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      Feel the groove: Trump keeps on dancing – does it help his cause?

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      Amid the lies, the vindictiveness, the dystopian portrayal of an America in decline, one aspect of Donald Trump’s political rallies tends to get overlooked: the dancing.At many campaign stops, the former president engages in what has become a signature dance: to the tune of Village People’s YMCA, Trump pumps his arms alternately, while staring blankly into the crowd.Unusually for a dance performance, there is a sort of malevolence to Trump’s movements. It’s rare to see someone dancing with a scowl on their face. But his supporters love it. A compilation video of Trump dancing proved a big hit at the Republican national convention, where it was played on big screens to fawning supporters every night. But why does Trump do this? And is his dancing any good?No it is not, said Brandon Chow, the founder of Hip Hop Dance Junkies, a company with dance schools in several states across the US.“On a scale of one to 10, I would say three. Three or four max,” Chow said.“The arms are there, the arms are very stiff, though – they’re not really moving. It’s literally him with his fists tight and his arms to his side. I mean, there is no movement where he’s leaving his comfort zone or his space. He’s literally just stepping in place, side to side, hips swaying.”View image in fullscreenChow, who predominantly deals in one-on-one coaching, suggested Trump could incorporate his feet more, and experiment with other arm movements.“He should get more steps involved, as opposed to stepping in place. Or if you aren’t going to travel outside of your zone, at least get some arms going instead of locking them to your sides, maybe even just, like a hand in the air every now and then, or doing an arm wave, or a turn or something. It just seems very repetitive, like it’s a robot staying in place,” Chow said.Marjorie Hershey, professor emeritus of political science at Indiana University Bloomington, said Trump’s characteristic performance is less an irrepressible expression of glee and more a way for him to show his supporters, and his party, who is boss.“It’s a sign of his need for power and control: that if he can lie with impunity, if he can dance oddly whenever he wants to, that’s a sign that, basically, he has enough power to be able to do whatever he pleases without anybody being able to stop him,” Hershey said.“Goodness knows he’s not in control of his dancing, but the fact that he feels this is a sign he’s cool, and it’s something he feels perfectly at ease to demonstrate, shows how he thinks he’s in total control of the Republican party: and he’s right.”View image in fullscreenIt is uncommon to see national leaders dance in public. And when they do, it hasn’t always proved to be a political benefit.Theresa May, while prime minister of the UK, became a figure of fun in August 2018 after performing an odd, stilted dance in front of a group of scouts in Nairobi. A couple of months later, at the Conservative party conference, May attempted to reclaim the narrative by dancing on to the stage to the tune of Abba’s Dancing Queen. The routine was widely panned.Boris Yeltsin, the former president of Russia, was known as someone who enjoyed a good time. During a campaign stop in 1996, he appeared on stage with a rock band and performed a spirited dance composition, which incorporated sashaying hips, under-knee claps, and a fists-clenched, arm pumping motion. Yeltsin won re-election, although questions were raised about the legitimacy of the vote.Barack Obama rarely danced while in office, but in a 2007 appearance on the Ellen show, while running for the Democratic presidential nomination, the former president briefly sashayed along to Beyoncé’s Crazy in Love. To the untrained eye, Obama appeared to display significantly more rhythm than Trump, May or Yeltsin.Joe Biden has had his own issues with musical performance. At a concert to celebrate Juneteenth earlier this year, the president stood frozen in place, arms rigid at his sides, as other people danced beside him.View image in fullscreenUnlike Yeltsin or Obama, Trump never looks to be enjoying himself while dancing. A review of at least 20 videos of Trump performing his signature dance at campaign rallies and, this week, during an interview with the questionable internet personality Adin Ross, failed to find a single instance of Trump smiling.“I would love to see him smile while he dances,” said Rhonda Malkin, a former member of the Rockettes dance troupe and the owner of Fusion Exercise and Professional Dance Coaching, who has tutored scores of professional dancers.Malkin said she suspected Trump was uninterested in a career in dance, but if he were, “he probably should work on his footwork”.“If he’s into moving his hands, then he should move his feet accordingly, with either a side-to-side motion or a step touch,” Malkin said. A step touch involves the dancer stepping one foot to the left or the right, and bringing the other foot next to it. The move is then repeated in the opposite direction.Trump may not have time to work on his footwork, or even arm movements, given he is facing, for the first time in months, serious challenges in his bid to win a second presidential term. Trump has fallen behind Kamala Harris in an average of national polls, as Harris has galvanized previously weary Democratic supporters.View image in fullscreenHe continues to face legal issues, too. He is due to be sentenced on 16 September after being found guilty on 34 felony fraud charges, while a judge presiding over Trump’s election interference case in Washington recently rejected his efforts to throw out the case. In context Trump’s continued jigs seem almost defiant – and now Tim Walz, Harris’s running mate, has proved a huge hit, whereas JD Vance, Trump’s VP choice, has faced questions over past remarks and actions.In that context, at least Trump can rely on his ever-adoring base – the type of supporter who is thrilled when the former president does his idiosyncratic dance on stage, and believes Trump can do no wrong.“This does not look like a typical political attachment of even strong partisans to a candidate. I just haven’t seen before mentions of a candidate as the second coming of Christ, or that somehow he was divinely protected from a stray bullet by God,” Hershey said.Trump, Hershey said, has spent years “fundamentally fearmongering” about immigration, crime and “the other” to secure his relationship with his fans. The dancing, however lackluster it may be, is just some rather odd icing on a largely disgruntled cake. More

