Category: Politics

(WASHINGTON) — Issues with a host of communications and technical difficulties with drone capabilities plagued the U.S. Secret Service at the rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, where an assassin took a shot at former President Donald Trump, according to a new report released Friday by the agency.

The Secret Service said it failed to secure the line of sight to the former president, by not securing the roof of the AGR building near the Butler Fair Grounds and law enforcement did not communicate to all personnel involved that there was a threat to the former president, the report said.

The report also revealed there was no discussion with the Secret Service advance staff about positioning a local sniper team on top of the AGR roof and the “lack of due diligence” in the construction of the secure perimeter should have been focused on more acutely.

“It’s important that we hold ourselves accountable for the failures of July 13, and that we use the lessons learned to make sure that we do not have another failure like this,” U.S. Secret Service Director Ronald Rowe said Friday.

The report was an effort from the Secret Service to be transparent about the failures that occurred on July 13, when Thomas Matthew Crooks allegedly climbed on top of a neighboring building and opened fire on Trump, striking him in the ear before being killed by a Secret Service sniper.

“We’re in a pivotal moment in the history of the Secret Service, and at a pivotal moment in history of our country, and I’ve directed that the Secret Service embark on a significant paradigm shift that will redefine how we conduct protective operations,” Rowe said Friday. “What occurred on Sunday demonstrates that the threat environment in which the Secret Service operates is tremendous and under constant threat, and we’ve been in this heightened and increasingly dynamic threat environment since July 13.”

“A consistent theme gathered from state and local law enforcement personnel who helped secure the Butler rally was the presence of communications deficiencies,” according to an executive summary of the report released on Friday.

The “deficiencies” included a lack of resources to share information, a “variety” of communications channels used by different law enforcement agencies, and the agency’s inability to convey the Secret Service’s “protective needs.”

“Some local police entities supporting the Butler venue had no knowledge that there were two separate communications centers on site (i.e., the Secret Service security room and the Butler County Emergency Services Mobile Command Post),” the executive summary said. “As a result, those entities were operating under a misimpression that the Secret Service was directly receiving their radio transmissions.”

Federal personnel on the scene were not informed through the radio of a description of the assailant, or vital information received from local law enforcement regarding a suspicious individual on the roof of the AGR complex, the report said.

The information was being passed through mobile devices in a “fragmented fashion” instead of being relayed through the Secret Service’s radio network, the report said.

“This failure was especially acute in terms of the [Former President’s] protective detail, who were not apprised of how focused state and local law enforcement were in the minutes leading up to the attack on locating the suspicious subject,” the executive summary said. “If this information was passed over Secret Service radio frequencies it would have allowed [Former President’s] protective detail to determine whether to move their protectee while the search for the suspicious suspect was in progress.”

The Secret Service was not made aware that a local agency was providing support to the Secret Service, according to the report.

“Neither the Secret Service’s Pittsburgh Field Office leadership nor anyone on the agency’s advance team were aware of this outreach for support,” the report said. “This led to a situation where the local tactical team operating on the second floor of the AGR building—a team that was providing mutual aid support—had no prior contact with Secret Service personnel before the rally.”

There was “no discussion” with the Secret Service about positioning that local team on the roof of the AGR building, according to the report’s executive summary.

Another challenge impacting the Secret Service on July 13 was its drone system was experiencing “technical difficulties,” the agency said.

The FBI director testified to Congress that Crooks flew a drone outside of the secure perimeter before the rally started.

“It is possible that if this element of the advance had functioned properly, the shooter may have been detected as he flew his drone near the Butler Farm Show venue earlier in the day,” the executive summary said.

The report also found that the Butler Farm Show site “as seen by the Secret Service and our local law enforcement partners as a challenge.”

It was selected by the campaign and local officials “because it was the better venue to accommodate the large number of desired attendees.”

“Advance personnel and multiple supervisors with oversight of the security plan at the Butler Farm Show venue recognized line of site concerns,” the report found. “However, the security measures to alleviate these concerns were not carried out on July 13, 2024 as intended. There was a lack of detailed knowledge by Secret Service personnel regarding the state or local law enforcement presence that would be present in and around the AGR complex.”

ABC News’ Jack Date contributed to this report

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(WASHINGTON) — Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz’s preparation for the Oct. 1 vice presidential debate with Sen. JD Vance is well underway, sources familiar with the process have confirmed to ABC News.

