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      Liz Cheney campaigns with Harris and urges voters to reject Trump’s ‘cruelty’

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      Liz Cheney, one of Donald Trump’s most prominent conservative critics, appealed to the millions of undecided Americans who could decide the outcome of the 2024 election, asking them to “reject the depraved cruelty” of the former president.A former representative from Wyoming, Cheney cast the stakes in November as nothing less than the future of American democracy as she appeared alongside Kamala Harris in Ripon, Wisconsin, on Thursday, the symbolic birthplace of the modern Republican party.The daughter of Dick Cheney, the Republican former vice-president, said she had never voted for a Democrat before, but would do so “proudly” to ensure Trump never holds a position of public trust again. Her father will join her in casting his ballot for Harris.“I know that the most conservative of conservative values is fidelity to our constitution,” Cheney said, speaking from a podium adorned with the vice presidential seal. The crowd broke into a chant: “Thank you, Liz!” A large sign looming over them declared: “Country over Party.”Harris praised Cheney’s “courage” for being willing to cross party lines to endorse – and campaign alongside – the Democratic nominee. During the event, a remarkable joint appearance that would have been unimaginable in the pre-Trump era, Cheney pitched Harris as a unifying leader who will safeguard American institutions.Cheney and Harris agree on little politically – only that Trump should not be allowed to serve a second term. But their union is part of an effort by the Harris campaign to win over Republican voters who, like Cheney, believe in “limited government” and “low taxes” but are repelled by Trump and his Maga movement.“No matter your political party, there is a place for you with us and in this campaign,” Harris said. “I take seriously my pledge to be a president for all Americans.”Harris touts a growing collection of endorsements from prominent Republican leaders and ex-Trump administration officials, including Cassidy Hutchinson, a former Trump White House who testified against him in the January 6 House hearings, as well as Anthony Scaramucci, former White House communications director, and Stephanie Grisham, a former press secretary.Adam Kinzinger, a former Illinois representative and the only other Republican to serve on the January 6 committee, also is backing Harris, and forcefully denounced Trump in a speech at the Democratic national convention in August.In a reprisal of her role as the vice-chair of the House select committee investigating the 2021 attack on the US Capitol, Cheney on Thursday methodically recounted for the crowd how Trump had refused for hours to intervene on January 6, instead watching the violence unfold on television.“After the Capitol had been invaded, he praised the rioters. He did not condemn them. That’s who Donald Trump is,” she said. Cheney rebuked Republicans who have sought to “minimize what happened” that day.“Do not let anyone lie about what happened and what they did,” she said, adding: “Violence does not and must never determine who rules us. Voters do.”Cheney was effectively exiled from her own party after she broke forcefully with the former president. But on Thursday, she said it was Trump, thrice chosen as the Republican nominee, who was failing to uphold the founding ideals of the “party of Lincoln”. With a dash of arch humor, she added: “I was a Republican even before Donald Trump started spray-tanning.”Harris’s appearance with Cheney came one day after a judge unsealed new evidence in a federal case against Trump for his attempt to cling to power in 2020. In the court filing, federal prosecutors allege that he amplified false claims of voter fraud and “resorted to crimes” in his failed bid to overturn the results of an election he lost.At a rally in Michigan earlier on Thursday, Trump repeated the false claim that he won the 2020 presidential election.“We won. We won,” Trump said in Saginaw, a swing county in the midwestern battleground. “We have to be too big to rig.”Harris will travel to Michigan on Thursday night, and campaign in Detroit on Friday, as the candidates battle for votes in the trio of “blue wall” swing states seen as the clearest path to the White House.Leaving the White House on Thursday, Joe Biden said he was hardly surprised by the razor-thin margins.“It always gets this close,” he told reporters. “She’s going to do fine.”He also praised her running mate, Tim Walz, the Minnesota governor, for his performance against JD Vance, the Republican vice-presidential nominee, during Tuesday night’s debate in New York. Near the end of the 90-minute exchange, Walz turned to the subject of the 2020 election: had Trump lost? he asked Vance.Vance replied that he was “focused on the future”.“That is a damning non-answer,” Walz replied, adding that Vance’s loyalty to Trump above all else was the reason he and not the former vice-president, Mike Pence, was there on stage that night. The response was clipped and immediately re-packaged by the Harris campaign into a television ad.On January 6, as protesters chanted: “Hang Mike Pence,” the then vice-president resisted pressure from Trump to reject the votes of the electoral college and returned to the Capitol after it was breached to certify Biden’s victory.On Thursday, Cheney claimed Vance, in Pence’s shoes, would have “thrown out the votes of the people of Wisconsin” because they had voted to elect Biden as president in 2020. “That is tyranny, and that is disqualifying,” she said.Cheney effectively ended her own political career by voting to impeach Trump over his role in stoking a mob of supporters that attacked the Capitol on 6 January 2021. She was one of just two Republicans willing to serve on the House select committee investigation into the attack that sought to hold Trump – and his Republican enablers – accountable for the sprawling effort to overturn his defeat.She lost a 2022 Republican primary, but has remained a vocal critic of the former president. Before Biden stepped aside, Cheney said she was mulling a third-party bid.But on Thursday, she made clear there was no other alternative to Trump. Cheney quoted from a letter that John Adams, the nation’s second president, wrote to his wife on the first night he spent in the White House: “May none but honest and wise men ever rule under this roof.”“Now I am confident,” she said, her smile widening, “that John Adams meant women, too.” More

