Trump says he has agreed to offer from ABC News to debate Harris
(WASHINGTON) — Former President Donald Trump says he has agreed to an offer from ABC News to debate Vice President Kamala Harris on Sept. 10.
Trump said so during a news conference at his Mar-a-Lago Club on Thursday.
Trump previously said he had been willing to go toe-to-toe with President Joe Biden and agreed to ABC’s first invitation issued in May.
However, after Biden dropped out of the race last month and Harris became the presumptive Democratic nominee, Trump had implied he would not debate Harris on ABC.
Harris has accused Trump of “running scared” and trying to back out of the debate.
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
(GRAND RAPIDS, Mich.) — Former President Donald Trump and his allies have quickly pivoted to attacking Vice President Kamala Harris since President Joe Biden on Sunday suspended his reelection campaign and the Democratic Party coalesced behind the president’s former running mate.
Both the Trump campaign and groups supporting him are accusing Harris of being “complicit” in a cover-up of what they claim is Biden’s decline making him unfit for office.
At the same time, they are painting her as an even more “radical” liberal.
Trump’s team and his allies have been fast in firing off new attacks on Harris, already running both television and online ads in key swing states.
A new campaign video released on Sunday shortly after Harris jumped in the race as a presidential candidate claimed Harris helped Biden “screw up the border,” emphasizing her role in the Biden White House as the “border czar” and accusing her of not visiting the border enough — rhetoric Trump has used in the past during his own border visits.
The Trump campaign has also launched new social media ads attacking Harris, highlighting her gaffes while describing her as a “far more radical” candidate.
Pro-Trump super PAC Make America Great Again Inc. too immediately launched an ad in Georgia, Pennsylvania and Arizona, pushing unfounded claims alleging Harris had concerns about Biden’s mental fitness and worked to cover it up.
A source close to the super PAC told ABC News, “we will expand the buy,” adding that “there is going to be tremendous chaos within the Democratic Party and our job now is to seize on that.” The plan will be to continue to frame Harris as complicit in hiding Biden’s decline while also focusing on her record as a prosecutor and vice president, according to the source.
Trump himself has also been lashing out at Harris during his recent campaign stops as his campaign began privately polling Trump versus other candidates — increasingly name-calling her and attacking her credibility. Until recently, her name would only occasionally come up on Trump’s campaign trail — particularly during his border visits and while attacking her record on border security.
Just this past weekend, at a campaign stop in Grand Rapids, Michigan, Trump poked fun at Harris’ laugh — a personality trait his campaign has also spotlighted.
“I call her ‘Laughin’ Kamala.’ Have you seen her laughing? She is crazy. You can tell a lot by a laugh. She is nuts,” Trump said.
Even before Biden dropped out on Sunday, Trump long argued that Harris, along with other members of the Democratic Party, was secretly running the show because Biden was not fit to be president — an argument that they hope will help them as they attempt to point the blame on Harris for policies from the Biden administration.
“When you vote for Biden, you’re probably voting indirectly for Harris anyway,” Trump added on Saturday.
“We’re going to defeat ‘Crooked Joe Biden’ and Laughin’ Kamala Harris,’ and we’re going to take back the White House, and we’re going to take back our country,” Trump similarly said at his campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, two weeks ago — shortly before he was rushed off the stage after an assassination attempt on him.
A campaign rally at his Doral golf course in Florida earlier this month, Trump zeroed in on Harris’ border record, saying she has the “worst border” in history.
“As vice president, Kamala Harris was given two jobs — two very important jobs, actually,” Trump said. “First, she was put in charge of the U.S. border security at the border. And she never showed up. She’s never gone.”
He then attacked Harris’ role in the Biden administration’s foreign policy, claiming she “failed” to deter Russia’s attacks on Ukraine.
“Both times the result was a deadly failure,” Trump said.
The RNC Research social media account, managed by the Trump campaign and merged with the Republican National Committee, also posted several “flashbacks” on Sunday following Biden’s departure from the ticket, using Harris’ own words in an attempt to remind voters on what they believe is a failed record.
Again, those attacks centered around the claim that Harris’ was complicit in a cover-up as well as her role on the border.
“The biggest scandal in a generation — and Kamala is right at the center of the coverup,” one post by the Trump campaign suggested.
In another video posted, Harris is seen on the 2019 Democratic primary debate stage, raising her hand to suggest she would make illegal border crossings a civil, not, criminal offense.
