's Great Opportunity PAC, launched this summer, promised to deliver Trump $14 million to help his GOP pal reach out to Black voters, Politico reported Wednesday.
According to Politico's analysis of campaign finance reports, Scott had only been able to raise about 10 percent of the pledge with just $1.4 million.
"Its fundraising was largely driven by a $550,000 donation from Great Opportunity Policy Inc., a social welfare nonprofit, as well as contributions from GOP megadonors Jeff Yass and Marc Rowan, who wrote checks for $500,000 and $200,000, respectively," the report stated.
Politico cited a "person close to Scott granted anonymity," saying that there was a "slew" of checks that came in at the last minute, and the recent campaign finance reports don't reflect that.
According to the report, it's unclear if those last-minute donations will add up to the full amount.
The political action committee has spent about $1 million in ads in swing states, Politico reported.
The ads discussed school choice candidates like the far-right Republican candidate for U.S. Senate, Dave McCormick, who is running against Sen. Bob Casey (D-PA).
Trump's campaign has attempted to reach out to Black men in an effort to chip away at the Democratic votes.
Polls show that Trump is doing far better with the group than previous Republican candidates in presidential elections, Politico reported.
Former President Donald Trump thought he scored a win with his Madison Square Garden rally — then Vice President Kamala Harris put him in his place, wrote former conservative pundit Jonathan Last in a
lengthy Threads post.
Trump was already on the defense over the racist optics of one of his rally speakers
attacking the island of Puerto Rico, then Harris showed Trump she could beat him at his own game — and that "scared the crap out of him," argued Last.
"Trump was pleased with himself for putting 20,000 people in Madison Square Garden.
Harris brought *75,000* people onto the Ellipse," wrote Last — that's a figure larger even than the crowd Trump brought to the Ellipse on Jan. 6, just before the attack on the Capitol.
"Then there were the optics of the event itself.
Trump's MSG rally looked like the set was designed by the same person who made the Nobody Beats The Wiz commercials," wrote Last. "Harris looked like the POTUS in a Michael Bay movie come to life."
Last argued Harris sent a message that likely made Trump furious.
"Everything about the Harris event — from the magic hour lighting, to her suit and hair, to the VP seal, to the thickness of the carpet on the stage and the ghostly White House behind her — sent a two-word message:
Power. Strength," wrote Last. "These are the signals that Trump's lizard brain is *always* on alert for. I promise you that he didn't miss them last night."
Last argued Trump holds stock in the "law of the jungle" — and believes that Harris, if she wins, will do the same things to him that he plans to do to her.
That, according to Last, would be to use the full might of the federal government to persecute Trump, even beyond the criminal charges he already faces for the plot to interfere in the 2020 presidential election.
Harris, of course, won't do this, wrote Last, and this cuts to the one thing Trump doesn't get.
"It's about the rule of law," wrote Last. "Trump simply can't understand why anyone would adhere to it. So when he sees someone bring out 75k supporters, his lizard brain immediately worries about what that person will do to him if she has more power than he does."
A political analyst Wednesday revealed why he believes former President Donald Trump can't stop obsessing with Vice President Kamala Harris' intelligence.
Salon writer Chauncey DeVega dug through decades of rhetorical history to reveal a disturbing pattern that ends with Trump's attacks on the Black woman challenging his right to return to the White House in 2025.
"Trump told his followers that Kamala Harris is 'lazy,' has a 'low IQ' and appears to be on drugs or abusing some other substance(s).These are all lies," DeVega wrote.
"Trump is continuing to dig way down into his nasty bucket of racism and hate, grab the mess in his hands, and then smear it all over himself."
DeVega argued Trump has been relying on an centuries-old racist stereotype originated by the white people who enslaved Black people in the Antebellum South.
"To suggest that a Black person is lazy is a very old white racist stereotype that has its origins in white on Black chattel slavery and the American apartheid system that deemed Black people as incapable of full citizenship, 'natural' slaves, childlike and members of a subordinate and inferior group that was unfit for freedom," DeVega wrote.
"As historians and other experts have repeatedly demonstrated, the white racist lie that Black people constitute a naturally lazy 'race' is evidence of the absurdity of the race system and white supremacy given that Black human property were literally worked to death by their white owners."
DeVega — after detailing racist comments from Trump and his allies that include calling Puerto Rico a "floating island of garbage," falsely and repeatedly claiming Haitian immigrants eat pets and immigrants have "bad genes" — delivers a backhanded compliment to the Republican presidential nominee.
"Trump is one of the most accomplished and prominent racists and white supremacists in modern American history," DeVega wrote.
"Trump is truly the country’s first White president – and it appears increasingly likely that he will be back in the White House in January 2025."
A former speechwriter for multiple Republican presidents said this week former President Donald Trump presents a greater risk to his party than Vice President Kamala Harris.
Peter Wehner, who served as a speechwriter under three Republican presidents — Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, and George W. Bush — made no secret of his total disdain for Trump and the far-right MAGA movement in an Atlantic opinion piece released Tuesday night.
"It would be an affectation to say that Harris is a conservative champion, just as it would be a caricature to portray her now as a far-left liberal," Wehner argues. "She is neither, and if she's elected president, she is likely to govern from the center-left, at least on most things. But the strongest conservative case for voting for Harris doesn't have nearly as much to do with her as it has to do with her opponent. Trump remains a far more fundamental threat to conservatism than Harris."
The 63-year-old Wehner adds, "Trump has, in a way no Democrat ever could, changed the GOP from within and broken with the most important tenets of conservatism. That's no surprise, because his desire isn't to conserve; it is to burn things to the ground."
