The debate between Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz and Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance was closely matched, with Vance earning marks from pundits for his steadiness and Walz winning on key policy issues in some voter polls — but a particular standout moment was when Vance refused to answer whether former President Donald Trump lost the 2020 election.
Vice President Kamala Harris' campaign immediately pounced on that moment — and within hours, had a new campaign ad using that footage to blast Vance and Trump.
"It's really rich for Democratic leaders to say that Donald Trump is a unique threat to democracy, when he peacefully gave over power," said Vance in the ad, which supercut his words with footage of Trump supporters violently rioting at the Capitol building on January 6.
"He is still saying he didn't lose the election," said Walz in the next clip. "Did he lose the 2020 election?" Vance replied, "Tim, I'm focused on the future." To which Walz said, "That is a damning non-answer."
As the ad played more footage of the January 6 insurrection, words flashed on the screen: "If we elect Donald Trump, the past will be the future."
"America, I think you've got a real choice of who's gonna honor that democracy, and who's gonna honor Donald Trump," said Walz in the clip, as the ad concluded.
Aside from the January 6 questioning, critics have also highlighted a rough moment for Vance when he complained about the moderator fact-checking him, after she told him the migrants in Springfield, Ohio were there legally.
Former President Donald Trump's running mate exposed Tuesday night a deep-rooted hatred of children, argued Salon columnist Amanda Marcotte.
"Vance sneered that climate change is 'weird science,'" Marcotte wrote. "With that simple answer, 'pro-baby' Vance showed he will wreak havoc on the futures of all children for his political ambitions."
This is just one of several examples Marcotte cites from the CBS News-hosted debate between Vance and Democratic vice presidential nominee Gov. Tim Walz (D-MN).
"Research shows that when women are forced to carry pregnancies they don't want to term, they are more likely to stay in contact with men who abuse them and often their children," Marcotte wrote.
"And Vance has said he thinks women are obliged to stay with men who beat them, condemning women who leave violent marriages for shifting 'spouses like they change their underwear.'"
Marcotte argued that underneath Vance's professed "pro-baby" stance lies a deeply rooted desire to dominate women and a poorly concealed ambivalence about children's lives.
"Vance made it very clear last night that children are only valuable to him if they can be used to derail women's futures," Marcotte concluded. "But when it comes to the futures of children themselves, Vance could not care less."
The iconic news show's Tuesday announcement that Trump had pulled out of the special Oct. 7 broadcast alongside Harris spurred outrage from his campaign spokesperson and jeers from the left.
"Fake News," declared Steven Cheung. "Nothing was ever scheduled or locked in. They also insisted on doing live fact checking, which is unprecedented."
This spurred a sarcastic reply from national security attorney Bradley Moss.
"Dear Leader shall not be fact checked," Moss quipped. "The man lives for media attention. The negotiations must have gone really badly."
Eric Schultz, a spokesman for Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and onetime adviser to former President Barack Obama, also took umbrage with Cheung's scornful response to checking the facts.
"A window into how Trump operation bullies the press," Schultz wrote. " And what their red line is: 'They also insisted on doing live fact checking.'"
MSNBC and Bulwark commentator Sam Stein expressed open shock at Trump's decision and predicted his political foes would be quick to capitalize on the less-than-optimal optics.
"Trump not agreeing to 60 Minutes is actually genuinely surprising," Stein wrote. "But between this and the decision not to debate, he's giving fodder to critics, or at least watering down their attacks on Harris."
This prediction was almost immediately proven true by critics such as "Mueller, She Wrote" podcast host Allison Gill, who urged mainstream media to focus its reporting on the reason she suggested Trump reneged.
"So Donald has backed out of the third debate, and now he’s backing out of the 60 minutes interview," Gill wrote. "I’m gonna need wall to wall coverage on his fitness for the next three weeks from the corporate media."
David Plouffe, a senior adviser for the Harris campaign, had another theory as to why the former president and Republican presidential nominee declined to join "60 Minutes."