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      Trump and Vance are unmatched in ‘the Olympics of lying’, says Pete Buttigieg

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      The Republican presidential ticket of Donald Trump and JD Vance might be slipping in the polls, but remains unmatched in “the Olympics of lying”, according to transportation secretary Pete Buttigieg.The senior Democrat was responding Sunday, the final day of the Paris Olympics, to remarks by the Ohio senator criticizing Tim Walz for misstating his military service in an interview six years ago.The Minnesota governor, announced this week as running mate to Democratic candidate and vice-president Kamala Harris, served 24 years in the army national guard, but never in a combat zone, which he seemed to suggest in the 2018 interview.In an appearance on CNN’s State of the Union, Buttigieg assailed Vance, himself a former marine corps journalist, for disparaging Walz’s military record at a rally this week and moments earlier on the same show.“I watched that interview and watched JD Vance present himself as suddenly very particular about precision in speech and very concerned about honesty,” Buttigieg said.“He’s running with Donald Trump, somebody who has set records for lying in public life. He just gave a press conference where fact-checkers estimate that he told 162 distortions or lies. That, frankly, is just impressive in terms of being able to physically do that. It’s like the Olympics of lying.”It was quite the zinger from Buttigieg, a former intelligence officer in the US navy reserve who has established a reputation for eloquent takedowns of Republican political positions.“The fact a veteran wants to go out and disparage another veteran just goes against certainly everything I learned during my time in service,” he said.“The fact they have to go back to find a clip from 2018 to find the one time that he slipped up when he talks about the weapons of war that he carried and said something instead about carrying a weapon in war, it’s kind of an exception that proves the rule in terms of how hard you have to look to find Tim Walz saying anything that isn’t precise and accurate.”On State of the Union, Vance insisted he was not impugning Walz’s military service, but “the fact that he lied about his service for political gain”.“I think that’s what Tim Walz did. That’s what I was criticizing. And, yes, I do think it’s scandalous behavior,” he said.A statement from the Harris-Walz campaign on Saturday turned Vance’s earlier criticism around. “Governor Walz would never insult or undermine any American’s service to this country. In fact, he thanks Senator Vance for putting his life on the line for our country. It’s the American way,” it said.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“He did handle weapons of war and believes strongly that only military members trained to carry those deadly weapons should have access to them, unlike Donald Trump and JD Vance who prioritize the gun lobby over our children.”Buttigieg, on CNN, also condemned Vance’s much-maligned commentary that senior Democrats were “a bunch of childless cat ladies”. As part of his clean-up effort for those remarks, Vance claimed Sunday he was not criticizing people for not having children, but for “being anti-child”.“I don’t know which part of that is worse, the lie that he just told when he says he never criticized people for not having kids, because of course he very much did, including Kamala Harris and me and a lot of other people, millions of Americans, in fact, who he disparaged as childless cat ladies,” said Buttigieg, who has two adopted sons with his husband.“The other part, just as troubling, is saying that anybody who disagrees with him is anti-child. It’s part of just who he is, right? He seems incapable of talking about a vision for this country in terms of lifting people up, or building people up, or helping people out.” More

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      The Guardian view on the politics of joy: Democrats are embracing the sunny side | Editorial

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      “Thank you for bringing back the joy,” Tim Walz told Kamala Harris in his first speech after agreeing to become her running mate. He has continued to invoke the emotion, describing himself and Ms Harris as “joyful warriors” against opponents who “try and steal the joy”. Donald Trump has attacked Ms Harris’s ready laughter, but the Democrats are embracing an upbeat coconut-and-brat-meme atmosphere while Republicans invoke American carnage.Rarely have two presidential campaigns had such contrasting moods. Asked by a reporter what made him happy, Mr Trump’s running mate, JD Vance, retorted that “I smile at a lot of things including bogus questions from the media”, and that he was “angry about what Kamala Harris has done to this country”. Mr Trump – along with other rightwing populists globally – has channelled fear and rage to extraordinary effect.“Visceral states and feelings appear at the forefront of the political conversation” in this era, writes Manos Tsakiris, director of the University of London’s Centre for the Politics of Feelings. Voters are less rational and more emotional than we like to believe. Feelings may also have different effects upon different parts of society. US research suggests that dissatisfaction with politicians is more likely to send white voters to the polls and minority voters to other forms of activism.In the past, Democrats have tried to counter lies and loathing with facts. Though fear of Mr Trump motivated voters in 2020, warnings about his return have not proved as effective. People can be indifferent or passive in the face of threats such as the climate crisis. (In contrast, deliberative democracy – such as citizens’ assemblies or community activism – can generate a sense of political agency and re-engage them.) Giving people something to fight for, not just against, may be potent. But there is more research on how emotions such as anger affect politics than there is on emotions such as hope.Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva beat Jair Bolsonaro’s dark vision of Brazil in 2022 with hope, and Rahul Gandhi walked the length of India with a message of love and solidarity, an appeal that cost India’s divisive prime minister, Narendra Modi, his parliamentary majority this year. In Britain, the joy of the Liberal Democrats’ successful election campaign bubbled over. But critiques of “cruel optimism” and “hopium” note that invoking positive emotions can sometimes encourage people to feel good about bad political choices. Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos won the Filipino presidency in 2022 with a feelgood social media campaign glamourising his family and his father’s dictatorship.In the US, Ronald Reagan’s sunny “morning in America” advert won plaudits, but Hubert Humphrey’s “politics of joy” didn’t win the Democrat the presidency. For Ms Harris – like Humphrey, a vice-president aspiring to the top job – urging voters to get happy when they’re worrying about bills could be counterproductive. The wrongfooted Trump campaign appears to be pivoting towards attacking her record.Ms Harris seems to recognise the problem, tempering the buoyant mood by acknowledging that grocery prices are too high, for instance. But if a recession hits, striking the right note will be even tougher, and policy will be still more pressing. The Democrats are hoping for the best – but even in a short campaign, vibes will only carry them so far. More