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      Mayor in Wisconsin removes ballot drop box as tensions rise over voting method

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      A Wisconsin mayor removed a ballot drop box from outside city hall and relocated it indoors last week – a performance that underscores the tensions and misinformation that surround election administration and the topic of ballot drop boxes in the state.Doug Diny, who donned a workperson’s hat and gloves to move the drop box, claimed he did so because he was worried the box, which had not yet been fully installed and did not have any ballots in it, could have been tossed in the river. The city has since re-installed the dropbox outside the Wausau municipal building.Since 2020, the use of ballot drop boxes – secured boxes where voters can return absentee ballots – has been a fixture of debate over the administration of elections in Wisconsin.With Covid-19 surging during the 2020 presidential election, about 60% of voters cast ballots early or by mail. By 2021, there were 570 ballot drop boxes in place across the state, according to the Wisconsin elections commission.In 2022, after conservative groups filed suit to ban the use of the drop boxes, the Wisconsin supreme court – then ruled by a conservative majority – outlawed the voting method. In July, a year after voters elected a liberal judge to the court and reversed the ideological balance of the court, the state supreme court overturned its previous decision. With just four months to go before the 2024 election, election clerks across the state were free to introduce drop boxes at their discretion.The ruling has not cooled tensions over the use of the secured voting boxes. With unfounded fears that US elections are vulnerable to fraud still swirling years after Donald Trump spread the lie that the 2020 election was rife with irregularities, the re-introduction of drop boxes in Wisconsin has repeatedly spurred controversy.In Dodge county, Wisconsin, the political outlet WisPolitics first reported that some municipal clerks who sought to bring back drop boxes reversed course after the county’s Republican sheriff urged them not to use drop boxes, claiming they could cause the perception of fraud.In Brookfield, Wisconsin, a suburb of Milwaukee, residents rallied for a ballot drop box to be installed for the 2024 November elections. But after the municipal clerk, whose office oversees election administration, turned the decision about drop boxes over to common council, the council voted not to offer residents that option. Mike Hallquist, a local official in Brookfield who voted in favor of installing a drop box in the city, said that while “state law definitely provides the clerk their ability to make that decision,” he was comfortable weighing in “because it was at the request of the clerk”.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe Republican Senate candidate Eric Hovde has even weighed in on the topic of drop boxes, calling on poll watchers to monitor drop boxes in majority-Democratic cities in a recording obtained by the Washington Post. Hovde reportedly asked: “Who’s watching to see how many illegal ballots are being stuffed?” The suggestion that ballot drop boxes would likely be “stuffed” with fake ballots echoes the debunked claim that circulated after the 2020 election that people had fraudulently cast ballots using drop boxes in swing states.It was in this fraught environment that Diny made a show of relocating an absentee drop box – a stunt that garnered instant headlines and outcry from voting rights groups in the state. Diny, who was not available for comment, has vowed to bring the issue before Wausau’s city council – although city council members almost certainly lack the legal standing to make such a decision unilaterally, and the city clerk, who does have the authority, remains in support of the dropbox.In an email to the Guardian, the Wausau city council president, Lisa Rasmussen, forcefully rejected Diny’s actions and emphasized that the Wisconsin elections commission and the Wisconsin supreme court give election clerks the discretion to use drop boxes – not local government.“Elected officials do not have the authority to make those choices. So, if the mayor opts to ask the council to decide something they have no authority to consider, it is likely all for show,” wrote Rasmussen. “I also remain hopeful that there is a measure of accountability for those actions since this type of thing could happen in any town and it is just not appropriate.”Diny is currently under investigation by the Portage county sheriff to determine if he violated the law in relocating the drop box. More