He’s already held some mock debates, sources said, with Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, in his personal capacity, acting as a Vance stand-in, and held policy sessions with his own longtime aides, Biden White House alumni and members of the Harris-Walz campaign team.

Buttigieg was in Minneapolis as recently as Wednesday to help him prepare. Walz has also been practicing on the road as he campaigns.

Biden White House alumni Rob Friedlander and Zayn Siddique are running the preparations. Siddique, who is currently an attorney at the firm Paul Weiss and served as senior adviser to Bruce Reed, the White House deputy chief of staff under President Joe Biden, has also been part of the vice president’s debate preparations.

Friedlander was chief of staff for the White House National Economic Council and senior adviser for communications.

Friedlander and Siddique are being supported by a larger team that includes Liz Allen, a veteran political operative who stepped down from her role as head the State Department’s public diplomacy office in August to become chief of staff on Harris’ running mate team. Chris Schmitter, Walz’s longtime aide who led his gubernatorial races and debate, is also helping along with Harris-Walz communications director Michael Tyler, sources say.

The vice presidential debate hosted by CBS News is set to be in New York City, the network has announced, with both Walz and Vance agreeing to participate. The debate will be moderated by “CBS Evening News” anchor and managing editor Norah O’Donnell and “Face the Nation” moderator and CBS News chief foreign affairs correspondent Margaret Brennan.

The sources stress that the vice presidential debate won’t be the “end all be all” for Walz, who has acknowledged himself that he’s “working hard” to “try and learn the issues” but is up against Vance, who “as a United States senator, a Yale Law guy” will come prepared.

“You’ll hear me talk like I have about things that impact Americans, making sure they have the opportunity to thrive, making sure that we’re being factual in how we talk about that. And so I’m looking forward to it. I’ll work hard. That’s what I do,” Walz said about the VP debate on MSNBC in the aftermath of the presidential debate between Harris and former President Donald Trump. “I fully expect that Senator Vance, as a United States Senator, a Yale Law guy, he’ll come well prepared.”

“Debates and VP Debates don’t matter all that much in polling — this will be one of many data points for voters,” sources said about the significance of the debate, also stressing that “Vance is a skilled debater.”

The campaign sees the debate as one of “many” opportunities for Walz to present Harris’ agenda to Americans. He’ll also use the debate to introduce himself and highlight the Democratic ticket’s vision for the future.

“This debate will serve as another clear opportunity for Governor Walz to present Vice President Harris’ winning vision of a New Way Forward to the American people who are ready to turn the page on Donald Trump,” Emily Soong, a spokesperson for the Harris-Walz campaign said in a statement to ABC News.

Vance’s team has not commented to ABC News on how he’s preparing for the debate. The Washington Post was first to report the details of Walz’s preparations.

ABC News’ Hannah Demissie contributed to this report.

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(WASHINGTON) — As many key battleground states prepare to send out mail-in ballots to voters for the November general election, former President Donald Trump has been escalating his false and unsubstantiated rhetoric on mail-in voting, most recently even floating possible court action in what could be a repeat of the onslaught of legal battles on election results that followed the 2020 presidential election.

But the former president’s messaging on mail-in voting has been anything but consistent with his allies at the Republican National Committee often cleaning up Trump’s attacks on mail-in voting and urging voters to embrace different voting methods as the party attempts to expand voter turnout for November.

Trump, during campaign rallies and interviews throughout this election cycle, often speaks about the need to “protect the vote,” repeating false and unsubstantiated claims that “cheating” or “fraud” occurs every time mail-in voting is involved.

“The elections are so screwed up. We have to get back in and we have to change it all,” Trump falsely said during a campaign rally in Johnstown, Pennsylvania, last month. “We want to go to paper ballots. We want to go to same-day voting. We want to go to citizenship papers. And we want to go to voter ID. It’s very simple. We want to get rid of mail-in voting.”

In Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, in July, he said, “the mail-in voting isn’t working. It’s corrupt. But until then, Republicans must win.”

At those very rallies, however, and at many other rallies over the last few months, his campaign has been actively promoting mail-in voting with staffers helping supporters register for mail-in ballots on site. Additionally, large screens at rallies show messages urging supporters to request mail-in ballots, update their voter registration or “pledge” to vote early in-person as a part of their voter registration effort.