As the Trump campaign attempts to capitalize on outlining Harris’ border policies, Harris has been on the campaign trail talking about abortion. She has issued several attacks on Trump’s proposed abortion policy.
Abortion bans have emerged as a divisive issue among Republicans since the Supreme Court’s 2022 decision to overrule Roe v. Wade’s nationwide guarantee to access the procedure.
“And understand, the former president wants to pass a national abortion ban to outlaw abortion in every single state, but we will not let him,” Harris said last month at an event in Texas. “We will not let that happen.”
Harris continued, “America must trust women, America must honor individual choice, America must defend freedom.”
Hailing from California where she served as attorney general, the Harris campaign is also starting to tout her previous role in contrast to Trump’s convictions, framing the potential battle between the two as prosecutor vs. criminal.
“Vice President Kamala Harris has held criminals accountable her entire career — and Donald Trump will be no different,” Harris for President Spokesperson Ammar Moussa said in a statement. “That’s the contrast the American people will see over the next 106 days.”
(PHOENIX) — Before Arizona Sen. Mark Kelly emerged as one of the lead contenders for vice president on the Democratic ticket, the former NASA astronaut earned more than a million dollars on the speaking circuit by regaling companies and colleges with tales of his triumphs in space.
Kelly, who was a U.S. Navy attack pilot before spending a decade as a NASA Space Shuttle pilot, earned more than $1.7 million in speaking fees over the two years before he was elected to the U.S. Senate in 2020, financial disclosures show.
The senator, who has been floated as one of the possible candidates to be Vice President Kamala Harris’ running mate, earned additional income from book deals and business consulting, according to the disclosures.
The $1.7 million came from 62 public speaking engagements from 2018 to 2019 — during which time Kelly sometimes delivered multiple speeches per day in different states, records show. On Nov. 18, 2018, for example, Kelly made $72,250 from three separate speeches in California, Minnesota, and Oregon.
Among those that paid Kelly for speeches were the American Society of Dermatological Surgery, which paid him $25,500, Chobani, the yogurt company, which paid him $58,250, and the Sexual Medicine Society of North America, which paid him $29,750.
Kelly later returned $55,250 that he made from a speech for Pink Tank, a Dubai-based consulting company, after it was made public that the event was sponsored by the Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi. At the time, a spokesperson for Kelly’s Senate campaign said Kelly’s speech was “focused entirely on Mark sharing experiences in space and discussing our countries’ space programs.”
In 2019, the Arizona senator also reported $1.5 million in income from Kelly Aerospace Consulting LLC, an Arizona limited liability company he registered in 2017, along with other income he earned from board member positions and from consulting.
The financial disclosures from that year show that Kelly held 16 positions for which he was compensated, including a position with Space X, the spacecraft manufacturer owned by Elon Musk.
According to disclosures from 2020 to 2022, Kelly stepped away from most of his board member positions and stopped doing paid public speaking engagements.
Since 2020, Kelly’s income has mostly come from his investments and stocks, and from royalties and advances from his several books.
In 2021, Kelly reported six royalty agreements for books he has written or co-written, which include several children’s books as well as the book “Gabby,” a book written with his wife, former Rep. Gabby Giffords, that recounts the 2011 mass shooting that left her partly paralyzed and with difficulty speaking.
Kelly’s most recent financial disclosures are from 2022. He requested an extension to file his disclosures for 2023.
Less than 24 hours after President Joe Biden announced he would end his reelection campaign and endorse Vice President Kamala Harris for president, Harris has been met with an outpouring of enthusiasm from high-ranking Democrats, celebrities and the public.
Some of the most unexpected voices among the rabble have been fans of Charli XCX, the British hyperpop artist whose critically acclaimed Brat has been the predominant album of the summer. Memes about the album and its signature lime green aesthetic have exploded online since its release in June, with many dubbing the summer of 2024 as “Brat summer.”
Even Charli XCX herself got into it hours after Harris was endorsed by Biden. “kamala IS brat,” she posted on X (which, if you exist in the context, you know is a positive thing).
Since late June, when Biden’s disastrous debate performance raised alarms about his fitness to stay in the race, Harris’ name began being floated as Biden’s probable successor. Along with it came memes — particularly ones linking her with “Brat,” including popstar-style video edits of Harris dancing to songs from the album.