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      Veep cast reunites, with special guests, to raise money for Harris

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      As soon as Joe Biden dropped out of the presidential election and threw his support behind Kamala Harris, people immediately started comparing the shocking turn of events to something that would unfold on HBO’s critically acclaimed political satire Veep. At the time, the US vice-president was seen as a Selina Meyers-esque figure, what with her penchant for public awkwardness, clunky turns of phrase and the perception of her as a perpetual also-ran.Since then, things have changed quite a bit, with Harris rising to the occasion and running a highly effective and exciting campaign that has seen her ascend to frontrunner in the race (even if her advantage remains razor-thin).Still, as I wrote in my article from July, her campaign and the Democrats as a whole would be wise to lean into comparisons to Veep. Despite how venal and vain the characters on the show were, the workplace comedy (which wrapped up in 2019) remains as popular and relevant as ever.When you consider this alongside the fact that the majority of the cast, including and especially its star, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, are outspoken liberals, it made all the sense in the world for some Democratic group to try to work with them to raise funds and awareness during this final leg of the campaign.That group ended up being the Wisconsin Democrats. A swing state that is likely to have a big hand in deciding not only who the next president is, but also which party controls the Senate, WisDems put together a live Zoom table read of a classic episode of Veep, featuring the majority of the cast, plus some big-name guest stars, to be livestreamed to the donors, with the money raised going towards presidential, congressional and assembly campaigns across the state.Fellow liberal comic and Veep super-fan Stephen Colbert took on hosting duties. Special guest stars included the Wisconsin senator Tammy Baldwin in her acting debut (not counting her childhood performance in a school production of Finian’s Rainbow), actor and comedian Kumail Nanjiani as a Syrian refugee (“I’m Pakistani, but I can play cat-eating immigrants from all over the world”), Seinfeld co-star Jason Alexander as a pompous feature writer, film-maker Kevin Smith as a reporter, and Larry David – who, in the most fitting turn of events imaginable, spent the first several minutes of the live stream trying to figure out how to work his Zoom – as Selina’s chief hatchet man, Ben Cafferty.View image in fullscreenReprising their roles from the show were actors Diedrich Bader, Nancy Lenehan, Gary Cole, Sam Richardson, Sufe Bradshaw, Timothy Simons, Reid Scott, Matt Walsh, Anna Chlumsky, Tony Hale and, of course, Louis-Dreyfus, while series regulars Clea DuVall and Sarah Sutherland took on other roles, since their characters don’t appear in this ep. (Patton Oswalt, who was also on the show, made a surprise appearance during the post-read Q&A.)The episode chosen was Crate, from season 3, which finds Selina and her cronies campaigning in New Hampshire ahead of the upcoming primaries. Various mishaps involving a pricey photo-op prop, an incriminating cellphone recording and the suicidal first lady, ensue. This episode is regarded as one of the very best in the show’s history, mostly due to one scene: Selina, having just learned that Potus will be resigning from office, effective immediately, shares a joyous freakout alongside her body man/closest confidant, Gary. It’s a bravura performance from both Louis-Dreyfus and Hale, one that probably secured them each an Emmy the following year.