"Afraid of the debate stage. Afraid of 60minutes," Plouffe wrote. "And his campaign team - after the last three days of increasingly unhinged and unstable ranting at his rallies - is clearly afraid of exposing him beyond comfortable confines."
Dan Pfeiffer, co-host of Pod Save America, agreed, writing on X, "Trump’s campaign clearly believes that the less people see of Trump, the better."
Vice President Kamala Harris' campaign dropped a new ad Tuesday targeting Sen. J.D. Vance (R-OH) by way of former President Donald Trump, and vice versa.
The new digital ad appeared online just hours before Vance is slated to debate Harris' running mate Gov. Tim Walz (D-MN), whose succinct character attack on the Ohio Republican features prominently — as does Trump's age.
"I'm really concerned about J.D. Vance being a heartbeat away from the presidency," Sen. Mark Kelly (D-AZ) says at the onset of the ad.
"He's not just weird or dangerous," a voiceover adds. "He could be a heartbeat away from the Oval Office."
This marks the first time Harris has targeted Trump's age (78) in a political ad and capitalized on the about-face the former president faced when President Joe Biden dropped out of the race.
NBC News reported Tuesday the ad will hit battleground state voters with clips of Trump slurring his words and Vance making far-right claims.
"You really need to be ruthless when it comes to the exercise of power," Vance says in a video clip. Trump struggles to say the word "anonymous."
The ad also includes Trump's mugshot and raises the question, "Can he govern from prison?"
Harris-Walz campaign spokesperson Sarafina Chitika told NBC News in a statement that the team hoped to capitalize on polling numbers that show Vance is viewed unfavorably by about 46 percent of voters.
“The American people have made it clear: they don’t like JD Vance, his plans to ban abortion nationwide, or his extreme Project 2025 views,” Chitika said.
“Debate day will be yet another reminder to voters about the stakes of this election, and a stark warning that a victory for Donald Trump could place Vance, America’s least favorite extremist, just a heartbeat away from the presidency.”
The 2024 presidential election will come down to inflation, according to two polling experts, and while they agree that Vice President Kamala Harris is doing a better job of persuading voters she can tackle the issue than Donald Trump, the “framing war” of both campaigns will ultimately decide the race.
“Both sides understand that the game will be won or lost around the issue of inflation,” according to an interview in Salon with public opinion and politics experts Elizabeth Jarosz and Clifford Young of the market research firm Ipsos. “Right now, Harris is more effective at this than Trump. But there still is a month until Election Day.”
While both polling experts agree that Harris has been building momentum in the polls in a race that is essentially tied, they believe that so called “shy Trump voters,” may be “systematically undercounted in polling.”
“They conclude that the 2024 election is a battle between Harris’ likeability and Trump’s perceived strengths on the economy and immigration — and that Harris has an easier path to victory than Trump,” according to Salon. The pollsters note that while Trump wins on policy issues, including economy and immigration, he is “not the clear frontrunner because Harris wins on personality.”
Jarosz and Young cautioned though that “any number of things can happen in the remaining weeks” of what they see as "an extremely close presidential race."
“In the end, we believe it will come down to the relative ability of each campaign to win the framing war. ‘Throw the Bums Out’ because of inflation versus future economic opportunity for all Americans. Harris is more effective with the latter narrative frame.”
The New York Times has been flooded with angry letters from readers warning former President Donald Trump's rhetoric and behavior render him unfit to serve as commander in chief, a new editorial shows.
The Times published Tuesday a slew of letters to the editor in which readers condemn Trump's description of Vice President Kamala Harris as "mentally disabled" as both racist and unhinged.
" Trump is trying to send a not-so-subtle subliminal message about people of color being 'less than,' and, therefore 'less deserving,' than whites," wrote Dave Schraeger of New Jersey. "Trump has demonstrated time and again that he is unfit to serve as president."
Schraeger is just one of several readers who raise fears about the Republican presidential nominee's fitness to serve a second term in the White House, and they cite a wide swath of Times coverage in their arguments.
