Kevin McCarthy, the former Republican House speaker, said Donald Trump should stop questioning the size of Kamala Harris’s crowds at her campaign rallies and instead focus on her as a candidate.
As we reported earlier, Trump has falsely accused Harris of using artificial intelligence to create a photo showing a large rally of supporters outside of her campaign plane. Trump shared a photo from a conspiracy theorist’s post to his millions of followers on Truth Social, claiming that a real image of a Harris event in Detroit was a “fake image”.
“You’ve got to make this race not on personalities,” McCarthy said in an interview on Fox News today.
Stop questioning the size of her crowds and start questioning her position, when it comes to: What did she do as [California] attorney general on crime? … What did she do when she was supposed to take care of the border as a czar?
A Trump campaign spokesman told EU regulators to “mind their own business” in response to a letter urging Elon Musk to abide by hate speech and disinformation regulations in his interview with Trump scheduled for this evening.
“Only in Joe Biden and Kamala Harris’ America can an un-Democratic foreign organization feel emboldened enough to tell this country what to do,” Steven Cheung wrote on X. “They know that a President Trump victory means America will no longer be ripped off because he will smartly utilize tariffs and renegotiated trade deals that puts America First. Let us be very clear: the European Union is an enemy of free speech and has no authority of any kind to dictate how we campaign.”
The Trump campaigned shared the same statement with supporters by email this afternoon.
The Digital Services Act, which the EU adopted in 2022, requires large social networks, like X, to aggressively police disinformation and hate speech, or face fines of up to 6% of its global turnover.
In an open letter, EU commissioner Thierry Breton warned Elon Musk today that Musk must abide by European hate speech laws in his interview with Trump this evening.
Because the interview will be available to EU users, Breton said, Musk must comply with regulations under the Digital Services Act to stop the “amplification of harmful content”.
“DSA obligations apply without exceptions or discrimination to the moderation of the whole user community and content of X (including yourself as a user with over 190 million followers) which is accessible to EU users and should be fulfilled in line with the risk-based approach of the DSA, which requires greater due diligence in case of a foreseeable increase of the risk profile,” Breton wrote.
In response, Musk shared a meme that was as mature as only Musk can be:
Musk has recently faced pushback from EU regulators, who ruled last month that X breached the DSA in its use of blue checkmarks. In response, Musk threatened to sue.
Read more about it here:
A pro-Trump Super Pac will fund $100m in TV ads, starting next week as the Democratic national convention kicks off. The Maga, Inc Super Pac is planning to air commercials calling Harris a “soft-on-crime radical who is too dangerous for the White House”, the organization’s top strategists, David Lee and Chris Grant, write in the memo, which Politico first reported. The ads will air in seven Rust belt and Sun belt states: Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Nevada, Arizona, Georgia and North Carolina.
The memo also announced that the leader of Maga, Inc, Taylor Budowich, is leaving the Super Pac to join the Trump campaign.
The news comes as conservative groups try to ramp up funding for Trump, following Harris’s recent record-setting fundraising. Last month, billionaire Tesla CEO Elon Musk announced that he had founded the America Pac to raise additional funds for Trump.
Read more here:
Here are some campaign images from the weekend that you might not have seen. Kamala Harris and Tim Walz were in the swing state of Nevada on Saturday.
What was that about crowds?
Donald Trump campaigned in Montana on Friday night.
The Pentagon said yesterday that defense secretary Lloyd Austin had ordered the deployment of a guided missile submarine to the Middle East and for the Abraham Lincoln carrier strike group to accelerate its deployment to the region.
But a US official told Reuters the Lincoln carrier strike group was currently close to the South China Sea and would likely take more than a week to reach the Middle East.
Oil prices jumped by more than 3% on Monday, rising for a fifth consecutive session on expectations of a widening Middle Eastern conflict that could tighten global crude supplies.
Israeli forces pressed on with operations near the southern Gaza city of Khan Younis today amid an international push for a deal to halt fighting in Gaza and prevent a slide into a wider regional conflict with Iran and its proxies.
Meanwhile, Reuters also reports, British prime minister Keir Starmer held a call with Iranian president Masoud Pezeshkian today, asking him to refrain from attacking Israel and saying that war was not in anyone’s interest, the prime minister’s office said. Starmer called on Iran to stop its “destabilizing actions”.
The US has prepared for what could be significant attacks by Iran or its proxies in the Middle East as soon as this week, White House national security spokesperson John Kirby said today.
Kirby said the US had increased its regional force posture and shared Israel’s concerns about a possible Iranian-backed attack after Iran and Hamas accused Israel of carrying out the assassination of a Hamas leader in Tehran last month, Reuters reports.
We have to be prepared for what could be a significant set of attacks,” he said.
Israel has been braced for a major attack since last month when a missile killed 12 children and teenagers in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights and Israel responded by killing a senior Hezbollah commander in Beirut.
A day after that operation, Haniyeh, the political leader of Hamas, was assassinated in Tehran, drawing Iranian vows of retaliation against Israel.
We obviously don’t want to see Israel have to defend itself against another onslaught, like they did in April. But, if that’s what comes at them, we will continue to help them defend themselves,” Kirby said.
You can follow all of the Guardian’s coverage of the region here and here.
Joe Biden will speak at the Democratic national convention next week, the White House has confirmed.
Biden will use his remarks at the convention to focus on the issues he “cares about”, the White House’s press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told CNN.
It’s an event that he views as very important. It’s an opportunity to talk about the issues that he cares about. It’s an opportunity to talk about unity.
Joe Biden is scheduled to deliver remarks on the opening night of the Democratic national convention next Monday alongside the former secretary of state and 2016 Democratic presidential nominee, Hillary Clinton, according to a report.
Former president Barack Obama is down to speak on Tuesday, and former president Bill Clinton is scheduled for Wednesday, NBC is reporting, citing sources. One of the sources told the outlet that the schedule was still tentative.
Kamala Harris is to deliver an acceptance speech on Thursday, and her running mate, Tim Walz, is to speak Wednesday, as is customary.
Donald Trump appeared to be paying X to promote his interview with the platform’s owner, Elon Musk, scheduled for tonight 8pm ET, the New York Times reported.
The Times said:
The hashtag #TrumpOnX landed at the top of the platform’s “Trending” section, with a disclaimer that it was promoted by Donald J. Trump — a tag that typically marks paid ad campaigns on the social media site.
As we reported earlier, the former Republican House speaker Kevin McCarthy said Donald Trump should stop questioning the size of Kamala Harris’s crowds at her campaign rallies and instead focus on her as a candidate.
Here’s the clip from McCarthy’s interview on Fox News, where he urged Trump to “start questioning [Harris’s] positions”, highlighting several of the Democratic presidential candidate’s policy positions that have shifted over the years.
“This is a perfect person to run against,” McCarthy said.
You thought John Kerry was a flip-flopper? She is the biggest flip-flop, with the most extreme positions, and you got a short time frame to do it. So don’t sit back, get out there and start making the case and use her own words to do it.
Debbie Dingell, the Democratic congresswoman for Michigan, has dismissed Donald Trump’s false claims that crowds at Kamala Harris’s campaign in her state were generated by artificial intelligence.
“Sorry, Donald Trump, you’re wrong again,” Dingell, who attended the Michigan rally and spoke before Harris and her running mate, Minnesota governor Tim Walz, went on, told MSNBC. She added:
I was really there. And I haven’t seen that large a crowd in a long time, and it was great to feel the energy, the enthusiasm.
Source: US Politics - theguardian.com