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      Trump blames Iran for email hack and says only publicly available information stolen

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      Donald Trump said that only “publicly available information” had been stolen by a hack of his campaign for the presidency as he pinned the dramatic theft on the Iranian government.The news of an alleged hack emerged amid reports from the news website Politico that it had begun getting emails from an anonymous account with internal documents from the Trump campaign, including a vetting dossier on his running mate JD Vance.“We were just informed by Microsoft Corporation that one of our many websites was hacked by the Iranian Government – Never a nice thing to do!” Trump said in a statement on his Truth Social media platform.Trump added: “They were only able to get publicly available information but, nevertheless, they shouldn’t be doing anything of this nature. Iran and others will stop at nothing, because our Government is Weak and Ineffective, but it won’t be for long.”The reference to Iran and Microsoft appears to confirm a Microsoft report released on Friday about alleged hackers with ties to Iran who “sent a spear-phishing email in June to a high-ranking official on a presidential campaign from the compromised email account of a former senior adviser”.The Microsoft report did not identify the official or senior adviser.Politico reported that it been getting emails from an anonymous account from someone who identified themselves only as “Robert”. That account sent Politico internal campaign communications and a 271-page long research dossier on Vance. The news organisation said the Vance profile was “based on publicly available information about Vance’s past record and statements” and appears to be linked to the vetting process.In a statement to Politico, campaign spokesperson Steven Cheung said: “The Iranians know that President Trump will stop their reign of terror just like he did in his first four years in the White House.”News of the potentially embarrassing and damaging hack was yet another blow to a Trump campaign that has endured a sharp reversal in its fortunes in recent weeks. Trump’s effort to reclaim the White House had emerged unified and ahead in the polls after last month’s Republican national convention as it prepared to do battle with a struggling Joe Biden.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionHowever, Biden’s historic decision to drop out of the race and endorse Vice-President Kamala Harris has shaken up a race that seemed for a long time likely to end in Democratic defeat. Harris – and her new running mate Minnesota governor Tim Walz – have surged in the polls and recent head-to-head surveys show her ahead of Trump. She has also strengthened markedly in the vital swing states that are key to victory in November’s contest.On Saturday the New York Times released a poll showing Harris was leading Trump by four points in each of Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania – the three key Rust Belt states that have been a huge focus of each campaign’s efforts. More

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      New poll shows Harris four points ahead of Trump in three key swing states