John G. Williams, of Pennsylvania, also focused on Trump's claim that Harris was "mentally impaired" but took a more succinct and less subtle jab at the former president.
"By most measures Vice President Harris won the presidential debate against Mr. Trump," Williams wrote. "What does that say about Mr. Trump’s mental acuity?"
Nor was Williams the lone reader to raise concerns about Trump's mental capacities.
Larry Sandberg, a psychiatry professor at Weill Cornell Medical Center and contributor to the bestselling book "The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump," urged voters to cast ballots based on more than their policy positions.
"He displays poor judgment, impulsivity, extreme self-centeredness, a vulnerability to being manipulated and an attraction to autocrats," Sandberg wrote. "He also blatantly shows waning cognitive capacities. In a sane world, all of this would be disqualifying."
Sandberg argued Trump attacked Harris' mental fitness to project upon his opponent the reality of his own cognitive circumstances.
"Trump is distorting reality for public consumption and manipulation," Sandberg wrote. "I urge the public to listen to experts who are addressing an existential threat to our democracy and the world."
Times reader and Maryland resident Bryan Fichter began his letter with a lengthy quotation from Trump's response to a Chrysler plant worker's question about the future of autoworkers' jobs in Michigan:
“So pretty much, as we’ve been saying — and what I want to do is, I want to be able to — look your business," Trump replied. "Years ago in this area, I was honored as the Man of the Year. Was maybe 20 years ago, and the fake news heard about it. They said, ‘It never happened. It never happened.’ And I didn’t know who it was. It was a group that honored me as Man of the Year. The fakers back there — see the fake news — but they said, they said, Oh. And they looked at it, you know, they said it never happened. But I said, ‘I swear to you, it happened. It did happen.’"
Fichter reported he was shocked by Trump's response and urged the New York Times and other mainstream media outlets to report more thoroughly and frequently on the former president's cognitive condition.
"The level of incoherence and repetitive speech in Mr. Trump’s answer, given his age and family history, should be profoundly concerning, yet his mental state remains the Thing That Must Not Be Named of the 2024 campaign as far as corporate media are concerned," Fichter wrote.
"Continue to ignore the elephant in the room if you like, but the elephant isn’t going anywhere. Mr. Trump is in bad shape."
Donald Trump responded to the worsening crisis in the Middle East with a lengthy comment about himself minutes before Iran launched missiles into Israel.
The former president's campaign issued a statement Tuesday that he shared on Truth Social blaming President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris for the ballistic missile attack, which U.S. officials had warned was imminent, and insisted that his Democratic rivals were responsible for Israel's war in Gaza and a ground offensive in Lebanon.
"The World is on fire and spiraling out of control," the statement read before a lengthy attack on Harris' record as a prosecutor and attorney general in California.
"When I was President, Iran was in total check," the statement continued. "They were starved for cash, fully contained, and desperate to make a deal. Kamala flooded them with American cash and, ever since, they've been exporting terror all over, and unraveling the Middle East."
The GOP presidential nominee argued that Russia would not have invaded Ukraine if he had been president and accused his Democratic rivals of "leading us to the brink of World War III."
"You wouldn't trust Joe or Kamala to run a lemonade stand," the statement read, "let alone the Free World."
Trump followed up the campaign statement with a post of his own after the missile attack was launched.
"Look at the World today — Look at the missiles flying right now in the Middle East, look at what’s happening with Russia/Ukraine, look at Inflation destroying the World," he posted. "NONE OF THIS HAPPENED WHILE I WAS PRESIDENT!"
Several Florida Democratic Party officials insist the Sunshine State is in play, and not just in the presidential race. As campaign cash is flooding the state, a Republican pollster finds both Donald Trump and Republican U.S. Senator Rick Scott with a tiny lead over their Democratic opponents, well with the margin of error.
"Trump leads Harris by 2.1%, and Scott leads Mucarsel-Powell by 0.8%," according to Victory Insights, which released the poll Monday. Trump is beating Harris 46.9% to 44.9%, with just over eight percent still undecided.