(It’s also fitting that this episode should be chosen, given that this intimate scene is immediately followed by Selina betraying Gary, a dynamic that repeats itself in the most devastating moment of the series finale.)For the read-through, the cast slipped back into their roles with ease. Everyone was on point, but Louis-Dreyfus and Hale were extra-dialed in, especially during their big scene. You got goosebumps watching them recreate it 10 years later, over Zoom, while still bringing all of the emotion they did during the actual filming.The guest stars all acquit themselves well, but it should come as no surprise that it was David who got the biggest laughs. While it’s impossible for him not to play himself, his singular delivery proved a perfect fit with Veep’s uber-cynical, profanity-laden screwball dialog.After the reading, we alternated between cast members interviewing a handful of state legislature candidates (with the major focus of the night revolving around abortion rights) and them fielding questions from viewers. Show creator Armando Iannucci joined in for this portion of the event.We got treated to a mini-Seinfeld reunion between Louis-Dreyfus, Alexander and David; Louis-Dreyfus sounded off on her hatred of AI; Smith talked about his favorite scene of the show (Selina accidentally getting high on St John’s wort, naturally); and David went off on a funny tangent about bald men looking better with beards (although he himself would never grow one because comedians can’t be stroking their beards).Someone asked the cast to give their favorite individual lines from the show. Louis-Dreyfus: “Jolly green jizz-face.” Simons: “[You’re] a meme, ma’am.” Walsh: “I’ve met [some] people … and a lot of them are fucking idiots.” Chlumsky: “[That’s] like [trying to use] a croissant [as] a [fucking] dildo. It doesn’t [do] the job and it [makes] a fucking mess!” Bradshaw: “[Get] the government out of my [fucking] snatch.” Colbert: “Danny Wah!”Iannucci seemed to confirm that Kent and Sue indeed hooked up at some point (“It probably involved algorithms”) and speculated on various characters’ outcomes (married politicos Amy and Bill are probably hosting a podcast with their dogs, while the “late” Andrew Meyer is living under a new identity on an island that he’s trying to buy with a view to it being recognized as its own country).When asked about the future of satire, Iannucci said it depended on who wins this election, as the entire premise of political comedy hinges on people holding politicians up to certain standards, standards Trump and his ilk have never shown the least bit of concern over.Colbert wrapped things up by having the cast read aloud their favorite insults of the show’s most despicable and hilarious character, noxious political aide and eventual veep, Jonah Ryan. These cruel gems include: “Childless cat-lady man”, “Disney plus extra chromosomes”, “Harry No-Styles”, “Rape-It Ralph”, “Moonsucker”, “Satellite licker”, “face-circumcised” and “stock photo for sperm-bank reject”.Right as Simons, the actor who played Ryan, broke the news that the fundraiser exceeded its stated goal of $600,000, Iannucci tossed out on final new Jonah barb that he’d come up with earlier in the day:“Jonah, even if you fell into the world’s most powerful castration machine, you’d still come out of it a dick.” More

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      Harris y Trump están empatados en Míchigan y Wisconsin, según las encuestas