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      A major new poll puts Kamala Harris ahead of Donald Trump in three key swing states, signaling a dramatic reversal in momentum for the Democratic party with three months to go until the election.The vice-president leads the ex-president by four percentage points in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Michigan, 50% to 46%, among almost 2,000 likely voters across the three states, according to new surveys by the New York Times and Siena College.The polls were conducted between 5 and 9 August, in the week Harris named midwesterner Tim Walz, the governor of Minnesota and a former high-school teacher, as her running mate on November’s Democratic ticket.It provides the clearest indication from crucial battleground states since Joe Biden pulled out of the race and endorsed Harris amid mounting concerns about the 81-year-old’s cognitive wellbeing and fitness to govern for a second term. The results come after months of polling that showed Biden either tied with or slightly behind Trump.Harris is viewed as more intelligent, more honest and more temperamentally fit to run the country than Trump, according to the registered voters polled.The findings, published on Saturday by the New York Times, will boost the Democrats, as Harris and Walz continue crisscrossing the country on their first week on the campaign trail together, holding a slew of events in swing states that are likely to decide the outcome of the election.On Saturday, the candidates held a rally in Las Vegas, Nevada, a state the Biden-Harris ticket won by more than two points in 2020.While only a snapshot, Democrats will probably be heartened to see that 60% of the surveyed independent voters, who always play a major role in deciding the outcome of the race, said they are satisfied with the choice of presidential candidates, compared with 45% in May.The swing appears to be largely driven by evolving voter perceptions of Harris, who has been praised for her positivity and future-focused stump speeches on the campaign trail. In Pennsylvania, where Biden beat Trump by just more than 80,000 votes four years ago, her favorability rating has surged by 10 points since last month among registered voters, according to Times/Siena polling.Harris will need to win Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Michigan – crucial battleground states that Biden clinched in 2020 – if the Democrats are to retain the White House.The latest polls will probably further anger Trump, whose few recent campaign events have largely been dominated by ire – and apparent disbelief – at the rapid shift in momentum since naming JD Vance, the Ohio senator and former venture capitalist, as his running mate amid a celebratory atmosphere at the Republican national convention less than a month ago.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionVance, who has been derided as “weird” by the Democrats as he doubles down on 2021 comments about the US being run by “childless cat ladies”, is broadly viewed unfavorably or unenthusiastically by the majority of independents, Democrats and registered Republicans, the new poll found.But Democrats still have work to do to communicate Harris’s vision for the country. The poll found that 60% of registered voters think Trump has a clear vision of the country, compared with only 53% when asked about Harris.Crucially, Trump is also still leading when it comes to confidence over handling the economy and immigration – two of the three key issues for voters, according to polls.Still, Harris has a 24-point advantage over Trump when it comes to abortion, an issue which Democrats hope will help get out the vote in key swing states such as Arizona and Wisconsin. Harris is also viewed significantly more favorably when it comes to democracy than Trump, who continues to face charges related to his alleged role in subverting the 2020 election results and the 6 January insurrection in Washington.In a statement to the Times, Tony Fabrizio, the Trump campaign’s chief pollster, said the new polls “dramatically understated President Trump’s support”, citing surveys conducted in the days before the 2020 election that overestimated the margin of Biden’s victory. More

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      Biden, Harris to attend first joint event since he quit campaign race – live

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      Joe Biden and Kamala Harris are going to attend an event together in Maryland next Thursday, according to the White House.No further details were given. Ordinarily, this would not be significant news, but so much has changed in the last three weeks and this will be their first appearance together in person since the US president announced on Sunday, July 21 that he would no longer seek re-election.Minutes later, he endorsed his vice president, Harris, to take up the baton and rise to the top of the Democratic ticket for the election this November against the Republican nominee, Donald Trump.Biden dialed in to a boisterous public happening that week when Harris went to what had formerly been the Biden-Harris election campaign headquarters in Delaware and talked to staff, as it became transformed into the Harris for President campaign – and is now the Harris-Walz campaign, since she chose the Minnesota governor, Tim Walz, as her running mate. Biden was effusive about his anointed successor.Now the two will make their first public appearance together in person since that seismic shift in the election. We’ll update you when we know a time, place and nature of the event next Thursday.On Sunday, “CBS News Sunday Morning” will air an interview with President Biden, discussing the president’s decision not to seek reelection.“When I ran the first time, I thought of myself as being a transition president,” Biden told CBS News. “I can’t even say how old I am – it’s hard for me to get it out of my mouth.”“Although it’s a great honor to be a president, I think I have an obligation to the country to do what I– most important thing you can do. And that is — we must, we must, we must defeat Trump,” he said.Biden withdrew from the 2024 presidential election on July 21, and endorsed his vice president, Kamala Harris, immediately after.Read David Smith’s analysis on Biden’s decision to withdraw for more background ahead of the interview this weekend:With Kamala Harris’s rally in Phoenix this evening still more than two hours away, footage of the crowds gathered inside and out of the venue have begun circulating on social media.The Desert Diamond Arena in Glendale, where Harris will speak at 5pm local time, can hold 20,000 people.The number of Harris-Walz campaign rally attendees has made headlines recently – in contrast to the quieter crowds attending rallies for Joe Biden just weeks ago. They’ve also attracted attention from former president Trump, who has complained about the media supposedly exaggerating crowd sizes for his Democratic opponent, at his expense.Ahead of today’s rally in Phoenix, the Harris-Walz campaign released a new ad playing up Harris’s strict views on immigration.“Kamala Harris has spent decades fighting violent crime,” the ad says. “As a border state prosecutor, she took on drug cartels and jailed gang members for smuggling weapons and drugs across the border. As vice-president, she backed the toughest border control bill in decades. And as president, she will hire thousands more border agents and crack down on fentanyl and human trafficking. Fixing the border is tough, so is Kamala Harris.”The ad foreshadows the tone Harris may take as she takes the stage in Phoenix this evening – especially as Republicans criticize her record on immigration as vice president. For more on Harris’s views on immigration, read Lauren Gambino’s analysis:The justice department on Friday announced criminal charges against three executives at the voting machine company Smartmatic in connection to an alleged 2016 bribery scheme in the Philippines.The indictment, filed in federal court in south Florida, comes as the company has faced false accusations it was involved in rigging the 2020 election. Smartmatic was only used in Los Angeles county in 2020. Elon Musk, who has become a large spreader of misinformation, immediately shared news of the indictment on X.Prosecutors alleged three executives, including the president of the company, Roger Alejandro Pinate Martinez, bribed the chairman of the Commission on Elections of the Republic of the Philippines “to obtain and retain business related to providing voting machines and election services for the 2016 Philippine elections and to secure payments on the contracts, including the release of value added tax payments.” The scheme allegedly involved “at least $1m in bribes,” the justice department said in a statement.“Regardless of the veracity of the allegations and while our accused employees remain innocent until proven guilty, we have placed both employees on leaves of absence, effective immediately,” the company said in a statement. “No voter fraud has been alleged and Smartmatic is not indicted. Voters worldwide must be assured that the elections they participate in are conducted with the utmost integrity and transparency. These are the values that Smartmatic lives by.”The indictment comes as the company has several defamation lawsuits pending against several conservative news outlets, including Fox and Newsmax. It settled a suit with One America News Network and also has sued Rudy Giuliani, Sidney Powell, and Mike Lindell for defamation.Alpha Kappa Alpha, the historic Black sorority that Kamala Harris joined in college, has created a political action committee, according to a filing with the Federal Election Commission dated Friday, the New York Times reports.Alpha Kappa Alpha was the first Black sorority formed in the United States. Harris became a member while enrolled at Howard University.The Pac is the first in the sorority’s history, spokeswoman Carisma Ramsey Fields told The Times.Read more about the power of Black sororities from Guardian reporter Helen Sullivan:Make America Great Again, Inc, a political action committee dedicated to re-electing former president Donald Trump, has shared reporting from Fox News today on Democratic vice presidential nominee Tim Walz’s record on policing:After police murdered George Floyd in Minneapolis in 2020, Walz signed a number of bipartisan police reforms, including a ban on certain types of chokeholds and a ban on “warrior style” police training, which emphasizes the use of force.For more coverage of Walz’s views on policing, read Gloria Oladipo’s reporting in The Guardian:Here’s a look at where things stand:

      Joe Biden and Kamala Harris are going to attend an event together in Maryland next Thursday, according to the White House. This will be their first appearance together in person since the US president announced on July 21 that he would no longer seek re-election.

      Newly released body cam and dashboard camera footage from local Pennsylvania police officers on 13 July shows the moments right before the attempted assassination of former president Donald Trump at his rally in Butler, Pennsylvania. The footage, obtained by CNN through a public records request, shows the moment one police officer climbed up to the roof of the building overlooking rally, and saw the shooter just before the firing began.

      A man who stood in front of a gallows and attacked police with poles on January 6, 2021 on Capitol Hill has been sentenced to 20 years in prison, the second longest sentence delivered in the riot. According to prosecutors, who sought 262 months, or 21 years, for David Dempsey, he climbed over rioters like “human scaffolding,” as well as used “his hands, feet, flag poles, crutches, pepper spray, broken pieces of furniture, and anything else he could get his hands on” as weapons against police, NBC reports.

      The US district judge overseeing the 2020 federal election interference case against Donald Trump has agreed to delay the case by several weeks after special counsel Jack Smith’s team requested an extension earlier this week. Smith’s office asked the court for extra time on Thursday, as the prosecutors said that they had not finished assessing how the US supreme court’s immunity decision issued last month.

      Texas governor Greg Abbott, a Republican, has signed an executive order ordering public hospitals in Texas to collect and report information on the immigration status of patients they treat, in order to assess the expenses of providing medical care of undocumented immigrants. Texas congresswoman Sylvia Garcia called it “unacceptable”.

      Kamala Harris and Tim Walz’s rally in Detroit, Michigan was the duo’s largest campaign rally to date, featuring over 15,000 voters, the campaign announced today. It added that the crowd broke the campaign’s own record of more than 14,000 voters in Philadelphia on Monday.

