Category: Politics

(WASHINGTON) — In remarks on Thursday at the Economic Club of Washington, D.C., President Joe Biden will celebrate the progress of the American economy, but stop short of declaring victory, senior advisors told ABC News on a call previewing the remarks.

Biden said in a post on X that he will speak about what the first key rate cut since 2020 and falling inflation “means for Americans.”

“President Biden is going to speak to a new milestone, inflation and interest rates are falling at the same time, employment, wages and GDP are rising,” White House Chief of Staff Jeff Zients told reporters. “I want to be really clear, this is not meant to be a declaration of victory. It’s meant to be a declaration of progress, significant progress. The President believes it’s important to mark this moment for the country by laying out how far we’ve come, while also outlining the work we still have to do.”

Zients added that Biden will lay out the three big pillars of his economic playbook: the historic response to the COVID-19 crisis, the administration’s work to address global inflation and efforts to build an economy that invests in all Americans.

But Zients added that Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris are still looking ahead to the work that is not finished, pointing to the cost of childcare and housing as two of the biggest areas.

“The president knows this is no time for a victory lap, which is why he will talk about the work ahead every single day, the president and vice president, both, on what more can be done to make the economy stronger, create more jobs and, importantly, lower costs, the President will lay out how we build on the progress that we’ve made across these three and a half years, and what’s at stake,” Zients said.

National Economic Adviser Lael Brainard also talked about the Federal Reserve’s Wednesday rate cut announcement and how recent data is a good sign, but also noted that costs are still high for American families.

“The president will note this hard won progress, but emphasize that we must continue to work together to tackle long standing affordability challenges for middle class families,” Brainard said. “America needs more housing. That’s why it’s critical to move forward on ambitious plans to bid to bring housing costs down by building millions of new affordable homes and providing incentives for states and localities to remove outdated obstacles to building it’s essential we continue to enable more workers to participate in the labor force and to make it easier and more affordable to raise a family.”

One White House official on the call was asked about whether the administration was concerned about rising unemployment in response to Wednesday’s rate cut, but the official brushed off the concern, saying that the Fed’s data shows “the labor market remaining solid,” and adding that unemployment has “remained the lowest on average of any administration in 50 years.”

A reporter also asked whether rising tensions in the Middle East could be a setback in the fight against rising inflation. The different White House official said that it is one of the “geopolitical risks that we consistently monitor.”

“But our assessment, you know, right now is that the economy is in a healthy place, and that the kind of range of risks, while we continue to monitor them are do not pose a significant risk to the to the outlook,” the White House official added.

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(WASHINGTON) — The FBI and other U.S. intelligence agencies released findings that Iranian hackers have continued efforts to influence the 2024 presidential election, with “stolen” information from former President Donald Trump’s campaign being sent to individuals associated with President Joe Biden’s campaign before he left the race.

“Iranian malicious cyber actors in late June and early July sent unsolicited emails to individuals then associated with President Biden’s campaign that contained an excerpt taken from stolen, non-public material from former President Trump’s campaign as text in the emails,” U.S. intelligence agencies said in a statement Wednesday.

“There is currently no information indicating those recipients replied,” investigators said.

Additionally, the FBI found that the Iranian government has “continued their efforts” to send “stolen” campaign materials to media organizations.

In June, Iran launched a phishing campaign against the then Biden campaign and Trump campaign — with the Trump campaign operation getting internal campaign materials.

In mid-August, U.S. intelligence agencies — the FBI, CISA and ODNI — warned of this effort, and as of now, the effort still exists, according to the agencies.

“This malicious cyber activity is the latest example of Iran’s multi-pronged approach, as noted in the joint August statement, to stoke discord and undermine confidence in our electoral process,” investigators said.

“As the lead for threat response, the FBI has been tracking this activity, has been in contact with the victims, and will continue to investigate and gather information in order to pursue and disrupt the threat actors responsible. Foreign actors are increasing their election influence activities as we approach November,” investigators said.

On Wednesday, Trump’s campaign released a statement, calling for more information from the Biden-Harris administration about the intelligence agencies’ findings.

“Kamala and Biden must come clean on whether they used the hacked material given to them by the Iranians to hurt President Trump. What did they know and when did they know it?” Karoline Leavitt, Trump Campaign National Press Secretary, said in a statement.

Harris-Walz campaign spokesperson Morgan Finkelstein said in a statement, “We have cooperated with the appropriate law enforcement authorities since we were made aware that individuals associated with the then-Biden campaign were among the intended victims of this foreign influence operation.”

“We’re not aware of any material being sent directly to the campaign; a few individuals were targeted on their personal emails with what looked like a spam or phishing attempt,” Finkelstein added. “We condemn in the strongest terms any effort by foreign actors to interfere in U.S. elections including this unwelcome and unacceptable malicious activity.”

Intelligence agencies have assessed Russia, China and Iran as the biggest peddlers of influence operations in 2024.

In a statement Wednesday, Iran’s Mission to the United Nations called the intelligence agencies’ findings “fundamentally unfounded, and wholly inadmissible.”

“The Islamic Republic of Iran does not engage in the internal uproars or electoral controversies of the United States,” the statement said.

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(NEW YORK) — Former President Donald Trump told a Long Island, New York, rally crowd on Wednesday night that he is going to Springfield, Ohio, the town he said on the debate stage two weeks ago, is where “people are resorting to eating dogs, cats and other household pets.”

“I’m going to Springfield, and I’m going to Aurora,” he told the rally attendees, adding that he plans to go within the next two weeks.

Trump did not specify the ethnicity of the migrants he claimed were eating pets in Springfield when he made those remarks, but on X, his running mate JD Vance continuously raised the issue of Haitian undocumented immigrants draining social services.