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      La contienda se ha estrechado en dos de los estados disputados del norte, según las encuestas de The New York Times/Siena College.[Estamos en WhatsApp. Empieza a seguirnos ahora]La vicepresidenta Kamala Harris y el expresidente Donald Trump están en una contienda aún más apretada en los estados en disputa de Míchigan y Wisconsin que hace solo siete semanas, según las nuevas encuestas de The New York Times y Siena College.La ventaja de Harris de principios de agosto se ha visto ligeramente reducida por la fortaleza de Trump en cuestiones económicas, según las encuestas, un hecho potencialmente preocupante para la vicepresidenta, dado que la economía sigue siendo el tema más importante para los votantes.A menos de 40 días de las elecciones, la contienda está esencialmente empatada en Míchigan, con Harris recibiendo el 48 por ciento de apoyo entre los votantes probables y Trump obteniendo el 47 por ciento, bien dentro del margen de error de la encuesta. En Wisconsin, un estado donde las encuestas suelen exagerar el apoyo a los demócratas, Harris tiene un 49 por ciento, frente al 47 por ciento de Trump.Los sondeos también revelan que Harris aventaja en nueve puntos porcentuales a Trump en el segundo distrito electoral de Nebraska, cuyo único voto electoral podría ser decisivo en el Colegio Electoral. En un escenario posible, el distrito podría dar a Harris exactamente los 270 votos electorales que necesitaría para ganar las elecciones si ganara Míchigan, Wisconsin y Pensilvania, y Trump capturara los estados en disputa del Cinturón del Sol, donde las encuestas de Times/Siena muestran que está por delante.El Times y el Siena College también analizaron la contienda presidencial en Ohio, que no se considera un estado en disputa para obtener la Casa Blanca, pero tiene una de las contiendas senatoriales más competitivas del país. Trump lidera por seis puntos en Ohio, mientras que el senador demócrata Sherrod Brown aventaja a su oponente republicano, Bernie Moreno, por cuatro puntos.How the polls compare More

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      Top Republicans disavow Trump’s ‘mentally disabled’ attacks on Harris

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      Senior Republicans distanced themselves Sunday from comments made by Donald Trump at campaign stops over the weekend that opponent Kamala Harris was born “mentally disabled” and had compared her actions to that of “a mentally disabled person”.Senator Lindsey Graham, a South Carolina Republican, pushed back on Trump’s remarks, which came in what Trump himself admitted was a “dark” speech.“I just think the better course to take is to prosecute the case that her policies are destroying the country,” Graham said on CNN. “I’m not saying she’s crazy, her policies are crazy.”Graham’s comments came as immigration and border security remained the top domestic issue on Sunday’s political talk shows. Trump made his comments during a rally in Wisconsin on Saturday amid remarks on Harris’s actions on those issues as vice-president.“Kamala is mentally impaired. If a Republican did what she did, that Republican would be impeached and removed from office, and rightfully so, for high crimes and misdemeanors,” he said.Trump added: “Joe Biden became mentally impaired. Kamala was born that way. She was born that way. And if you think about it, only a mentally disabled person could have allowed this to happen to our country.”Minnesota Republican representative Tom Emmer, a member of JD Vance’s debate preparation team, told ABC News: “I think we should stick on the issues. The issues are, Donald Trump fixed it once. They broke it. He’s going to fix it again. That – those are the issues.”But Maryland governor Larry Hogan struck back, telling CBS News that Trump’s comments were “insulting not only to the vice-president, but to people that actually do have mental disabilities.“I’ve said for years that Trump’s divisive rhetoric is something we can do without,” Hogan added.Steven Cheung, the communications director for the Trump campaign, did not directly address Trump’s comments, widely criticized as offensive, but said Harris’s record on immigration and border security made her “wholly unfit to serve as president”.Trump’s comments joined a long list of personal attacks against opponents that supporters at his campaign eagerly lap up. Democrats have their own reductive articulations, calling Trump and Vance “weird”.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionBut the use of mental disability to describe Harris’s faculties has been widely seized upon. Democrat Illinois governor JB Pritzker told CNN that Trump’s remarks were “name-calling”.“Whenever he says things like that, he’s talking about himself but trying to project it onto others,” Pritzker said. Eric Holder, the former Obama administration attorney general, said Trump’s comments indicated “cognitive decline”.“Trump made a great deal of the cognitive abilities of Joe Biden,” he told MSNBC. “If this is where he is now, where is he going to be three and four years from now?”Maria Town, president of the American Association of People with Disabilities, pointed out that many presidents had disabilities.Town said in a statement to the Washington Post that Trump’s comments “say far more about him and his inaccurate, hateful biases against disabled people than it does about Vice President Harris, or any person with a disability”. More