      FiveThirtyEight’s new poll shows Harris leading Donald Trump by 2.1 points in the national average. Before Harris entered the race late last month, Joe Biden, who was then running for re-election, before dropping out and handing the torch to Harris, “was behind [Trump] by a significant number, not just at the national popular vote, but in battleground states.
      On Friday, Joe Rogan, the popular podcaster who has been criticized for using racist and sexist language in the past, as well as espousing Covid-19 misinformation, appeared to take a dig at Trump.Rogan said Robert F Kennedy Jr – who has become widely known as a vaccine conspiracy theorist – is “the only one that makes sense to me.”After drawing the ire of Trump who wrote on Truth Social, “It will be interesting to see how loudly Joe Rogan gets BOOED the next time he enters the UFC Ring??? MAGA2024,” Rogan took to X and wrote:
      “For the record, this isn’t an endorsement. This is me saying that I like RFKjr as a person, and I really appreciate the way he discusses things with civility and intelligence. I think we could use more of that in this world. I also think Trump raising his fist and saying “fight!” after getting shot is one of the most American fucking things of all time.”
      Nick Fuentes, the 25-year old white supremacist and Holocaust denier who once dined with Donald Trump at Mar-a-Lago, has revoked his support for the former president.Referring to the loose network of white nationalist activists, alt-right and internet trolls known as Groypers, Fuentes wrote on X:
      “Tonight I declared a new Groyper War against the Trump campaign. We support Trump, but his campaign has been hijacked by the same consultants, lobbyists, & donors that he defeated in 2016, and they’re blowing it. Without serious changes we are headed for a catastrophic loss.”
      He added that he plans to present a “detailed statement of the facts, a mission statement, and a plan of action” on Monday.In 2022, Democrats, civil rights organizations and some Republicans criticized Trump for dining with Fuentes, who has a history of spewing violently misogynistic rhetoric, in addition to homophobic and Islamophobic views.Newly released body cam and dashboard camera footage from local Pennsylvania police officers on 13 July shows the moments right before the attempted assassination of former president Donald Trump at his rally in Butler, Pennsylvania.The footage, obtained by CNN through a public records request, shows the moment one police officer climbed up to the roof of the building overlooking rally, and saw the shooter just before the firing began.The officer, who was hoisted up to the roof by his colleague, is seen quickly dropping down after he sees the shooter. The officer is then seen running to the other side of the building to get a look at the roof, as the first three shots can be heard on the officer’s dashboard camera, followed by five more.In total, eight shots were fired by the shooter on 13 July, which resulted in Trump’s ear being grazed, one spectator killed and two others were injured.In the videos, the officer can be seen running back to his car to grab his rifle, and shouting at his colleagues to not put their heads up. “He’s right there,” he tells them. At this point, government snipers had killed the shooter, according to CNN.Other footage obtained by CNN shows local police officers expressing frustration and confusion, and complaining that they had previously told the Secret Service to put officers near the building the gunman fired from.“I told them that fucking Tuesday” one officer says. “I told them to post fucking guys over here”. When another officer asked who he told that to, he responded: “The Secret Service.”A man who stood in front of a gallows and attacked police with poles on January 6, 2021 on Capitol Hill has been sentenced to 20 years in prison, the second longest sentence delivered in the riot. According to prosecutors, who sought 262 months, or 21 years, for David Dempsey, he climbed over rioters like “human scaffolding,” as well as used “his hands, feet, flag poles, crutches, pepper spray, broken pieces of furniture, and anything else he could get his hands on” as weapons against police, NBC reports. According to documents reviewed by the outlet, prosecutors also wrote:
      “Though Dempsey has pled guilty only for his assaults on Detective [Phuson] Nguyen and Sergeant [Jason] Mastony, his violent assault on other officers defending the Capitol was relentless: swinging pole-like weapons more than 20 times, spraying chemical agents at least three times, hurling objects at officers at least ten times, stomping on the heads of police officers as he perched above them five times, attempting to steal a riot shield and baton, and incessantly hurling threats and insults at police while rallying other rioters to join his onslaught.”
      In a bizarre attempt to repeat the Republican attack line that Kamala Harris refuses to speak to the press, JD Vance wrote:
      “If we could convince Kamala Harris that illegal aliens are actually journalists trying to ask her questions she’d build that border wall in five seconds.”
      On Thursday, prior to departing from Detroit, Michigan on Air Force Two, a reporter asked Harris whether there is an update on when she will sit down for her first interview since being the Democratic presidential nominee.In response, Harris said:
      “I’ve talked to my team. I want us to get an interview scheduled before the end of the month.”
      The US district judge overseeing the 2020 federal election interference case against Donald Trump has agreed to delay the case by several weeks after special counsel Jack Smith’s team requested an extension earlier this week.Smith’s office asked the court for extra time on Thursday, as the prosecutors said that they had not finished assessing how the US supreme court’s immunity decision issued last month, which awarded former presidents some immunity from criminal prosecution, would narrow their case.“The Government continues to assess the new precedent set forth last month in the Supreme Court’s decision in Trump v United States, including through consultation with other Department of Justice components,” prosecutors wrote in the filing requesting the extension.The joint status report that was previously due by 9 August is now due by 30 August, according to the court order, and the status conference hearing, previously scheduled for 16 August, has been postponed until 5 September.Joe Biden and Kamala Harris are going to attend an event together in Maryland next Thursday, according to the White House.No further details were given. Ordinarily, this would not be significant news, but so much has changed in the last three weeks and this will be their first appearance together in person since the US president announced on Sunday, July 21 that he would no longer seek re-election.Minutes later, he endorsed his vice president, Harris, to take up the baton and rise to the top of the Democratic ticket for the election this November against the Republican nominee, Donald Trump.Biden dialed in to a boisterous public happening that week when Harris went to what had formerly been the Biden-Harris election campaign headquarters in Delaware and talked to staff, as it became transformed into the Harris for President campaign – and is now the Harris-Walz campaign, since she chose the Minnesota governor, Tim Walz, as her running mate. Biden was effusive about his anointed successor.Now the two will make their first public appearance together in person since that seismic shift in the election. We’ll update you when we know a time, place and nature of the event next Thursday.Hello again US politics blog readers, it’s a fascinating news day even if a little less frenzied than most recent ones. The Democratic and Republican campaigns have rallies coming up later today and there is a lot of polling information around and other stories moving. We’ll keep you abreast as it happens.Here’s where things stand:

      Texas governor Greg Abbott, a Republican, has signed an executive order ordering public hospitals in Texas to collect and report information on the immigration status of patients they treat, in order to assess the expenses of providing medical care of undocumented immigrants. Texas congresswoman Sylvia Garcia called it “unacceptable”.

