Tag: donald trump

Harris and Trump exchanged barbs over the airwaves as they reached out to the few remaining undecided voters in the final stretch of an election seen as one of the closest in modern US history…reports Asian Lite News

Harris has maintained a lead of two-to-three points in national polling since mid-August, despite presidential and vice presidential debates, encouraging jobs data, an interest rate cut, escalating international crises and a devastating hurricane.

“I literally lose sleep — and have been — over what is at stake in this election,” the Democratic vice president, 59, told radio icon Howard Stern in a 70-minute live interview.

A poll from Siena College and The New York Times out Tuesday highlighted the deadlock, finding Harris ahead of her Republican rival by 49 percent to 46 percent — although it had the pair in a dead heat in September.

Poll-watchers expect the stalemate to break only in the last couple of weeks before election day on November 5, as the small fraction of wavering Americans who will decide the election break one way or the other.

In the seven battleground states seen as likely to determine the election, the race is even tighter. The new poll gave Trump the edge on who is the stronger leader but, crucially, revealed that registered voters see Harris as the change candidate.

Harris — who has spent much of the campaign under pressure to sit down for more interviews — is spending the week targeting women, Latinos and young voters through traditional media and via appearances on influential podcasts and YouTube shows.

“The Late Show with Stephen Colbert,” a staple of the evening comedy talk show circuit, was set to air a pre-recorded interview late Tuesday with Harris — and in excerpts shared ahead of the broadcast she called Trump a “loser.”

Trump “openly admires dictators and authoritarians,” she said during a weighty section of what was, at times, a light-hearted conversation in which both host and interviewee sipped beer.

“He has said he wants to be a dictator on day one if he were elected again as president. He gets played by these guys. He admires so-called strongmen and he gets played because they flatter him or offer him favor,” she said.

Republican US presidential candidate Donald Trump has maintained an aggressive posture toward his Democratic rival Kamala Harris

Earlier, on popular ABC television show “The View,” she talked about campaigning recently with Republican former congresswoman Liz Cheney. There are more than 200 former officials from past Republican presidents George W. Bush and George H.W. Bush, as well as officials tied to Republican heavyweights John McCain and Mitt Romney, who have endorsed her, Harris said.

“We really are building a coalition around some very fundamental issues, including that we love our country and that we have to put country before party,” she said.

Trump meanwhile maintained his aggressive posture, attacking Harris as a “very low intelligence person” on conservative influencer Ben Shapiro’s podcast. The 78-year-old Republican claimed she had been “missing in action” over the federal response to Hurricane Helene — even though Harris visited the disaster zone last week.

Trump, who was on a blitz of several media organizations, then criticized Harris in an interview on right-wing network Newsmax over her plans to pay for her agenda, telling viewers: “You don’t tax the rich… the rich pay most of the tax in the country.”

And, in a more personal moment, he told Los Angeles radio station KFI AM 640 he sees campaign interviews as therapeutic. “You know what this is for me? Therapy, okay? I’m speaking to a smart man. This is like, some people go to a psychiatrist. I don’t have time so this is, like, my therapy,” he told host John Kobylt.

Both candidates were due to appear on the influential CBS show “60 Minutes” this week and while Harris fulfilled her commitment, Trump backed out, offering shifting explanations for his about-face.

He was mocked by Democrats and responded with a campaign statement demanding the transcript of the Harris interview be released, claiming that it had been “deceptively edited.”

Meanwhile, Emory University political science professor Zachary Peskowitz predicts that the polls will be a “nail-biter” and that no candidate has a decisive lead in any of the seven swing states.

Peskowitz says that the electoral college in the US elections will be “extraordinarily close” and the popular vote is going to be “very close.” Asked about his expectations from the two candidates with regards to electoral college and popular votes, Peskowitz says, “So, I think the popular vote is going to be very close. I think within two or three percentage points one way or the other, electoral college is going to be extraordinarily close as well. You know, it’s quite possible that there will be a narrow victory.”

“There’s even a possibility that it will be a tie in electoral college, 269 to 269 that will end up going to the US House of Representatives. You know it’s going to be very close and it’s going to come down to these seven states. So, all the recent polling shows it’s just very close. No candidate has a decisive lead in any of the seven states and it’s gonna be a nail-biter,” the US university professor says.

