RFK Jr. says he left dead bear in Central Park 10 years ago
(WASHINGTON) — Independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. claimed in a conversation with Roseanne Barr posted on X Sunday that he placed a dead “young bear” in Central Park 10 years ago.
In the video, which the campaign said was posted to get ahead of a New Yorker article, the candidate said he was driving in upstate New York when a woman in a van in front of him hit and killed the bear, he told Barr.
Kennedy told Barr he pulled over and put the bear in the back of his vehicle, planning to skin it and put the meat in his refrigerator.
However, after a day spent “hawking,” followed by a dinner that ran long back in New York City, Kennedy told Barr that he did not have time to put the bear in his house before catching a flight out of New York. Kennedy said he chose — with encouragement from others — to place the dead bear in the New York City park next to a bicycle he happened to have in his car to make it appear as if a bicyclist struck the bear. Kennedy said bicycling accidents with pedestrians were big news at the time.
The dead bear made news when a woman discovered it the next day, though Kennedy was never tied to the incident.
Kennedy said at the end of the video that he told the story to get ahead of an upcoming New Yorker profile of him, which he believes will include details of the incident.
“Looking forward to seeing how you spin this one [New Yorker],” he wrote on X to accompany the video.
The Kennedy campaign is not worried about any legal ramifications stemming from Kennedy’s bear incident, a campaign official told.
The official said the video was shot as an outtake when Kennedy recorded a conversation with Barr. The campaign saw it as a funny story that they decided to post Sunday when they became aware the New Yorker was planning to include the incident in an upcoming article, the campaign official said.
(CHICAGO) — Oprah Winfrey will speak at the Democratic National Convention on Wednesday night, multiple sources familiar with the program confirmed to ABC News.
CNN first reported the development.
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
(WASHINGTON) — Tulsi Gabbard, who once ran for president as a Democrat, is taking on a prominent role as part of former President Donald Trump’s 2024 campaign team.
On Thursday, she will moderate what Trump’s campaign is calling a “town hall” with him when he visits La Crosse in battleground Wisconsin.
Gabbard publicly endorsed Trump on stage in Michigan earlier this week, and joined his presidential transition team along with fellow former Democrat Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
“This administration has us facing multiple wars on multiple fronts and regions around the world and closer to the brink of nuclear war than we ever have been before,” Gabbard said. “This is one of the main reasons why I’m committed to doing all that I can to send President Trump back to the White House, where he can, once again, serve us as our commander in chief.”
Trump called Gabbard an “amazing person” and that he looked forward to working with her.
Gabbard, a military veteran who represented Hawaii in Congress for eight years, has also been aiding Trump as he prepares for his first debate against Vice President Kamala Harris on Sept. 10. Gabbard debated Harris and President Joe Biden in the 2020 Democratic primary, and made headlines at the time for taking aim at Harris’ record as a prosecutor.
Since leaving the Democratic Party in 2022 to register as an independent, Gabbard’s adopted several views that align with those held by Trump and his Republican allies.
That includes opposition to U.S. support for Ukraine in its fight against Russian invaders; criticism of the criminal indictments against Trump; and statements railing against the so-called deep state and “woke” ideologies of the Democratic Party.
Gabbard, an anti-interventionist when it comes to foreign policy, has accused President Joe Biden’s administration of stoking tensions around the globe — describing Democrats as a “cabal of warmongers” when she became an independent.
“This war and suffering could have easily been avoided if Biden Admin/NATO had simply acknowledged Russia’s legitimate security concerns regarding Ukraine’s becoming a member of NATO, which would mean US/NATO forces right on Russia’s border,” she wrote of the Russia-Ukraine war on X, formerly known as Twitter, in 2022.
She also shared false information alleging U.S. involvement in Ukraine biological weapons laboratories. Her comments received pushback from the likes of Utah Sen. Mitt Romney, a Republican, who described her comments as “treasonous lies” that were “parroting false Russian propaganda.”
The State Department, around the time such claims were being spread, said the Kremlin was intentionally proliferating “outright lies that the United States and Ukraine are conducting chemical and biological weapons activities in Ukraine.”
The year Russia invaded Ukraine, Gabbard made multiple appearances on Tucker Carlson’s show on Fox to discuss the conflict, clips of which were aired on Russian-state media.