He has also pushed mixed messaging on other forms of voting, sometimes urging voters to go out to vote during early-voting periods, while other times saying he wants to enforce same-day voting.

Trump himself voted early in the Florida Republican primary last month, casting his ballot at a polling location near his home in Palm Beach.

Most recently, Trump has more specifically directed his attacks on the United States Postal Service, making baseless statements that the agency is in a “bad shape” and is unable to process mail-in ballots ahead of Election Day in November.

“They are saying they’re in very bad shape, that they cannot deliver the mail well, and we’re relying on them,” Trump falsely claimed during an interview with a far-right outlet last week.

“We ought to go to court, bring a lawsuit, because they’re going to lose hundreds of thousands of ballots, maybe purposely, or maybe just through incompetence,” he continued.

On Thursday, Postmaster General Louis DeJoy dismissed claims from the man who appointed him to the job: “My response is like my response to everyone who says that we’re not prepared for the election — it’s that they’re wrong.

“We recognize that election officials are under an extreme amount of pressure, and will remain so for at least the next two months,” DeJoy said. “We also recognize that the American public will become increasingly alarmed if there is ongoing dialogue that continues to question the reliability of the Postal Service for the upcoming elections.”

“Let me be clear,” DeJoy continued. “The Postal Service is ready to deliver the nation’s mail-in ballots.”

DeJoy, who reiterated that the agency had been delivering ballots since 1864, said the Postal Service delivered 99.89% of ballots from voters to election officials in the 2020 election, which he called a “highly sensitive, sensationalized environment.”

At times, Trump himself has urged his supporters to go out and vote regardless of the voting method, including earlier this month, ahead of what was originally supposed to be the start of North Carolina’s mail-in voting.

“This will be the most important election in the history of our country. So whether it’s mail-in ballots, early voting, voting on the day, you got to get out and vote,” Trump told his followers in a social media video earlier this month, stressing the importance of this election.

Days later, Trump on his social media platform made a baseless claim that “20% of the Mail-In Ballots in Pennsylvania are fraudulent.” Without evidence, he also accused Democrats of cheating and called on the attorney general and the FBI to launch an investigation.

Lara Trump, the RNC co-chair and Trump’s daughter-in-law, the next day attempted to clean up his comments on CNN, saying he was referring to the 2020 election — while still not providing evidence of such fraud in 2020.

She then stressed that for this election, the party is focused on making sure voters can participate in any way they can, whether it’s by mail, early voting or in-person voting on Election Day.

“What I can tell you is we worked very hard on the ground at the RNC to make sure every voter in this country feels like when you cast a ballot, whether it’s via mail, whether it’s early voting in-person, or whether it’s on Election Day in an election office, around the country, your vote matters, and your vote counts,” Lara Trump said.

“And Donald Trump very much wants every Republican voter to vote however they feel most comfortable,” she continued.

But Republicans aren’t giving a carte-blanche blessing of the process, already launching a series of legal actions in key battleground states.

On Sept. 5, the RNC filed a lawsuit against North Carolina’s Board of Elections over a state law that governs mail-in ballot curing, claiming the state election board’s rules are “inconsistent with state law and diminishes protections for absentee ballots.”

“We have filed suit to uphold election integrity and ballot safeguards. State law lays out clear requirements, and the NCSBE must follow them — we will continue to fight for election integrity in the Old North State,” RNC Chairman Michael Whatley wrote in a statement.

After a delay over Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s legal battle to remove his name from the ballot, absentee ballots are finally set to go out in North Carolina next week.

The RNC this week also launched a petition to the state Supreme Court against Pennsylvania’s Secretary of State Al Schmidt, saying the state’s instructions for voters to cast a provisional ballot if they do not follow the instructions for completing and returning mail ballots is illegal.

Under the current Pennsylvania law, some counties have created procedures to notify voters if there’s any issue with their mail-in ballot to provide them the opportunity to fix that ballot or to cast a provisional ballot in person on Election Day.

“Secretary Schmidt’s policy ignores the law and has caused great confusion to Pennsylvania voters,” Whatley wrote in a statement. “This clearly undermines election integrity, diminishes fairness for voters, and threatens to erode public confidence in our elections. We have filed suit to force election officials to follow the law in the Keystone State.”