Ryan Long, a 22-year-old Charli XCX fan behind one of the most viral video edits, told ABC News the video took him three hours to make. It now has 3.6 million views. When he saw Harris’ official campaign appeared to be embracing the memes about her, he said he was “so excited.”
“I was screaming,” he said. “I looked away from my phone for five or 10 minutes, and when I looked back, I had so many texts from friends and all these people tagging me in the comments.”
‘You think you just fell out of a coconut tree?’
Harris has also become associated with coconuts — with supporters talking about falling “out of a coconut tree” or declaring themselves “coconutpilled” — due to a speech she gave in May 2023 at a swearing-in ceremony for the President’s Advisory Commission on Advancing Educational Equity, Excellence, and Economic Opportunity for Hispanics.
“My mother used to … say to us, ‘I don’t know what’s wrong with you young people. You think you just fell out of a coconut tree?’ You exist in the context of all in which you live and what came before you,” she remarked.
The clip first gained prominence after the Republican National Committee posted it on X, prompting ridicule from conservatives, particularly for her boisterous laugh. Even Trump has dubbed her “Laffin’ Kamala” — a nickname the meme-literate on the left have reclaimed, editing her chuckle into a whole slew of pop songs.
Since entering the presidential race, Harris’ campaign has leaned all the way into the memes. Her official campaign X account, @KamalaHQ, debuted by changing the accounts banner image to ‘kamala hq’ — all lowercase and on a lime green background, in the precise stylization of the Charli XCX album cover. The account’s bio, “providing context,” is a reference to her viral line about existing “in the context.”
Prominent Democrats have gotten on board as well. Colorado Gov. Jared Polis signaled his endorsement with emojis of a coconut, palm tree and an American flag, and Hawaii Sen. Mazie Hirono posted a photo of herself with Harris and second gentleman Doug Emhoff with a lime green overlay. Massachusetts Sen. Ed Markey posted a photo of Harris and himself falling out of a coconut tree on the cover of the children’s book Chicka Chicka Boom Boom. “Let’s put Kamala in the Situation Room,” it said.
Hawaii Sen. Brian Schatz posted an actual photo of him climbing up a palm tree to retrieve a coconut.
“Madam Vice President, we are ready to help,” he wrote.
Schatz told ABC News the photo was taken six years ago on Hawaii Island, and that he scaled the tree in order to “eat and drink from the coconut.”
“What I did was I thought about tweeting a coconut, and I understood everyone was already doing that,” Schatz said. “And then I remembered that I had this photo and then my iPhone was very helpful in finding it instantaneously.”
A ‘semi-ironic groundswell of support’
Long said he hopes the memes around Harris’ campaign can breathe some new hope and energy into the race for the presidency.
“I really think using memes like this that people are already actively engaging with is going to help get people out to vote, because I think a lot of people are very politically disengaged or disillusioned,” he said.
Adam Downer, a senior editor at Know Your Meme, said the campaign appears to be leaning into the memes in order to “endear her to her semi-ironic groundswell of online support.”
“Obviously, Charli XCX is huge right now, as is the concept of ‘brat summer,’ a do-what-you-want, screw-the-haters mantra inspired by Charli’s attitude on her album ‘Brat,'” Downer said. “The Venn diagram of online, politically knowledgeable Gen Z and Millennial voters who are also Charli XCX fans is close to a circle, so we have a type of ‘Two Things’ meme-ing going on, where basically people are combining two disparate interests into one joke to get a laugh.”
The true meaning of what it is to be “brat” is hard to define, but Charli XCX explained how she sees it in a TikTok.
“You’re just, like, that girl who is a little messy and likes to party and maybe says some dumb things sometimes, who like, feels herself, but then also like maybe has a breakdown, but kind of like, parties through it,” she said. “Is very honest, is very blunt, a little bit volatile. Yeah like, does, like, dumb things, but like, it’s brat. You’re brat. That’s brat.”
It’s hard to say how long these memes will last, or if potential voters will sour on them as the race goes on — and it wouldn’t be the first time a politician capitalizing on a meme has backfired.
“I would be very surprised if Kamala herself references this on the campaign trail, lest she suffer a ‘Pokémon GO to the Polls’ moment,” Downer said, a reference to Hillary Clinton’s awkward bid to capitalize on the popularity of the mobile game during the 2016 election.