Two ballot initiatives, legalizing recreational marijuana use and ensuring abortion is legal, have a slim majority of support — in contrast to earlier polling by other firms that found both measures had more than enough support to pass the 60 percent threshold. Those issues are expected to drive more Democratic voters to the polls.
"Although both amendments currently fall short of the 60% support required to pass, both are within striking distance due to the voters who answered that they are undecided on each amendment, Victory Insights reports. "Amendment 4 [the abortion initiative] would need to win over at least 49% of undecided voters in order to reach the 60% mark, while Amendment 3 [marijuana] would only need to win over 35% to do the same. If undecided voters pick sides at the same proportions that decided voters have so far, both amendments would pass."
Florida Republican Governor Ron DeSantis has been waging war—while spending at least $15.5 million in taxpayer dollars—to defeat the abortion ballot issue, and may add more to defeat he marijuana initiative, according to Florida investigative reporter Jason Garcia.
Senator Scott "seems in serious danger of losing a second term, the poll shows," Florida Politics adds. "Less than 45% of voters plan to vote for the Republican candidate, while just under 44% plan to support Mucarsel-Powell, who won her party’s nomination in August."
Florida Politics also reports "national Democrats are investing in Florida after all."
"That’s the news from the Florida Democratic Party (FDP). Members highlighted a number of last-minute investments from outside the Sunshine State. That includes a $400,000 investment in Florida Democratic Party efforts, a multimillion-dollar campaign boosting U.S. Senate nominee Debbie Mucarsel-Powell and the recent addition of congressional candidate Whitney Fox to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee’s Red To Blue program.
“We have been saying it all along, don’t count Florida out,” said FDP Chair Nikki Fried, “and I’m excited to say that the message has been heard, and help is finally on its way.”
The Harris campaign's Florida Communications Director Karol Molinares on Monday wrote, "Florida Democrats now have more than 154,000 volunteers on the ground who've signed up to organize with @FlaDems and @KamalaHarris. We are fighting for Florida."
Florida Democratic Party Deputy Digital Director Camila Cisneros says, "Let me be clear: FLORIDA IS IN PLAY. We have 36 days to leave it all on the field."
Last month NBC News' Yamiche Alcindor said, "As more and more polls comes out, I'm going to keep in mind what @RepJamesClyburn told me yesterday during our @MSNBC interview, which is that he believes Ohio and Florida could be in play for Democrats &
@KamalaHarris, along with doing better in states like Georgia and North Carolina."
Some have suggested Trump's attacks earlier this month on Haitians might harm his chances at winning the Sunshine State.
"Florida is home to more than half a million people of Haitian heritage, with more residing here than any other state," Politico reported last week. "The island nation has been torn apart by violent gangs, leading the Biden administration in June to make about 300,000 Haitians in the U.S. eligible for temporary protected status. The move allows them to work and to be protected from deportation amid the ongoing strife in Haiti."
U.S. Rep. Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick (D-FL) "accused the Trump campaign of 'playing a dangerous game of divide and conquer,' especially by falsely claiming the Haitians in Springfield were illegally residing there when they are not."
“We have very hardworking people who entered into the country wanting to give back to the country that actually allowed them to escape their political struggles,” she said outside the Capitol.
Last week NBC 6 South Florida reported: "Democrats insist Kamala Harris can win Florida in November."
Mary Trump, a clinical psychologist and niece of Donald Trump, told MSNBC Monday night that her uncle is a “destroyed human being” whose inflamed criticisms of Kamala Harris are being driven by a “defense mechanism” as a reaction to the vice president becoming the Democratic nominee.
“Donald uses very frequently a defense mechanism known as projection in which he takes things that he unconsciously knows about himself but can't bear and projects them onto other people,” Mary Trump told MSNBC host Lawrence O’Donnell Monday night on his show “Last Word."
“That has been happening with increasing frequency over the last – well let’s see when did that happen? Yes, when Vice President Harris became his opponent for the presidency," she said.