After leaving the Democratic Party, she campaigned for election-deniers in the 2022 midterm cycle, including Arizona’s Kari Lake and New Hampshire’s Don Bolduc — both of whom were defeated.
During an event for Bolduc, she compared President Biden (who she endorsed in the 2020 primary after bowing out of the race) to Adolf Hitler.
In 2023 comments to Fox’s Jesse Watters, Gabbard continued to make comparisons to Hitler as she said Biden and the party’s focus on diversity was similar to the “geneticist core principles embodied by Nazism and Adolf Hitler.”
More recently, she’s accused Biden of weaponizing law enforcement to go after his political opponent after Trump was indicted on federal charges stemming from his handling of classified material and his efforts to overturn his 2020 election loss.
At the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) earlier this year, she suggested, like many Republicans have, that the criminal charges against Trump were an effort to interfere in the 2024 election.
“The Democrat elite and their cronies are using our criminal justice system to prosecute and distract the Republican presidential candidate in the midst of his campaign,” she said.
After Biden dropped out of the race, Gabbard turned her focus toward Harris — though asserted a larger “deep state” was at work in the federal government.
“Biden’s out, Kamala is in. Don’t be fooled: policies won’t change. Just like Biden wasn’t the one calling the shots, Kamala Harris won’t be either. She is the new figurehead for the deep state and the maidservant of Hillary Clinton, queen of the cabal of warmongers. They will continue their efforts to engulf the world in war and taking away our liberty,” Gabbard claimed on X.
(WASHINGTON) — Vice President Kamala Harris has tapped Kamau M. Marshall — formerly a senior adviser and spokesperson for the Biden-Harris ticket — as a 2024 senior adviser for her new presidential campaign.
Marshall, who led then-candidate Joe Biden’s strategic communications during his 2020 bid for the presidency, started as a senior adviser for the Biden-Harris campaign earlier this month after more than a year as a senior adviser under Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona.
Marshall said now is the time for unity with just over a 100 days until the 2024 election.
“We often say that each election is the most critical of our lifetime, but this one is at all costs,” Marshall told ABC News.
“I cannot emphasize the urgency of the upcoming election and how many achievements could be undone, rolling back all of the progress the Biden-Harris administration has made,” he added.
Vice President Harris traveled to Milwaukee, Wisconsin, on Tuesday in the first battleground state rally of her campaign.
In a sudden reversal, President Biden, who had vowed for weeks that he would be staying in the presidential race, dropped out and endorsed Vice President Harris on Sunday.
“I won’t be on a ticket, but I’m still going to be fully, fully engaged,” Biden said on a call with senior campaign staffers on Monday evening.
A career communications strategist, the move made him one of the only Black men to join the campaign’s senior-level staff.
Biden congressional ally Rep. Jasmine Crockett, D-Texas, celebrated the Harris ticket for transitioning to youth.
“He’s younger, he’s Black and he’s male,” Rep. Crockett said about Marshall, who is in his mid-30s. “Regardless of who’s at the top of the ticket, I think it’s really important that we tap into and we listen to young voices, Black voices, and definitely male voices. I think that he is someone who is able to tap into those cross sections.”
In the wake of Monday’s “Win with Black Men” live discussion — a more than four-hour voter mobilization effort hosted via journalist Roland Martin’s “Black Star Network” urging Black men to step up for Vice President Harris — they have become a key demographic in this election cycle during which they have voiced their frustrations.
Meanwhile, more than 80% of Black men identified with the Democratic Party over the last 25 years, according to the Pew Research Center.
Some of the Black voters most likely to support former President Donald Trump are those under the age of 50, according to Pew. Others are considering staying home in November.
Democratic strategist and former Obama campaign adviser Ameshia Cross praised Marshall’s experience with Black voters and his ability to reach Black men.
“He [Marshall] knows how to lead and engage those Black men who feel as though the party has left them or is not meeting their needs at this moment,” Cross told ABC News.
Before joining Harris’ campaign, Marshall, a former Houston Independent School District (HISD) teacher, championed several key education policies under Secretary Cardona’s office of communications and outreach. He worked on the White House’s initiative on HBCUs, historic HBCU funding, and college affordability.
However, the last year at the department has been mired by higher education woes, such as the U.S. Supreme Court effectively ending affirmative action and mounting challenges to Biden’s student debt relief plans. (The initial plan was struck down by the Supreme Court last year.)