The RNC also recently sued the city of Racine, Wisconsin, claiming a lack of Republican election inspectors hired by the city, signaling a general election full of legal battles, as Trump and his allies continue to stress the importance of “protecting the vote.”

“As the president has said, it is great to vote early, it’s great to vote by mail, absentee, and it’s great to vote on Election Day,” Whatley said in June when asked about Trump’s disparaging comments on mail-in voting. “The key is you got to make a plan.”

“We are spending a very significant amount of our time protecting the vote,” Whatley said. “We are recruiting hundreds of thousands of volunteers that we’re going to recruit and train and make sure that we deploy to serve as observers, poll workers and full judges all across the country.”

“And we want people to have a comfort level knowing that their vote is going to be preserved and it’s going to be. We protect the sanctity of the vote,” he continued. “So when people have comfort that we’re going to have election integrity, they’ll feel more comfortable voting.”

Asked for a comment, Trump’s campaign pushed early voting.

“This election cycle, President Trump, the RNC, and our campaign have been consistent and clear: vote early,” Trump campaign spokesperson Karoline Leavitt said.

ABC News’ Lucien Bruggeman and Brittany Shepherd contributed to this report.

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(NEW YORK) — Ohio Republican Gov. Mike DeWine delivered his strongest condemnation yet of former President Donald Trump and his running mate, Ohio Sen. JD Vance, for their continued false claims regarding Haitian migrants in Springfield.

“As a supporter of former President Donald Trump and Senator JD Vance, I am saddened by how they and others continue to repeat claims that lack evidence and disparage the legal migrants living in Springfield. This rhetoric hurts the city and its people, and it hurts those who have spent their lives there,” DeWine wrote in an op-ed in the New York Times published Friday morning.

DeWine said Trump and Vance’s rhetoric was a distraction, diminishing immigration policy conversations that “dilute and cloud what should be a winning argument about the border.”

DeWine has previously shot down the false claims from Trump and Vance that the Haitian migrants were eating neighborhood pets.

On ABC’s “This Week,” DeWine said the stories were baseless and “a piece of garbage.”

“This idea that we have hate groups coming in, this discussion just has to stop. We need to focus on moving forward and not dogs and cats being eaten. It’s just ridiculous,” he said on the program.

Earlier this week, DeWine revealed the city of Springfield has received at least 33 separate bomb threats in the last few days.

Asked for comment on the op-ed, the Trump campaign referred ABC News to a statement from vice presidential nominee JD Vance’s spokesperson.

“Senator Vance is glad that Governor DeWine supports the Trump-Vance ticket for president,” said Vance spokesperson Will Martin. “They’re not always going to agree on every issue. When Kamala Harris abuses our immigration system to bring thousands of illegal immigrants into this country, small Ohio towns like Springfield bear the brunt of the burden. President Trump and Senator Vance will secure our border and put a stop to this chaos.”

Vance chose to continue to share the claim about pets after an aide was told by a city official that it was categorically untrue.

The aide to Vance was informed by a top Springfield official earlier this month that claims about Haitian migrants eating cats and dogs were false, but the vice presidential nominee went ahead with spreading the rumor anyway the day before the presidential debate in which Trump repeated the claim, according to a report from the Wall Street Journal and confirmed by ABC News.

City manager Bryan Heck, in a Sept. 9 phone call, told a Vance staffer the “claims were baseless” when asked if they were true. A city spokesperson confirmed to ABC News the accuracy of the Wall Street Journal’s reporting about the call.

Even still, Ohio is not quite a swing state — Trump beat Biden by 8 points in 2020 and Clinton by 9 points in 2016. It’s ultimately unclear if his and Vance’s continued push of this narrative moves the needle electorally.

ABC News’ Soorin Kim, Hannah Demissie, Kelsey Walsh, Lalee Ibssa, Armando Garcia, and Jeremy Edwards contributed to this report.

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(WASHINGTON) — The House unanimously on Friday approved a bill that would require the Secret Service to apply equal standards of protection to major presidential candidates and sitting presidents, a move that comes in the wake of two assassination attempts on former President Trump.

The final tally was 405-0 in favor of the bill. Only two-thirds majority was required for the measure to pass.