She said Harris replacing President Joe Biden as the Democratic nominee “really made him unravel in a way we haven’t seen before,” adding that Harris is clearly “getting under his skin.”
“She pushes his buttons in a way few people ever had,” Mary Trump said.
When asked by O’Donnell if her “crazy uncle” is what compelled her to become a clinical psychologist, she said “unfortunately he wasn’t the only one,” explaining that Donald Trump is one of five children “and every single one of them was and is a destroyed human being.”
“As shocking as it may seem, Donald was not the worst one in my family,” Mary Trump said.
She cautioned though that is only because “he has, unfortunately, power that continues to be bestowed on him by a bankrupt Republican party and tens of millions of Americans.”
“But the whole family system was so broken from the very beginning.”
In her tell-all memoir, “Who Could Ever Love You,” a New York Times bestseller, Mary Trump wrote that “nobody liked Donald when he was growing up, not even his parents,” adding that his father, Fred Trump, was “incapable of loving anybody.”
An angry President Joe Biden snapped during a White House news conference after former President Donald Trump was subjected to a fact check from an unlikely source.
Fox News reporter Jacqui Heinrich took to X Monday afternoon first to share that Trump had falsely claimed Biden hadn't reached out to Gov. Brian Kemp — hours after the Georgia Republican praised the president for his outreach — then to share the president's response.
"He’s lying and the governor told him he was lying," Biden said. "The reason I get so angry about it — I don't care about what he says about me — I care what he what he (sic) communicates."
Biden expressed fury that Trump was telling Americans on the ground that they were being ignored as they faced a terrifying and tragic natural disaster that had claimed more than 100 lives as of Monday evening.
"The people that are in need, [it] implies that we're not doing everything possible," Biden said. "It's irresponsible.”
Heinrich, the conservative cable network's White House correspondent, hours earlier reported on the comment about Kemp that so infuriated the president.
"He's having a hard time getting the president on the phone," Trump claimed. "And, of course the Vice President, she's out someplace campaigning looking for money."
Heinrich told her followers this simply was not true.
"This is not accurate," she wrote. "Biden spoke to Gov. Kemp by phone last night...and the [vice president] cancelled campaign events."
Harris, the Democratic presidential nominee, then addressed Americans to report what she had learned and share her support.
"To all of those of you who are rightly feeling overwhelmed by the destruction and the loss, our nation is with you," said Harris. "I do believe the true character of the nation is revealed in moments of hardship."
Fox News host Jeanine Pirro was subjected to a brutal fact check from her colleague Monday after she heaped praise on former President Donald Trump's response to Hurricane Helene.
Pirro argued it was President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris' duty to do what Trump did Monday and appear on the ground after the deadly storm claimed more than 100 lives.
"This is what leaders do," Pirro said. "This is what Trump has done. He endears this sense of confidence. He's going to fight for us."
The Fox News pundit argued Biden and Harris prioritized the war in Ukraine over American residents ransacked by severe weather, such as those hit by unprecedented wildfires in Hawaii last year.
While Pirro suggested the Biden Administration's lone response was to cut Maui residents a $700 check, a White House brief from February shows the city received $330 million in federal assistance and that hundreds of aid workers remained on the ground six months later.
When asked how she viewed Trump's appearance, Jessica Tarlov, Fox News' liberal commentator, confessed she did not share Pirro's views.
"[I see it] dramatically differently than how my colleagues see it," Tarlov replied. "I guess if someone had found him 11,237 votes [in Georgia's 2020 presidential election] it would have gotten better — but he's a loser there."
Tarlov then quipped Trump would see Georgia voters respond to him the way they had in 2020.
"He shows up on a lot and people see him and vote against him," Tarlov said. "Trump and his supporters are running the same old tired playbook."
Tarlov then noted there was just one president who had denied aid to a state in the wake of a devastating national event — in 2017, when Trump was in office.