      Kamala Harris and Tim Walz’s rally in Detroit, Michigan was the duo’s largest campaign rally to date, featuring over 15,000 voters, the campaign announced today. It added that the crowd broke the campaign’s own record of more than 14,000 voters in Philadelphia on Monday. The presumed Democratic nominees for president and vice president, respectively, addressed a gathering of the United Auto Workers (UAW) union.

      FiveThirtyEight’s new poll shows Harris leading Donald Trump by 2.1 points in the national average. Before Harris entered the race late last month, Joe Biden, who was then running for re-election, before dropping out and handing the torch to Harris, “was behind [Trump] by a significant number, not just at the national popular vote, but in battleground states.

      Meghan McCain, political commentator and daughter of the late US Senator for Arizona, John McCain, shared a video of Donald Trump comparing his crowd sizes to Martin Luther King Jr’s and then she simply posted the message: “Vice president Harris is going to win.”

      Harris and Walz plan to highlight reproductive rights – the Republicans’ war on choice and Democrats’ efforts to codify choice – and immigration policies, which have been a mess, when they hold campaign events in Arizona tonight and Nevada tomorrow. More

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      Polls show Kamala Harris building lead over Trump in 2024 election

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      Kamala Harris continues to gain strength in the US presidential election, as polls nationally and in battleground states show her building leads or catching Donald Trump.On Friday morning, FiveThirtyEight, a leading polling analysis site, puts Harris, the Democratic party’s presumptive nominee for president, up by 2.1 points over her Republican rival in its national average.In averages for swing states, where control of the White House rests, Harris led in Michigan by two points, Pennsylvania by 1.1 point and Wisconsin by 1.8 points. Trump led in Arizona by less than half a point and in Georgia by half a point.In battleground states without enough polls to calculate averages, Trump was ahead by about three points in North Carolina and the candidates were about level in Nevada. In the latter state, recent CBS and Bloomberg polls have given Harris two-point leads while on Friday the Nevada Independent reported a poll showing the Democrat six points up.The US vice-president, 59, has changed the election race since mid-July, when Joe Biden, 81, finally heeded calls from his own party to step aside for a younger candidate to take on Trump, who is 78. He endorsed Harris to take over the top of the Democratic ticket for this November, while he serves out his single term.On Thursday night, Amy Walter, of the non-partisan Cook Political Report, told PBS that before Harris entered the race, Biden “was behind by a significant number, not just at the national popular vote, but in those … battleground states. You can see almost six points in a state like Georgia and Nevada.“Now, just in the time that Harris has been in the race, you have seen those numbers move pretty significantly toward Harris, four- or five-point shifts in those battleground states, which is mirroring what we’re seeing in the national poll as well.“It hasn’t turned those states, though, from ones that favored Trump to ones that now favor Harris. It just means now that the race is no longer as lopsided in Trump’s favor as it was, say, in late July … which is why we’re calling this race a toss-up.”The same day, the Cook Political Report changed its ratings for three Sun belt swing states – Arizona, Georgia and Nevada – from “leans Republican” to “toss-up”.Another analysis site, Sabato’s Crystal Ball, based at the University of Virginia, changed Georgia from leans Republican to toss-up. Looking north, the site changed Minnesota and New Hampshire, states where Trump made gains while Biden was top of the Democratic ticket, from leans Democratic to likely Democratic.Harris’s choice for vice-president, Tim Walz, is governor of Minnesota. Any Walz effect on polling has not yet been felt but some observers expressed surprise that Harris passed over Josh Shapiro, the governor of Pennsylvania, a battleground state.Others argued back. For Sabato’s Crystal Ball, Joel K Goldstein said that though Shapiro and Mark Kelly, the Arizona senator who was also closely considered, were “both from competitive states that were … important pieces of the 306 electoral votes Democrats won in 2020”, in choosing Walz, “Harris demonstrated yet again that vice-presidential selection turns on matters other than the over-hyped criterion of home-state advantage.“Walz also had the most experience (17 and a half years) in traditional vice-presidential feeder positions (senator, governor, member of the House of Representatives, holder of high federal executive office) of her options, which contrasts with the very limited experience (one and a half years) of his Republican counterpart, Ohio senator JD Vance.”Among widely noted individual polls, Harris led for a second week in the Economist/YouGov survey, maintaining a two-point advantage. Reuters/Ipsos found Harris up five points, 42%-37%, up two on the last such survey, taken just after Biden withdrew. Ipsos said it also found in a separate poll Harris leading Trump 42%-40% in the seven battleground states, though it “did not break out results for individual states”.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionA national poll from Marquette University in Wisconsin showed Harris up six points, with 53% support among likely voters to 47% for Trump. Harris maintained that lead when other candidates were included. Robert F Kennedy Jr, the leading independent, took 6% support. In the Reuters/Ipsos poll, Kennedy’s support had fallen six points to 4% since July.The Marquette poll contained further good news for Harris, pointing to her energizing effect as the campaign heads for the home stretch: an 11-point rise in respondents saying they were very enthusiastic about voting in November.“Enthusiasm has increased substantially among Democrats, with a small increase among Republicans,” the Marquette pollster Charles Franklin wrote. “Republicans had a consistent enthusiasm advantage over Democrats in previous polls, but this has been mostly erased now.”It was not all good news for Harris and Democrats. In a poll released on Thursday, CNBC put Trump up two points and firmly ahead on who voters thought would make them financially better off.Micah Roberts of Public Opinion Strategies, a Republican pollster who worked on the survey with a Democratic counterpart, said the election was “less now a referendum on Trump than it is a head-to-head competition between the two candidates”.Harris, Roberts said, was “still carrying a lot of water for the [Biden] administration. She has to answer for that and define herself independently … That’s a lot of baggage to carry when you’ve got a compressed time frame against a mature campaign on Trump’s side.” More

