Young voter groups have criticized the RNC’s gun store debate watch party, calling Trump ‘evil’ and ‘out-of-touch’ for hosting the event so close to the shooting site.
The groups, which include Voters of Tomorrow, College Democrats of America, Leaders We Deserve, College Democrats of Georgia, Georgia High School Democrats, Young Democrats of Georgia, Path to Progress and Blue Future issued a joint statement condemning the RNC decision:
Just days after students and teachers were murdered in Apalachee High School, Republicans are hosting a debate watch party an hour away at the world’s largest gun store. The Trump team is evil for disrespecting the victims like this — and by continually refusing to support life-saving gun violence prevention policies.
Donald Trump is out-of-touch with the vast majority of Americans on gun violence prevention. He continues to suck up to the gun lobby and insult victims, as shown by today’s event. As young organizers in Georgia and across the country, and members of a generation that has been defined by mass shootings, we know Donald Trump’s flagrant disregard for young Americans’ lives will cost him this election.”
More on today’s comments from Olivia Troye, a former Trump White House National Security Official, from the Guardian’s senior political correspondent, Lauren Gambino:
Troye warned that Trump would be dangerous for American alliances. She said as president, his foreign policy “go-tos were always, like, why don’t we just bomb them?”
“He would reach out to dictators and sometimes look at them for strength. So Donald Trump would be looking to Putin for advice,” she said.
Of how he would treat the US’s Nato and European allies, she said: “He would totally betray them, because those are the discussions that were actually had in this room with someone like Donald Trump.”
Troye said the recent endorsements of former vice president Dick Cheney and his daughter, former congresswoman Liz Cheny, was representative of a “sea change” happening among independents and moderate Republicans willing to set aside their partisan leaning to stop Trump from returning to the White House.
“Dick Cheney, no one can claim that he’s a Democrat, right?” Troye said. “So when you look at someone like him and he’s saying, ‘No, this is unacceptable. I don’t stand for this.’ I think that speaks volumes about where the Republican Party is today and where it’s headed under Donald Trump.”
Troye, who was a Homeland Security Advisor to former vice president Mike Pence, urged Harris to confront voter concerns on immigration. But she noted that it was Trump, not Harris, who stood in the way of a conservative border bill.
Trump blocked the bill, she said “because he just has his own personal vendetta, and it’s all about him like and that, to me, is like counterintuitive.”
She also assailed Trump’s running mate, JD Vance, for promoting a baseless rumor about Haitian immigrants in Ohio.
“The way to solve the immigration system is not going out and talking about Haitian immigrants … eating their pets,” she said. “I mean the extremism that these people propose in their agenda, the anti-immigrant and the hatred that they have just for America in general, that’s not the way that fix it. We need to come together in a bipartisan way.”
Live from the spin room, Anthony Scaramucci, a former communication director in Trump’s White House, predicted Harris would defeat his former boss in tonight’s debate.
Scaramucci, now a surrogate for Harris, warned that Trump was a “clear and present danger” to the American people.
Asked if Trump, having participated in seven presidential debates in eight years, had the advantage of experience, the Republican disagreed.
“I’m not worried about him having seven debates under his belt, because in a lot of those debates, he acts a little absurd. Frankly. What I’m confident in is [that] she’s going to compare and contrast herself, and she’s going to come out of this at 10:30 tonight as the one choice that the American people need to be president.
Scaramucci also joked about his brief tenure in the White House, telling reporters he had “lasted one Scaramucci in the White House, which is 11 days”.
Speaking to reporters in the debate spin room, Olivia Troye, a former homeland security and counterterrorism adviser to then vice-president Mike Pence, urged voters to set aside doubts they might have about Kamala Harris’s approach to the war in Gaza.
“She has been strong against Hamas and what’s happening there,” Troye said. “I do think that we need to be compassionate for the people that are going through the situation. She’s also been strong on Israel. I think she’s navigating this in the correct way.
“What I would say is when I contrast that to what Donald Trump would do in this situation, let me remind you that I was actually there in the Trump administration when Donald Trump and Stephen Miller and his inner circle enacted the travel ban.