"[North Carolina Gov.] Roy Cooper asked, after Hurricane Matthew, for a lot of money and he got 1 percent of his ask," Tarlov said. "They denied 99 percent of what he was asking for after that hurricane came."
A CNN correspondent faced criticism of "sanewashing" Monday as she reported on former President Donald Trump's controversial decision to campaign in regions of Georgia devastated by Hurricane Helene.
"He is clearly taking this seriously as a politician...trying to show that he is there in support of the people on the ground," said Holmes. "He is again offering a message of unity."
Holmes reported Trump had received a briefing from the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the National Guard, despite not holding any governmental office, and had come with needed supplies such as gasoline.
The CNN correspondent also claimed Trump had promised to secure StarLink broadband internet service directly from Tesla CEO Elon Musk despite reporting that shows FEMA had already coordinated satellite coverage.
Political commentator Aaron Rupar expressed frustration with the segment on X in the form of a summary and a hashtag.
"CNN correspondent says Trump is taking Helene seriously and is offering a 'message of unity,'" Rupar wrote. "#sanewashing."
Democratic strategist Adam Parkhomenko suggested Holmes had shown political bias akin to sporting "Make America Great Again" merchandise.
"Kristen Holmes should just put on a red hat," he wrote.
Mark Jacob, former editor of the Chicago Tribune, said he found Holmes' coverage representative of mainstream media coverage of the 2024 presidential election lead-up, and professed himself unimpressed.
"The news media is failing us at this crucial moment for democracy," Jacobs wrote. "No reporter is so stupid that they would think Trump is actually spreading a 'message of unity.'"
Watchdog group Media Matters research director Courtney Hagle was apparently so frustrated she wrote an entire article about the segment.
"Holmes did not mention Trump’s false comments from earlier on September 30 that [Gov. Brian] Kemp is 'having a hard time getting the president on the phone' and that Biden is being 'very nonresponsive,'" Hagle wrote.
"The same day, Kemp said that he had spoken to Biden the previous day and that he appreciates Biden’s offers of assistance."
Two lifelong Republicans who cut a campaign ad for Vice President Kamala Harris said they've been living a "nightmare" at the hands of former President Donald Trump's supporters, according to a new report.
Pennsylvania farmer Bob Lange and his wife Kristina told Philadelphia magazine Savvy Mainline on Sunday that they and their business have been bombarded by online and telephone bullying after the ad went live.
"Last Tuesday, MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” aired and discussed one of the new ads," the outlet reported. "That’s when hell broke loose."
Bob Lange told Harris' campaign in the ad he voted for Trump in 2016 and 2020 but the U.S. Capitol attacks in 2021 changed his views about the former president.
"Jan. 6 was a wakeup call for me," Bob Lange says in the ad. "He didn't do anything to help us."
Their troubles began when X user, “Bad Hombre” accused the Langes of being “trained actors” and donors to the Democrats, but cited campaign finance records of different Robert Lange while confusing Kristina with a scenic artist with a different last name, the report noted.
The couple did produce a low-budget horror movie "Hayride to Hell" on their farm starring “Night of the Living Dead” and “Friday the 13th" actors — but only appeared in non-speaking roles as monsters, the couple said.
Their business Sugartown Strawberries was hit with threats on Facebook and one-star Google reviews and their voicemail filled up with "shockingly profane" and "vicious" messages, according to the report.
A Facebook appeal posted on Sept. 26 begs local customers to ignore the false reporting in the viral tweet — which they said had received more than 1.7 million views.
"We are currently receiving a barrage of messages, based in hate and untruths, to our business website, social media, phone and they have now begun leaving poor Google reviews about our business," the message reads. "PLEASE, do not give credence to these hateful, politically motivated lies. Our community knows our truth."
The couple told Savvy Mainline that they would not undo the past, despite the attacks.
“We have no regrets,” Bob told the outlet. “The Harris team asked us if we wanted them to take the ads down. I said, ‘Absolutely not.’”
“We’re not backing down," added Kristina. "I feel it’s just a matter of standing up for what I believe is right – and that’s my right.”
