Harris continues battleground campaign blitz after Trump’s rambling press conference – live

Since launching her campaign, Harris has turned to the ideas of freedom and individual liberties – concepts long associated with the rhetoric of the conservative movement – and turned them back on Trump and the modern Republican party. In Harris’s campaign rallies so far, abortion rights, LGBTQ+ rights and, in this speech, labor rights form the basis of freedom.

“Even if you’re not a member of a union, you better thank unions. I’m here to say thank you, thank you, thank you to the sisters and brothers of UAW for all you are and all we will do over these next 89 days,” said Harris at the UAW earlier today.

During her speech, the vice-president referred to a political “perversion” of the Republican party, “where there’s a suggestion that somehow strength is about making people feel small, making people feel alone, but isn’t that the very opposite of what we know, unions know, to be strong? It’s about the collective. It’s about knowing that no one should ever be made to fight alone.”

Trump put out a dizzying number of falsehoods at his press conference earlier. Here are just a few:

1) He said the crowd at his speech on January 6, 2020 was comparable to the crowd that gathered for Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech in 1963. An estimated 50,000 people attended Trump’s speech. About a quarter of a million gathered to hear King speak.

2) He claimed that the US economy was at the brink of a depression. “Not a recession, a depression,” he said. While the stock market took a dip recently, many indicators suggest that the US economy is generally on firm footing. Today, Wall Street saw its best day of trading in two years.

3) He said “the vast majority of the country” supports him, and that his base includes “75 percent of the country”. That’s a bold claim for a former president who never won the popular vote. Polls currently indicate that about 43% of Americans currently hold a favorable view of Trump. The majority (more than 51%) have an unfavorable view.

JD Vance’s investments reveal potential contradictions between the political persona he has sought to project, his history as a venture capitalist and Peter Thiel acolyte, and his status as a hard-edged tribune of the so-called “new right”.

Companies he has invested in include a firm that carries out medical testing of therapies that may include stem cells in scientific research to tech firms with records of harvesting data. Vance and some of the people behind the various firms he is involved with also exhibit an obsession with references to the mythology around The Lord of the Rings’ fantasy world.

The revelations come in part from an analysis of his financial disclosures to the Senate ethics committee since 2022, first as a Senate candidate and then as a junior senator for Ohio. The Guardian’s reporting also drew on other public records and open source materials.

The most recent disclosure, which covers until the end of 2022, also showcases the peculiar preoccupations that Vance as an investor shared with a Thiel-adjacent network of rightwing Silicon Valley venture capitalists who later spent millions supporting Vance’s candidacy to the Senate in 2022.

Joe Lowndes, a political science professor at Hunter College and the author of several books on the American political right, said: “Vance has been a chameleon his whole life – that’s how he described himself in his autobiography.

The Cook Political Report had moved Arizona, Georgia and Nevada from “lean Republican” to “toss up” – a reflection of Harris’ momentum in the presidential race.

“For the first time in a long time, Democrats are united and energized, while Republicans are on their heels. Unforced errors from both Trump and his vice presidential nominee J.D. Vance have shifted the media spotlight from Biden’s age to Trump’s liabilities,” Cook Political Report’s Amy Walters wrote. “In other words, the presidential contest has moved from one that was Trump’s to lose to a much more competitive contest.”

Whereas Biden was trailing Trump in key swing states, Harris is tied with Trump or sometimes leading in more recent polls.

During Donald Trump’s rambling press conference today, the former president revived many of his go-to talking points, including falsehoods about the economy, his opponets’ policies and his own record.

But one of his most audacious claims was that no one died in the January 6 riot at the Capitol, and that there was a “peaceful transfer of power” after the 202 election.

In fact, four Trump supporters died in the crowd.

Ashli Babbitt, 35, died after she was shot in the shoulder by a Capitol Police officer while protesters “were forcing their way toward the House Chamber where Members of Congress were sheltering in place,” according to a statement from the former Capitol Police chief Steven Sund.

Two other “Stop the Steal” died of heart attack, according to the DC medical examiners office and another of accidental overdose.

Three law enforcement officers also died after the the attack, including one who died from blunt force injuries while defending the capitol and two who died by suicide. The families of the latter two officers, along with some elected officials, sought to deem their deaths as “line of duty” – noting they suffered from trauma following the riot.

Leaders of the “uncommitted” campaign spoke with Kamala Harris and Tim Walz, before a rally in Detroit on Wednesday to discuss their calls for a ceasefire in Gaza and an arms embargo on Israel.

Harris “shared her sympathies and expressed an openness to a meeting with the Uncommitted leaders to discuss an arms embargo”, the organization said in a statement.

But a Harris aide said on Thursday that while the vice-president did say she wanted to engage more with members of the Muslim and Palestinian communities about the Israel-Gaza war, she did not agree to discuss an arms embargo, according to Reuters.

Phil Gordon, Harris’s national security adviser, also said on Twitter/X that the vice-president did not support an embargo on Israel but “will continue to work to protect civilians in Gaza and to uphold international humanitarian law”. A spokesperson for Harris’s campaign confirmed she does not support an arms embargo on Israel.