“When I think about what they’re going to do with Gaza and when I think of Muslim countries and when I think about the international populations, I think about how much they detested those populations and I look at the extremism that will come with a Donald Trump administration. That’s what crosses my mind.”
Troye, a member of Republicans for Harris-Walz, added:
“What I would say to Michigan voters is: think very carefully in this situation on what really matters to you right now because you’ve got to think more on the greater strategic picture of what someone like Donald Trump would do because he does not have your best interests at heart.”
Young voter groups have criticized the RNC’s gun store debate watch party, calling Trump ‘evil’ and ‘out-of-touch’ for hosting the event so close to the shooting site.
The groups, which include Voters of Tomorrow, College Democrats of America, Leaders We Deserve, College Democrats of Georgia, Georgia High School Democrats, Young Democrats of Georgia, Path to Progress and Blue Future issued a joint statement condemning the RNC decision:
Just days after students and teachers were murdered in Apalachee High School, Republicans are hosting a debate watch party an hour away at the world’s largest gun store. The Trump team is evil for disrespecting the victims like this — and by continually refusing to support life-saving gun violence prevention policies.
Donald Trump is out-of-touch with the vast majority of Americans on gun violence prevention. He continues to suck up to the gun lobby and insult victims, as shown by today’s event. As young organizers in Georgia and across the country, and members of a generation that has been defined by mass shootings, we know Donald Trump’s flagrant disregard for young Americans’ lives will cost him this election.”
The RNC has scheduled a watch party for tonights debate at a gun store in Georgia just miles away from Apalachee high school where two teachers and two students were killed by a 14-year-old shooter last week.
“While Georgians continue to mourn the students and educators who were shot and killed at Apalachee High School last week, the RNC is hosting a #Debate2024 watch party at the nation’s largest gun store tonight—less than 50 miles from Apalachee High School,” the gun-control advocacy group Moms Demand Action wrote in a post on X, adding in all caps: “INSENSITIVE. GROSS. REPREHENSIBLE.”
Adventure Outdoors, which proudly proclaims itself as “The Greatest Store On Earth,” carries over 15,000 guns in stock and has a 17-lane shooting range. The store has hosted debate watch parties before, including last June when Trump debated Joe Biden.
The event, which includes dinner and refreshments, is sponsored by a slew of conservative groups, including the Tea Party Patriots Action, Fulton County Republican party and the Pac Turning Point Action.
Kamala Harris will be joined by her husband, Doug Emhoff, sister Maya Harris and her husband, Tony West, at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia tonight, NBC News reported.
Donald Trump will be joined by his eldest son, Eric Trump, and his wife and the Republican National Committee chair, Lara Trump, according to CNN. It’s unclear whether Melania Trump will attend.
Tommy Tuberville, the Republican senator from Alabama, is blocking the promotion of an army general and top aide to Lloyd Austin, the US defense secretary, citing concerns about the military leader’s alleged role in the lack of transparency surrounding Austin’s hospitalization earlier this year.
The army general in question, Lt Gen Ronald P Clark, has been nominated to become the four-star commander of all US army forces in the Pacific. But the Alabama senator and retired college football coach is holding up the promotion, according to the Washington Post.
“Senator Tuberville has concerns about Lt Gen Clark’s actions during secretary Austin’s hospitalization,” a spokesperson for the senator, Mallory Jaspers, told the Post.
Jaspers went on to say that Clark knew Austin was “incapacitated” and did not tell Joe Biden, breaking his oath to president.
The spokesperson said that Tuberville was waiting to review an inspector general’s report surrounding Austin’s handling of his hospitalization before Clark’s promotion.
The Trump and Harris campaigns had been in dispute over the debate guidelines.
The Harris campaign had previously pushed for live, or “hot”, microphones, arguing that it would “fully allow for substantive exchanges between the candidates”.
Meanwhile, Trump’s campaign had been pressing for them to be turned off, as was the case in the first debate with Joe Biden.