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      Trump leans into anti-immigrant rants and Harris barbs at Wisconsin rally

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      Donald Trump spoke on Saturday in the battleground state of Wisconsin, escalating his anti-immigrant rhetoric and taking his personal insults against Kamala Harris up a notch.Trump’s speech in the small community of Prairie du Chien, where a Venezuelan in the US illegally was detained in September for allegedly sexually assaulting a woman and attacking her daughter, was unusually devoted almost entirely to undocumented immigrants. He wrongfully claimed that immigrants in the US are violent criminals, referring to them as “stone-cold killers”, “monsters” and “vile animals”.The Republican presidential candidate was flanked by posters of immigrants in the US illegally who have been arrested for murder and other violent crimes, and banners saying “End Migrant Crime” and “Deport Illegals Now”.Trump is locked in a close race with Kamala Harris, the Democratic candidate and vice-president, before the 5 November election. Immigration at the southern border are one of the top issues for voters, according to opinion polls.Trump attacked Harris, who on Friday visited the US-Mexico border for the first time in her 2024 presidential campaign, calling her “mentally impaired” and “mentally disabled”.The former president blamed Harris and Joe Biden for allowing undocumented immigrants into the US, accusing some immigrants of wanting to “rape, pillage, thieve, plunder and kill the people of the United States of America”.At one point Trump admitted: “This is a dark speech.”“There’s no greater act of disloyalty than to extinguish the sovereignty of your own nation right through your border, no matter what lies she tells,” he said.“Kamala Harris can never be forgiven for her erasing our border, and she must never be allowed to become president of the United States and Wisconsin,” he added.A video intending to attack Kamala Harris was shown in the middle of Trump’s remarks.It was a compilation of Harris’s comments about immigration policy.“She is a disaster, and she’s not going to ever do anything for the border,” he said after the video. “She’s incompetent and a bad person.”“She’s a Marxist,” he added.JD Vance continued the attacks on Harris in a speech in Newton, Pennsylvania, taking the former president’s lead and making sure to continue the anti-immigrant claims.“The problem with Kamala Harris is that she’s got no substance,” Trump’s running mate said. “The problem with Kamala Harris is that she’s got no plan. And the problem with Kamala Harris is that she has been the vice-president for three-and-a-half years and has failed this country.”Vance claimed without proof that Harris played a role in worsening the economy by exacerbating inflation, then went on to link the country’s economic woes to immigration, blaming Harris for what he describes as an “invasion” amid a lack of border control.Vance claimed that the presence of immigrants in the US is contributing to rising housing costs.Some 7 million immigrants have been arrested crossing the US-Mexico border illegally during Biden’s administration, according to government data, a record high number that has fueled criticism of Harris and Biden from Trump and fellow Republicans.In her visit to the border on Friday, Harris outlined her plans to fix “our broken immigration system” while accusing Trump of “fanning the flames of fear and division” over the impact of immigrants on American life.Harris also called for tighter asylum restrictions and vowed to make a “top priority” of stopping fentanyl from entering the US.Before wrapping up his speech, Trump called to the stage the mother of Rachel Morin, a 37-year-old Maryland mother of five who was killed last year. After Rachel’s death, a native of El Salvador was arrested. Trump has used this case to support his remarks against immigrants from Central America living in the US.Studies generally find there is no evidence immigrants commit crimes at a higher rate than native-born Americans and critics say Trump’s rhetoric reinforces racist tropes.Trump’s opponents accuse him of cynically exploiting grieving families to fuel his narrative that foreign-born, often Hispanic, arrivals are part of an invading army.But some of the families of the victims have welcomed Trump’s focus on the issue of violent crime and the death toll of teenagers caused by the opioid drug fentanyl, much of which crosses into the US over the southern border. More