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Kamala Harris pivoted to attack Trump for setting up the withdrawal with a deal with “terrorists” Taliban and keeping out the Afghan government….reports Asian Lite News

Vice President Kamala Harris defended President Joe Biden’s decision to withdraw the US from Afghanistan saying it was something that four other presidents had wanted but not done and it saved $300 million a day that was spent on staying there.

But she pivoted to attack Trump for setting up the withdrawal with a deal with “terrorists” Taliban and keeping out the Afghan government.

“He calls himself a deal maker, even his national security adviser said it was a weak, terrible deal, and here’s how it went down. He bypassed the Afghan government. He negotiated directly with a terrorist organisation called the Taliban.

The negotiation involved the Taliban getting 5000 terrorists. Taliban terrorists released and got this. No, get this. And the president at the time, invited the Taliban to Camp David, a place of storied significance for us as Americans, a place where we honour the importance of American diplomacy, where we invite and receive respected world leaders. And this former President, as President, invited them to Camp David because he does not again appreciate the role and responsibility of the President of the United States to be commander in chief with a level of respect,” she said.

“So if you take a look at that period of time, the Taliban was killing our soldiers, a lot of them with snipers,” Trump said, defending himself. “And I got involved with the Taliban because the Taliban was doing the killing. That’s the fighting force within Afghanistan. They don’t bother doing that because, you know, they deal with the wrong people all the time. But I got involved, and Abdul is the head of the Taliban.

He is still the head of the Taliban. And I told Abdul, don’t do it anymore. You do it anymore. You’re going to have problems. And he said, why do you send me a picture of my house? I said, you’re going to have to figure that out, Abdul. And for 18 months, we had nobody killed. We did have an agreement negotiated by Mike Pompeo. It was a very good agreement. The reason it was good was, we were getting out. We would have been out faster than that, but we wouldn’t have lost the soldiers. We wouldn’t have left many Americans behind, and we wouldn’t have left, we wouldn’t have left $85 billion worth of brand new, beautiful military equipment behind. And just to finish, they blew it,” he further said.

“The agreement said, you have to do this, this, this, this, and they didn’t do it. They didn’t do it. The agreement was terminated by us because they didn’t do what they were supposed to do,” Trump added.

Taylor Swift endorses Harris; Musk takes a jibe

Tesla CEO Elon Musk made a jibe at American singer-songwriter Taylor Swift who threw her support behind Vice president Kamala Harris for the next president following a high stakes debate with former president Donald Trump.

Post the presidential debate hosted by ABC News between Harris and Trump held in Philedelphia on Tuesday (local time), Swift announced that she is endorsing Democratic candidate Kamala Harris for the 2024 US Presidential Election.

“Fine Taylor…you win…I will give you a child and guard your cats with my life,” Musk posted.

Swift in a social media post announced “I will be “casting my vote for Kamala Harris and Tim Walz in the 2024 Presidential Election.”

Swift termed Harris a “steady-handed” and “gifted” leader.

“Like many of you, I watched the debate tonight. If you haven’t already, now is a great time to do your research on the issues at hand and the stances these candidates take on the topics that matter to you the most. As a voter, I make sure to watch and read everything I can about their proposed policies and plans for this country,” Swift said.

“I will be casting my vote for Kamala Harris and Tim Walz in the 2024 Presidential Election. I’m voting for @kamalaharris because she fights for the rights and causes I believe need a warrior to champion them. I think she is a steady-handed, gifted leader and I believe we can accomplish so much more in this country if we are led by calm and not chaos. I was so heartened and impressed by her selection of running mate @timwalz, who has been standing up for LGBTQ+ rights, IVF, and a woman’s right to her own body for decades,” the singer added.

She signed off her post calling herself a “childless cat lady,” alluding to a phrase previously used by Sen JD Vance, Trump’s running mate, to criticize Democrats.

This is not the first time, Swift has supported Harris and Democrats. In 2020, she announced her support for Biden and Harris in their bid for the White House, CNN Entertainment reported.

A segment of Swift’s fans, known as Swifties, have united during the 2024 election cycle, establishing an online community called Swifties for Kamala shortly after Biden exited the race and endorsed Harris, as reported by CNN Entertainment.

Harris was nominated as the Democratic nominee after President Joe Biden quit the presidential race amid mounting concerns over his age, particularly after his poor show in the debate with Donald Trump in June.