Wehner argued many of the policies that Trump champions — tariffs, protectionism, mass deportations — are a big departure from the pro-free trade, pro-immigration conservatism of the Reagan and Bush years.
"It is in foreign policy, though, that Trump may be most antithetical to the policies and approach of modern conservatism," Wehner explains. "Reagan was a fierce, relentless opponent of the Soviet Union…. Trump is the opposite. He admires and is enchanted by the world's most brutal dictators, including Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping, Kim Jong Un, and others. Trump is at best indifferent to the fate of Ukraine in its war against Russia; one suspects that deep down, he's rooting for his friend Putin."
Wehner continued, "Reagan mythologized America; Trump trash-talks it. Reagan was a great champion of NATO; Trump is a reflexive critic who, according to his former national security adviser John Bolton, would withdraw from the alliance in a second term."
A Democratic strategist laughed in a Republican's face Wednesday morning as he tried to cast President Joe Biden's rhetoric as offensive and inappropriate — and received a swift fact check from the CNN anchor serving as referee.
Julie Roginsky did not try to hide her disdain for Lance Trover, former spokesperson for Gov. Doug Burgum (R-ND), and his argument that Biden's "garbage" comment was equivalent to former President Donald Trump's rhetoric casting foes as "the enemy within."
"I'm sorry — are you actually offended by what Joe Biden said?" Roginsky asked. "Are you going to use the same metric to say Donald Trump should not be calling people like me vermin?"
Roginsky admitted much frustration with media coverage of what she dubbed Biden's "word salad" comment on Tuesday in which he called it unconscionable to demonize Latinos.
Biden later said he was referring to the joke of a supporter's — Tony Hinchcliffe, who called Puerto Rico a "floating island of garbage" at a Trump rally — and not supporters casting a ballot for the former president.
"We have now spent the last 12 hours talking about whether Joe Biden meant a possessive noun or a plural noun, we have not spent much time talking about the fact that the economy grew 2.8% under this administration," said Roginsky. "We have not talked about the fact that [Speaker] Mike Johnson wants to repeal Obamacare."
Roginsky argued it mattered little either way because the names on ballot belong to Vice President Kamala Harris — who has distanced herself from the claim — and Trump, who declined to condemn Hinchcliffe's joke.
"Donald Trump can say the worst things on earth, he can call Democrats vermin, he can call them the enemy from within, and people say, 'Well, that's just Trump being Trump and no big deal,'" said Roginsky.
"Are you going to distance yourself from your candidate, the one who's running to be president for the next four years? Or do you want to dwell on Joe Biden who you won't have to think about three months from now?"
Trover said he didn't like the "verbiage" from either campaign and condemned Harris' for drawing comparisons between Trump and authoritarian leaders.
"The Harris campaign has said time and again, tossed around the word 'Hitler,' they have tossed around 'fascism' for weeks and tossed around 'Nazis,'" Trover said. "I'm just saying, Joe Biden is the sitting president—"
It was at this point anchor Joe Acosta jumped in to tell Trover he was wrong — and Roginsky laughed.
"Harris has not called Donald Trump a Hitler or a Nazi or anything like that," he said. "She has described him as a fascist and we just had Anne Applebaum, who was an expert on this from the Atlantic, on just a few moments ago, who said, 'You know, when Donald Trump is using terms like 'the enemy from within' to talk about political opponents in this country that, that is dangerous.'"
Trover stuck to his guns, arguing there was no reason for Democrats to hurl such accusations, which prompted Roginsky to list the Republicans and former Trump staffers who have called him a fascist.
She closed the segment with a lengthy rebuke to conservative lawmakers and operatives still supporting Trump's candidacy.
"Quite honestly, I don't mind debating these issues I just mind the hypocrisy where people are up in arms about Biden's word salad but can't bring themselves to distance themselves from the fact that Donald Trump refers to people as vermin and the enemy from within and basically threatens to arrest people like Gen. [Mark] Milley and put them put them up on treason charges," said Roginsky.
"If you don't think that's fascistic, if you don't think that's the kind of thing that autocrats the world over, as Anne Applebaum pointed out, do, then I don't know what kind of country you're looking for and what Republicans are looking for, because that's what we're sleepwalking into the minute you start equivocating Donald Trump and Joe Biden's rhetoric."
The co-hosts of "The View" were excited to see the footage from the Washington, D.C., rally on Tuesday night at the White House Elipse.
Former Donald Trump aide Alyssa Farah Griffin said that she was grateful to see Vice President Kamala Harris reclaim the space that was used on Jan. 6, 2021, before the crowd marched to the Capitol for the violent attack.
"These remarks hit me last night, I got to say. I found myself getting emotional," Griffin confessed. "The last time we saw a major national figure speak from the Ellipse, it was Donald Trump on Jan. 6th."
She recalled being in Florida after she'd already resigned while watching the day unfold.
"I had already resigned when he asked if Mike Pence had the courage to do this, and I had this pit in my stomach thinking you just put him in so much danger," recalled Griffin. "There is a mob of people who are ready to march up because you told them to. So, this imagery of standing and reclaiming that space ... was incredibly powerful."
She also noted that a woman standing with the White House behind her was a powerful image.
But Sunny Hostin looked at the crowd at the Harris rally and said that she saw America.
"We saw someone that was presidential, most importantly," said Hostin. "We saw someone that was ready and competent, who outlined her to-do list and what she would do for the country."
She continued, celebrating the diversity of the audience.
"One of my major takeaways is to look at the audience; 75,000 people were, you know, supporting her," she said. "And it looked like the United States of America that I know. Black, White, Latino, LGBTQ, old, young, everyone was there. And it looked like the country I know. It did not look like a white nationalist rally."