A statement from ABC made clear that microphones for both candidates will be muted during the debate when their opponent is speaking.
The other rules ABC News said had been agreed upon with the two sides include:
No opening statements and closing statements will be 2 minutes per candidate
Candidates will stand behind podiums for the duration of the debate
Props and prewritten notes are not allowed on stage
No topics or questions will be shared in advance
Candidates will not be permitted to ask questions of each other
Candidates will have two minutes to answer questions, two minutes for rebuttals and one extra minute for follow-ups, clarifications or responses.
After winning a virtual coin toss, Trump opted to give the second closing remarks; Harris selected the right podium position on the screen, meaning Trump will be on the left.
Donald Trump has called on Republicans in Congress to shut down the government as the House speaker Mike Johnson vowed to stay the course and put his government funding package on the House floor on Wednesday.
Trump, posting to his Truth Social platform, urged GOP lawmakers not to vote for a six-month continuing resolution to avert a shutdown in three weeks, unless the bill is linked to the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (Save) Act.
The Save Act would overhaul voting laws to require proof of citizenship in order to vote. Trump wrote:
If Republicans in the House, and Senate, don’t get absolute assurances on Election Security, THEY SHOULD, IN NO WAY, SHAPE, OR FORM, GO FORWARD WITH A CONTINUING RESOLUTION ON THE BUDGET. … CLOSE IT DOWN!!!
Democrats overwhelmingly oppose the measure and the bill has very little prospect of passing the House.
From Punchbowl News’s Jake Sherman:
Robert F Kennedy Jr will appear in the spin room in Philadelphia tonight as a surrogate for Donald Trump, after he dropped his independent presidential bid last month and endorsed the Republican nominee.
Trump is “so desperate for support he’s scraping the bottom of the barrel and coming up with RFK Jr”, a statement from Matt Corridoni, the Democratic National Committee spokesperson said, and added:
Equally desperate, RFK Jr. is willing to sell his soul for attention — abandoning any integrity he had left. Both of these men are driven by their egos and desire for attention and that will be on full display after the debate tonight.
On 21 July, Joe Biden dropped out of the presidential race and endorsed Kamala Harris. This historic move changed the landscape of the election and how many felt about the race.
As the election enters its final weeks, the Guardian US is averaging national and state polls to see how the two candidates are faring.
After two weeks of a roughly three-point Harris lead, Guardian US polling averages have Donald Trump and Harris tied for the first time since we started tracking the polls in August. Many of the high-Harris enthusiasm polls from late August are dropping off our 10-day rolling average, while several new high-quality polls have Trump in a narrow lead. Though the results are within the margins of error for the polls, Trump’s lead in those individual polls has led to a big increase in his national average.
The first presidential debate between Harris and Trump is Tuesday night. The last presidential debate was arguably one of the most consequential in modern political history, so we will be closely following the impact that the candidates’ performances have on their national standings.
A deputy manager for the Kamala Harris campaign debuted new billboards placed across Philadelphia, ahead of the debate there on Tuesday.
One billboard appears to reference Wawa convenience stores and mocks Donald Trump and his fixation on crowd sizes.
This comes as the Harris campaign also unveiled a new ad this week, titled Crowd Size, featuring former president Barack Obama’s speech from the Democratic national convention last month, during which Obama talked about Trump’s “weird obsession with crowd sizes”.
Tim Walz, the Democratic vice-presidential nominee and Minnesota governor, will be participating in a virtual national debate watch party tonight, he said in a post on X.
The virtual watch party will be from 8:30pm ET to 11pm ET.
With just hours to go until the much-anticipated debate between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump, a new poll published on Tuesday by PBS News/NPR/Marist shows Harris just one point ahead of Trump nationally among registered voters.
The poll also states that among independent voters, Trump received 49% while Harris received 46%, and that Trump now has a lead among the Latino voters surveyed, with 51% now choosing the ex-president.
A third of the registered voters said that the debate tonight will help them “a great deal or good amount” in making their selection.
Source: US Politics - theguardian.com