The bill was first introduced following the first assassination attempt in July by Reps. Mike Lawler, R-N.Y., and Ritchie Torres, D-N.Y.

It now heads to the Senate where its fate is uncertain. The Senate would likely not be able to take it up until after the 2024 election.

The House also officially expanded the jurisdiction of the Task Force investigating the Butler, PA assassination attempt against former President Trump to also include the second assassination attempt at Trump’s golf course in Florida.

Speaker Johnson said earlier this week the House would take this step and it was just approved by unanimous consent.

On Wednesday, the Secret Service told the House task force investigating the assassination attempts against Trump that the former president has an increased level of security.

“President Biden ordered the Secret Service to provide the same level of security to both Vice President Harris and to former President Trump, that would be a presidential level security commensurate with what the president would receive, and that that security is being provided, that’s our understanding,” Ranking Member Jason Crow, D-CO, said following a USSS virtual briefing.

The USSS insists that Donald Trump is now receiving protection at what one official calls “the highest levels the Secret Service provides.”

In addition to counter assault, counter surveillance, counter sniper, protective intelligence and drone teams for Trump, an agency official says the security plan at Mar-a-Lago now includes emergency tactical response functions and a protective platoon from Palm Beach County.

The protective package around a candidate – even one who’s now repeatedly come under physical threat – could never be the same as that of a sitting president or vice president, the official said.

Acting Director of the Secret Service said Monday that Congress’ commitment to providing the resources the agency needs has been “fantastic.”

He also praised DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas “ whose support in making sure that we’re getting what we need has been phenomenal.”

Rowe said that right now they need to hire more people because they are currently “redlining” agents.

House Majority Leader Steve Scalise touted the bill during the GOP weekly leadership press conference earlier this week.

“Every year since 2017, Congress has added more money to the Secret Service’s budget than they even requested in their budget,” Scalise said Wednesday. “And so, it is not an issue of money. What they are doing with the money we’ve had a lot of serious questions about before the first assassination attempt.”

ABC News’ Luke Barr and Steven Portnoy contributed to this report.

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(ATLANTA) — Vice President Kamala Harris plans on Friday to give her first abortion speech in Atlanta, where she will address the deaths of two Georgia women who, according to a senior campaign official, highlight the “dangerous consequences” of what Harris calls “Trump Abortion Bans.”

Reproductive rights have been one of the driving issues of the Harris’ campaign. Her team launched a “reproductive freedom” bus tour in early September with their first stop in Palm Beach County, former President Donald Trump’s backyard.

According to that same senior official, Harris plans to warn Georgians to not believe what the campaign describes as Trump’s flip-flopping record regarding abortion — noting that, if given the chance, he would ban abortion nationwide.

Trump during this month’s debate noted that he had returned the regulation of abortion care to state governments, saying it should be up to the states to decide. He would not commit during the debate to vetoing a potential federal abortion ban if it came to his desk as president. Instead, he said that situation would not arise.

Harris on Friday plans to speak about two women who died in 2022. Amber Thurman and Candi Miller’s deaths were a direct result of Georgia’s six-week ban, according to reporting by ProPublica. The Georgia ban went into effect after the U.S. Supreme Court struck down Roe v. Wade.

Thurman died two weeks after the Georgia ban was passed in 2022, after waiting 20 hours in a suburban Atlanta hospital for an incomplete abortion, according to the report. Miller died after declining to seek medical care for complications from abortion medication, the report said.

Thurman’s family appeared on Oprah Winfrey’s “Unite for America” live-streamed event that featured Harris on Thursday. In one of the more emotional moments of the program, her mother, Shanette Williams, tearfully proclaimed that she would not let her daughter become a “statistic.”

“Initially, I did not want the public to know my pain,” Williams recounted through tears. “I wanted to go through in silence. But I realized that it was selfish. I want y’all to know that Amber was not a statistic. She was loved by a family, a strong family, and we would have done whatever to get my baby, our baby, the help that she needed.”

Georgia is a key battleground state that Biden narrowly won in 2020, beating former Trump by about 12,000 votes. Recognizing that she could not only rely on voters in the metro-Atlanta area to keep the state blue, Harris visited rural counties in southeastern Georgia during a two-day swing that culminated in a rally in Savannah.