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      Brats, dads and bravado: this US election will be decided on vibes

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      Now that the Democrats have found their vice-presidential candidate in Tim Walz, can anyone say what either of the parties are planning to do if they win?Of course not. Donald Trump says immigration is bad, but having claimed a wall would fix things, he’s pretty much run out of options. The Democrats are pro-reproductive freedoms, anti-inflation and environment-friendly, but what do they plan to do about it? It’s not at all clear. Not to worry though. This election is not being fought on proposed policies or past accomplishments. It’s being fought on vibes.The vibes election is a kind of free-association game that takes place in the recesses of the deep subconscious. The goal is to determine not who the candidates are but who you feel like they could be if they weren’t politicians.In the vibes election, huge political moments keep being superseded by online ephemera: Trump was almost assassinated by a sniper, but what resonated was how cool he looked in AP photos afterwards. Kamala Harris became the first Democratic nominee in modern times not to go through a primary process, but what really landed was Charli xcx tweeting “Kamala is brat”. Within minutes, Harris’s team changed their official campaign X header to brat green.It’s nothing new for presidential election campaigns to be led by viral moments and personality – Barack Obama’s 2008 campaign was built on enthusiasm for change and the gaffes of Sarah Palin rather than policy positions. Trump’s 2016 win was about amorphous ideas of draining the swamp and making America “great”. But this is something different.Trump isn’t brave. Kamala isn’t brat, in the sense that Charli’s album is about it-girls who rip cigs and do bumps of cocaine – even though there’s something in Harris’s giggly personality that suggests she could have done that in another life. Her viral quote that you “exist in the context of all in which you live and what came before you” sounds like something that might be whispered in a smoking area after one too many tokes on the special vape.Walz is a shrewd politician with a progressive record as governor, but online he’s “the midwest prince”, a pun on an album by the gen Z pop star Chappell Roan you can feel confident Walz has never heard. He’s presented as a kind of gorpcore hero for the everyman (as Charlie Warzel of the Atlantic put it, “Dad is on the ballot”).Above all, and I’m sorry to be a party pooper here, JD Vance didn’t have sex with a couch, although the Republican vice-presidential nominee definitely has the vibe of someone who might have. And that’s what counts. There have been panels on CNN about what it means that people say he did. Walz even joked about it in his acceptance speech.View image in fullscreenThis is a product of the Trumpification of politics. Ever since he managed to turn the 2016 Republican primary into a Comedy Central roast, more traditional politicians have been racing to compete with his headline-grabbing one-liners. But even though it’s his playing field, he’s not doing so well in 2024, struggling to find insults that land.In contrast, Democrats have become much better at checking the vibes. Compare Hillary Clinton’s 2016 comment that half of Trump supporters were “a basket of deplorables” with the Democrats’ recent messaging that Republicans are “weird”.The former used strange, sneering verbiage to take aim at voters rather than politicians, and was said at a private event for rich fundraisers. It was easy for Trump supporters to reclaim the term and for Trump to use it to make Clinton look elitist. Clinton later acknowledged the comment was a big part of the reason she lost the election. Bad vibes.But calling Republicans “weird” punches up at the politicians themselves, using everyday language that most people, including rightwing voters, relate to. Democrats didn’t whisper this insult in private, like Clinton; they owned it with pride. That’s how you win at vibes – don’t address the person or the policy, address how it makes you feel.It’s true that not everyone is viewing the vote through this lens. Considerable numbers of people older than 50 still watch nightly TV news, where the election is being discussed in drier terms. But those under 50 don’t even have cable. The majority of gen Z’s news is coming from social media, where these conversations dominate.It goes without saying there are some pretty serious issues facing the US. People are dying from extreme heat. As Trump tried to make hay out of the assassination attempt, the family of his supporter who was killed in the crossfire mourned their loss, as did the families of the over 10,000 other Americans who have been killed by firearms this year alone. A war in Gaza, abortion rights, a far-right supreme court, mass incarceration – these issues are on voters’ minds.Certainly the Harris and Trump campaigns agree that the stakes are high. According to Democrats’ fundraising emails, American democracy is on the line and it’s up to voters to give 20 bucks before it’s too late. If Trump is to be believed, things are even more dire: he’s said that if Democrats win, they will unleash “hell on earth”. Either candidate could make this election about the issues, but that way controversy and expenditure lie. As long as they keep fighting the vibes wars, they can stay suspended in effervescent little fictions. More