The uncommitted movement, a protest vote against Joe Biden that started during the presidential primary season to send a message to the Democratic party about the US’s role in the Israel-Gaza conflict, began in Michigan and spread to several states. In Walz’s Minnesota, it captured 20% of the Democratic votes.

Harris’s announcement of Walz as her running mate on Tuesday was met with celebration and even hope by many different parts of the Democratic electorate. But those in the uncommitted movement are still weighing their response, and hoping for a presidential campaign that will comprehensively address the mounting death toll in Gaza.

“[Walz] is not someone who has been pro-Palestine in any way. That’s really important here. But he is also someone who’s shown a willingness to change on different issues,” said Asma Mohammed, the campaign manager for Vote Uncommitted Minnesota, and one of 35 delegates nationwide representing the uncommitted movement.

Kamala Harris has finished her address to the UAW, saying:

“ I’m here to say thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you to the sisters and brothers of UAW for all you are and all we will do on these next 89 days. God bless you.”

“You know, when you know what you stand for, you know what to fight for. We know what we stand for, and we stand for the people, and we stand for the dignity of work, and we stand for freedom,” said Kamala Harris.

“We stand for justice. We stand for equality, and so we will fight for all of it. And the bottom line about UAW is that I also know, and I’ll say to all the friends watching, look, even if you’re not a member of the union, you better thank unions,” she added.

“Let the collective come together around a common experience, which at its core is about dignity and the dignity of labor, and then let the people come together to negotiate so you make the balance, and then the outcome will be fair,” said Kamala Harris.

“And isn’t that what we’re talking about in this year election? We’re saying we just want fairness. We want dignity for all people. We want to recognize the right all people have to freedom and liberty to make choices, especially those that are about heart and home and not have their government telling them what to do,” she added.

Kamala Harris has taken the stage.

“I understand the concept and the noble concept behind collective bargaining. And here it is…fairness. It’s about saying, ‘Hey, in a negotiation, don’t we all believe the outcome should be fair?’ I mean, who could disagree with that?” Harris said.

The outcome should be fair. It should be fair, right? But when you’re talking about the individual and a big company, and you’re applying that one individual to negotiate against a big company, how’s that outcome going to be fair?,” she added.

“You know, things work really well in life and really well with your neighbors and really well in communities when you mind your own damn business, things work better. Stay out of our business. Stay out of our business,” said Tim Walz.

“He’s not fighting for you. He doesn’t know you. He doesn’t care about your family. And his running mate is just as dangerous and backward as he is,” he added.

“So this is very simple, you know it, and it’s going to take a heck of a lot of hard work, but this election is a simple choice, what direction and what’s our country going to look like? What direction are we going?” said Tim Walz.

“You know what we’ve said, If Donald Trump’s going to take it backwards, he’s going to, we aren’t going back. We’re not going back,” he added.

Tim Walz has now taken the stage.

“I couldn’t be prouder to be on this ticket and couldn’t be prouder to stand with UAW,” said Walz.

“You got two people up here that were on the picket line of striking UAW members, that’s a place Donald Trump will never be,” said Shawn Fain.

“You know, anyone can be your friend when the sun’s shining, things are going great, but you find out who your friends are when things get tough. And you know…when we look at tough times, we’ve been at tough times, we see who chose to stand with us and who chose to sit on the sideline to do nothing,” he added.

“This is not a time to sit back and hope for the best. This is our generation-defining moment. Everything is at stake,” Fain continued.

“You know, Donald Trump calls me stupid and you know why? Because he thinks auto workers are stupid, but we’re not stupid. We don’t fall for Trump’s alternative facts, or what we all call lies,” said Shawn Fain.

“This isn’t about opinions. This election is not about party politics. All we have to do is look at these candidates in their own words and actions. That’s all the facts we need, and that paints a very clear picture of which side the candidates are on,” he added.

He went on to note Trump’s absence during UAW’s strikes in recent years, saying Trump was “missing in action.”

“The man’s a con-man,” Fain added.

UAW president Shawn Fain is currently addressing the room.

“I think you already know this, but what’s at stake in this election? It’s very simple, everything is at stake. It’s about a choice of whether we continue forward or whether we go backwards,” he said.

“Kamala Harris is one of us. Governor Tim Walz is one of us. You know, they’re working class people. They have working class roots. They know struggle They know what it’s like to live paycheck to paycheck,” he added.

Kamala Harris and Tim Walz have just taken the stage in Detroit, Michigan where they are set to deliver remarks to the United Auto Workers union.

Harris and Walz entered the union hall to a crowd of cheering supporters.

ABC News has confirmed that Kamala Harris and Donald Trump will debate each other on September 10.

Both Harris and Trump have confirmed they will attend the debate.

During his news conference in Mar-a-Lago a few minutes ago, Donald Trump, who in recent weeks has refused to debate Harris on the originally scheduled network, said that he has agreed to ABC News’ offer to debate the vice president.

Speaking to reporters, Trump said:

“We have spoken to the heads of the network and it’s all been confirmed other than some fairly minor details – audience, some location, which city would we put it into but all things that would be settled very easily.”