Currently, Harris is neck-and-neck with Trump in the polls in the state, according to 538’s average. Trump leads by a one-point margin in Georgia, with 48% compared to Harris’ 47%.

The vice president is scheduled to head to Madison, Wisconsin, for a rally later on Friday evening.

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(WASHINGTON) — Postmaster General Louis DeJoy on Thursday said former President Donald Trump and others are “wrong” to question the Postal Service’s ability to deliver ballots ahead of the presidential election.

Asked by a reporter, at a virtual preview of the 2024 election, to respond specifically to Trump’s claim that the Postal Service might deliberately misplace mail-in ballots, DeJoy responded tersely: “My response is like my response to everyone who says that we’re not prepared for the election — it’s that they’re wrong,” he said. “I don’t know that I need to comment any more than that. They’re wrong.”

At the top of his prepared remarks, DeJoy pushed back on those engaging in rhetoric that undermines the public confidence in the Postal Service, which, DeJoy reminded reporters, had been delivering ballots since 1864.

“We recognize that election officials are under an extreme amount of pressure, and will remain so for at least the next two months,” he said. “We also recognize that the American public will become increasingly alarmed if there is ongoing dialogue that continues to question the reliability of the Postal Service for the upcoming elections.”

“Let me be clear,” DeJoy continued. “The Postal Service is ready to deliver the nation’s mail in ballots.”

DeJoy said the Postal Service delivered 99.89% of ballots from voters to election officials in the 2020 election, which he called a “highly sensitive, sensationalized environment.”

In an interview with right-wing outlet Real America’s Voice from Las Vegas last week, former President Donald Trump escalated false and baseless claims about mail-in voting, even suggesting a possible lawsuit.

“I read the post office is saying how bad it is. The post office is critiquing themselves, saying we’re really in bad shape. We can’t deliver the mail. And they’re not even talking about mail in ballots, right? We’re going to dump millions and millions of dollars,” Trump said, repeating false claims that the last election was “rigged” and that the U.S. voting system is “bad.”

ABC News’ Soorin Kim contributed to this report.

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(NEW YORK) — Second gentleman Doug Emhoff has slammed Donald Trump over antisemitic comments made by the former president.

In a new interview with GMA anchor Michael Strahan, the second gentleman, who is Jewish, accused Trump of having a “record” of saying “vile, antisemitic things.”

Strahan asked Emhoff what he thought of Trump’s July interview with WABC in which he claimed Vice President Kamala Harris, Emhoff’s wife and Democratic candidate for president, “doesn’t like Jewish people.”

“It’s typical Donald Trump gaslighting,” Emhoff told Strahan. He “is a guy who has had a record of saying incredibly vile, antisemitic things. So, for him to say that — I just almost laugh at — at how– the chutzpah, as we would say.”

Emhoff has repeatedly attacked Trump over his rhetoric towards Jewish Americans, calling him an antisemite in May after Trump claimed Jewish people who voted for President Joe Biden needed to “have to have their head examined.”

On Wednesday, Emhoff headlined two separate fundraisers for the Harris-Walz campaign, where he defended his wife against comments made by Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders, who said at a Trump town hall on Tuesday in Michigan that Harris “doesn’t have anything to keep her humble” because she does not have biological children.

“We know that all parents, no matter how you become one, make the same sacrifices and revel in the same joys of raising children as any parent anywhere,” Emhoff said, adding, “Women in this country will never humble themselves before Donald Trump.”

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(NEW YORK) — Republicans in North Carolina and nationally are assessing the potential fallout for former President Donald Trump from a bombshell report alleging that Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson, the party’s gubernatorial nominee, posted disturbing and inflammatory statements on a forum of a pornographic website.

CNN reported Thursday that Robinson, behind an anonymous username he allegedly used elsewhere, made the comments more than a decade ago, including supporting slavery, calling himself a “black NAZI” and recalling memories of him “peeping” on women in the shower as a 14-year-old.

ABC News has not independently verified the comments were made by Robinson, and he insisted in a video posted to X prior to the story’s publication that “those are not the words of Mark Robinson.”

But Robinson, a Donald Trump ally, already has a history of incendiary remarks about Jews, gay people and others, and elections in North Carolina, one of the nation’s marquee swing states, rest on a knife’s edge, raising questions of how much the latest news will impact his race and other Republicans on the ballot with him — including the former president.