She is the first female, first Black, and first Asian American vice president. If elected president, the 59-year-old Harris would become the first woman in history to become the US president. The vice president is only the second woman ever nominated for the presidency by a major political party.

Harris is up against Donald Trump, the former President who is aiming a return to the White House after his bitter exit in 2020. The presidential polls are scheduled on November 5. (ANI)

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ABC News has laid out parameters from the basic format — 90 minutes, with two commercial breaks — to specifications that moderators David Muir and Linsey Davis…reports Asian Lite News

Vice President Kamala Harris has accepted the rules set forth for next week’s debate with former President Donald Trump, although the Democratic nominee says the decision not to keep both candidates’ microphones live throughout the matchup will be to her disadvantage.

The development, which came Wednesday by way of a letter from Harris’ campaign to host network ABC News, seemed to mark a conclusion to the debate over microphone muting, which had for a time threatened to derail the Sept. 10 presidential debate at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia.

President Joe Biden’s campaign had made the muting of microphones, except for the candidate whose turn it is to speak, a condition of his decision to accept any debates this year. Some aides have said they now regret that decision, saying voters were shielded from hearing Trump’s outbursts during the June debate. A disastrous performance for the incumbent Democrat fueled his exit from the campaign.

Once Harris rose in Biden’s stead and became their party’s pick for president, her campaign had advocated for live microphones for the whole debate, saying previously that the practice would “fully allow for substantive exchanges between the candidates.”

But on Wednesday, Harris’ advisers wrote that the former prosecutor will be “fundamentally disadvantaged by this format, which will serve to shield Donald Trump from direct exchanges with the Vice President.”

“We suspect this is the primary reason for his campaign’s insistence on muted microphones,” her campaign added.

Despite those concerns, Harris’ campaign wrote, “we understand that Donald Trump is a risk to skip the debate altogether, as he has threatened to do previously, if we do not accede to his preferred format.” So as not to “jeopardize the debate,” Harris’ campaign wrote, “we accepted the full set of rules proposed by ABC, including muted microphones.”

According to an official with Harris’ campaign, a pool of journalists will be on hand to hear what the muted candidate may be trying to say when his or her microphone is turned off. That detail was not in the full debate rules, also released Wednesday by ABC, which are essentially the same as they were for the June debate between Trump and Biden.

The network laid out parameters from the basic format — 90 minutes, with two commercial breaks — to specifications that moderators David Muir and Linsey Davis “will be the only people asking questions,” perhaps hoping to avert a free-for-all between the candidates.

“Moderators will seek to enforce timing agreements and ensure a civilized discussion,” the network noted.

The Harris campaign official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss planning around the debate, said a candidate who repeatedly interrupts will receive a warning from a moderator, and both candidates’ microphones may be unmuted if there is significant crosstalk so the audience can understand what’s happening.

After a virtual coin flip held Tuesday and won by Trump, the GOP nominee opted to offer the final closing statement, while Harris chose the podium on the right side of viewers’ screens. There will be no audience, written notes or any topics or questions shared with campaigns or candidates in advance, the network said.

Meanwhile, Harris leads Trump 45 percent to 41 percent in a Reuters/Ipsos poll published on Thursday that showed the vice president sparking new enthusiasm among voters and shaking up the race ahead of the Nov. 5 election.

The 4 percentage point advantage among registered voters was wider than a 1 point lead Harris held over the former president in a late July Reuters/Ipsos poll. The new poll, which was conducted in the eight days ended Wednesday and had a 2 percentage point margin of error, showed Harris picking up support among women and Hispanics.

Harris led Trump by 49 percent to 36 percent — or 13 percentage points — among both women voters and Hispanic voters. Across four Reuters/Ipsos polls conducted in July, Harris had a 9 point lead among women and a 6 point lead among Hispanics.

Trump led among white voters and men, both by similar margins as in July, though his lead among voters without a college degree narrowed to 7 points in the latest survey, down from 14 points in July.

The findings illustrate how the US presidential race has been shaken up over the summer. President Joe Biden, 81, folded his flailing campaign on July 21 after a disastrous debate performance against Trump sparked widespread calls from his fellow Democrats to abandon his re-election bid.

Since then, Harris has gained ground against Trump in national polls and those in critical swing states. While national surveys including Reuters/Ipsos’ give important signals on the views of the electorate, the state-by-state results of the Electoral College determine the winner, with a handful of battleground states likely to be decisive.

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