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      in Elections

      Rallying in Two Key States, Harris Presses Her Case on Abortion Rights

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      Rallying supporters in two battleground states, Vice President Kamala Harris signaled on Friday that her closing campaign message would focus on the life-or-death risks that abortion bans pose to American women — and on the argument that former President Donald J. Trump is to blame.In Madison, Wis., a crowd that had been ebullient suddenly grew hushed as Ms. Harris spoke about her visit with the family of a Georgia woman who died of sepsis after waiting for more than 20 hours for medical care to treat an incomplete medication abortion.“She was a vibrant 28-year-old,” Ms. Harris said. “Her name, Amber Nicole Thurman, and I promised her mother I would say her name every time.”Earlier in the day, Ms. Harris traveled to Georgia, where Ms. Thurman and another woman, Candi Miller, died after delays in medical care tied to state abortion restrictions, according to reporting by ProPublica. Their deaths occurred in the months after Georgia passed a six-week ban made possible by the Supreme Court decision overturning Roe v. Wade.In Atlanta, Ms. Harris condemned the deaths of the two women in an impassioned speech, saying that Mr. Trump had caused a “health care crisis” and that women were being made to feel as “though they are criminals.”Ms. Harris’s stops in the two battleground states capped a relatively smooth week for her campaign as Mr. Trump again caused or confronted several politically unhelpful headlines and controversies. Most strikingly, the Republican candidate for governor of North Carolina, whom Mr. Trump has praised as “Martin Luther King on steroids,” was found to have called himself a “Black Nazi” and praised slavery in a pornographic chat room.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      JD Vance defends pet-eating remarks: ‘The media has a responsibility to fact-check’

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      JD Vance defended his comments about Haitian immigrants eating pets during a Tuesday rally, saying that “the media has a responsibility to fact-check” stories – not him.The rally in Eau Claire, Wisconsin, came two days after the Ohio senator told CNN host Dana Bash it was OK “to create stories” to draw attention to issues his constituents care about, regarding inflammatory and unfounded claims that Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, had eaten residents’ pets.The comments, in which he appeared to say that politicians can brazenly lie, drew immediate rebuke. But during his rally, Vance defended them and claimed that numerous constituents had told him “they’d seen something in Springfield”.“On top of it, if there are certain people who refuse to listen to them, who refuse to take their concerns seriously,” he said, “that’s when it’s my job as United States senator to listen to my constituents.”Vance took questions from reporters but knocked the press repeatedly, a line of attack that brought the crowd to their feet.“When I said – and the media always does this, they’re very dishonest – when I say that I created a story, I’m talking about the media story, by focusing the press’s intention on what’s going on in Springfield,” said Vance.During his speech to a crowd of several hundred people, Vance spoke at length about immigration, invoking a crime committed by an undocumented person in the town of Prairie du Chien that Republicans in the state have already seized on to bolster Republican claims about immigrants committing violent crimes. In fact, research shows immigrants do not commit crimes at a higher rate than people born in the US.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“Every community is a border state,” said Vance. “The problems that Kamala Harris has imported through that American southern border have now gone nationwide.”He also blamed the vice-president for the recent apparent assassination attempt at Mar-a-Lago.“The American media, the Democrats, the Kamala Harris campaign, they’ve gotta cut this crap out or they’re gonna get somebody killed,” said Vance, alleging that Democrats, who have highlighted Trump’s authoritarian rhetoric and attempts to overturn the 2020 election, are to blame for the two apparent assassination attempts that Trump has faced so far during his 2024 campaign.Vance described a chaotic, dark, and violent vision of the US under a Harris presidency.“We are closer, in this moment, to a nuclear war, or a third world war, than at any time in our country’s history and we have the chaos and incompetence of Kamala Harris to thank for it,” the Republican vice-presidential nominee said during a campaign event in Eau Claire, Wisconsin.Vance’s message, especially on immigration, was well-received by the crowd.“You don’t know who’s coming across that border. You don’t know the violence or the background of those people,” said Victoria Bischel, who owns a farm and a real estate business and appreciated Vance’s comments. “I believe in immigration. I believe in legal immigration […] I don’t hop over the fence to Saudi Arabia and decide that I want to live there.” More