“I think this only heightens the level of toxicity that the Robinson campaign has, and the real question becomes, what’s the radioactive fallout at the top of the ticket along with down the ballot for Republicans here in North Carolina” asked Michael Bitzer, the Politics Department chair at Catawba College.

“This cannot be something that the voters aren’t going to recognize and probably play more into softening the Republican support. Is it isolated only to Robinson’s campaign, or does it start to impact Trump? Does it impact other statewide executive Republicans as well? We’ll just have to wait and see, but this feels like a pretty significant event in North Carolina politics.”

Robinson, who casts himself as a conservative family man and is running for North Carolina’s open governorship against Democratic state Attorney General Josh Stein, is already behind in the polls.

While he holds statewide office and has broad name recognition, Robinson boasts a highly controversial record, including calling the Holocaust “hogwash” and homosexuality “filth,” and he drew claims of hypocrisy when he admitted this year that he had paid for his wife to get an abortion, seemingly in contrast with his stated opposition to the procedure, which he’d previously likened to “murder” and “genocide.”

North Carolina’s gubernatorial race is still considered competitive given the state’s tight partisan divide, but Republicans in the state told ABC News they had already viewed him as trailing, and that Thursday’s report won’t help.

“He’s already got a lengthy history of publishing comments like that on the internet. These are perhaps a little more graphic. In terms of does this by itself serve as a guillotine, I don’t know. But it feels like the cumulative weight is starting to add up now,” said one North Carolina GOP strategist. “It flies in the face of everything he presents of himself publicly. So, cumulatively plus the hypocrisy of this, it’s obviously hurtful to him.”

Republicans were more divided on what it means beyond Robinson’s own candidacy.

North Carolina is a must-win state for Trump, and losing it would impose significant pressure on him to perform in other swing states.

Trump is already running ahead of Robinson — while polls show Robinson trailing, they also show a neck-and-neck race in the state between the former president and Vice President Kamala Harris. The main question now is whether the news depresses Republican turnout in a state where even a small nudge in turnout one way or the other can make decide the victor.

“[Robinson] was already toast. The question is if it hurts Trump, something the campaign is very worried about,” said Doug Heye, a veteran GOP strategist with experience working in North Carolina. “It doesn’t directly cost him voters, but his endorsed pick continues to be a big distraction and has no money to drive out the vote.”

“He’s a baby blue anchor around Trump’s chances in the Tar Heel State,” added Trump donor Dan Eberhart. “This is not good news for Trump’s campaign at all.”

Democrats are already seizing on the news to try to connect Robinson to Trump, who has repeatedly praised him, even calling him at one point “Martin Luther King on steroids.”

Kamala HQ, an X page that serves as one of the Harris campaign’s rapid response tools, posted a slate of videos featuring Trump speaking positively about Robinson.

“His campaign was toast before this story, so the real impact is on all of the Republicans who have endorsed and campaigned alongside him,” said Bruce Thompson, a North Carolina Democratic fundraiser.

However, Trump has been able to navigate his own headwinds, including felony convictions in New York, questioning Harris’ race and more to remain the leader of his party and a viable presidential candidate, leading some Republicans to doubt that Robinson’s struggles will impact the presidential campaign.

“Doubt it impacts at all down-ballot,” said Dave Carney, a GOP strategist who chairs a pro-Trump super PAC.

“I don’t think it helps, but it won’t hurt,” added Sean Spicer, Trump’s first White House press secretary.

Trump campaign spokesperson Karoline Leavitt sounded a confident note, saying in a statement that the former president’s team would “not take our eye off the ball.”

“President Trump’s campaign is focused on winning the White House and saving this country. North Carolina is a vital part of that plan. We are confident that as voters compare the Trump record of a strong economy, low inflation, a secure border, and safe streets, with the failures of Biden-Harris, then President Trump will win the Tarheel State once again,” she said.”

Still, sources familiar with the matter said the Trump campaign was bracing for a story to come out about Robinson and is planning on putting more distance between the former president and the embattled nominee Robinson — but initially did not have plans to call on him to drop out.

“He seems to not be impacted by what’s going on down-ballot underneath him,” the North Carolina Republican strategist said of Trump. “There’s no way it helps him. But does it hurt him? I don’t know, I think that’s an open question.”

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