“Kamala Harris dropped 20,000 Haitian migrants into a small Ohio town, and chaos has ensued,” Vance previously said on X.

Trump’s reason for his Long Island rally on Wednesday night was to appeal to voters in New York, a blue state. Wednesday night’s event was Trump’s second rally in the state, on top of the multiple campaign stops he made in between his court appearances for his New York civil fraud trial.

As he addressed the crowd, Trump said a Harris win in November would turn New York “into a third-world country, if it isn’t already.”

Speaking at the Nassau Coliseum — a venue that holds 16,000 spectators — Trump thanked law enforcement that thwarted an apparent assassination attempt on him on Sunday and praised the woman who captured a picture of the suspect’s vehicle, saying he’d like to meet her.

Then he turned to his Democratic opponent, “the radical left Democrat politicians and the fake news media.”

“The message is it’s time to stop the lies, stop the hoaxes, stop the smears, stop the lawfare or the fake lawsuits against me, and stop claiming your opponents will turn America into a dictatorship,” Trump said. “Give me a break. Because the fact is that I’m not a threat to democracy. They are.”

He also pledged to restore SALT (state and local deductions), which his 2017 tax cut capped at $10,000.

Outside the Coliseum ahead of Trump’s event, vendors lined up selling various Trump merchandise. The celebration, which included music blaring through speakers, featured golden cars with Trump’s face on the front and bedazzled Trump jackets. Trump’s campaign claimed that 60,000 tickets were requested, which would make it one of Trump’s largest rallies during this campaign cycle.

The line for attendees stretched around the building hours before doors opened.

Trump’s rally was on the same day he was initially scheduled to be sentenced in his New York civil fraud trial. The judge in the case delayed his sentencing from Sept. 18 until Nov. 26 — after the presidential election.

Ahead of his Wednesday rally, Trump worked to court New Yorkers by promising to reverse a tax policy he signed into law in 2017. In a post on his social media platform, Trump claimed he would “get SALT back,” suggesting eliminating the cap on state and local tax deductions. In his 2017 tax law, Trump capped deductions at $10,000.

A majority of New York’s congressional Republican delegation has been pushing to reverse the SALT deduction cap on Capitol Hill, spearheading the ongoing debate around the issue.

However, while many local Republicans have celebrated Trump’s posture change, it also comes as he has recently rolled out a series of tax breaks, raising concerns about significant increases to the deficit.

“WHAT THE HELL DO YOU HAVE TO LOSE? VOTE FOR TRUMP! I will turn it around, get SALT back, lower your Taxes, and so much more,” the former president posted on his social media network ahead of his Wednesday rally.

In May, Trump pledged to turn New York red during a campaign rally in deep-blue South Bronx, New York, attempting to court the Hispanic and Black voters that make up a majority of the area’s population.

“We have levels of support that nobody’s seen before … Don’t assume it doesn’t matter just because you live in a blue city. You live in a blue city, but it’s going red very, very quickly,” Trump said at the time.

The Trump campaign has worked to court New Yorkers this campaign cycle, attempting to at least pull enthusiasm away from Democrats and help make down-ballot races more competitive.

This is also his first large-scale campaign rally after an apparent assassination attempt on Trump while he was golfing in West Palm Beach on Sunday. The day prior, Trump held a town hall where nearly 4,000 Michigan voters attended; the Nassau rally is expected to be four times the size.

Trump had also made multiple smaller campaign stops in New York City before and after his mandated court appearance throughout his seven-week hush money payment criminal trial earlier this year to highlight several campaign messaging at each stop.

In mid-April, he visited a small bodega in Harlem that was the scene of a fatal stabbing two years earlier to highlight what he claimed was the failure of Democratic prosecutors in New York to ensure public safety as they prosecute him. Later that month, he visited a construction site in midtown Manhattan to boast support from union workers and working-class voters.

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(WASHINGTON) — The House on Wednesday voted down Speaker Mike Johnson’s government funding plan with 14 Republicans voting against it and two others voting present.

The measure failed by a 202-222-2 margin. Three Democrats voted for the bill.

Johnson said after the vote that he was “disappointed that it didn’t pass,” but suggested there would be a “solution” to avoid a shutdown.

“We ran the play. It was the best play; it was the right one. So now we go back to the playbook. We’ll draw up another play, and we’ll come up with a solution,” John said. “I’m already talking to colleagues about their many ideas. We have time to fix the situation, and we’ll get right to it.”

“Stay posted,” he concluded his remarks without taking questions.

Johnson’s measure would have funded the government for six months but also included the SAVE Act, a bill backed by GOP leadership and former President Donald Trump that would require individuals to provide proof of U.S. citizenship to vote. Democrats said the legislation is a non-starter, noting it is already illegal for non-citizens to cast a ballot in federal elections.

Johnson was set to try to pass the funding plan last week but pulled it from the floor because he didn’t have the votes.

Some Republicans in his caucus opposed the measure because they say it would contribute to the deficit while defense hawks say they won’t vote for it because the six-month extension would effect the Department of Defense’s readiness.

Still, he was dug in on the measure and wasn’t talking about what the next steps would be. Congress needs to pass a funding measure before Oct. 1 to avoid a shutdown.

Trump openly called for Republicans to let the government close if they don’t pass the SAVE Act. He wrote on his social media platform that if they “don’t get absolute assurances on Election Security, THEY SHOULD, IN NO WAY, SHAPE, OR FORM, GO FORWARD WITH A CONTINUING RESOLUTION ON THE BUDGET.”

Asked about Trump’s comments that Republicans should let funding lapse in such a scenario, Johnson responded “No, look, President Trump and I have talked a lot about this. We talked a lot about it with our colleagues who are building consensus on the plan. We all believe that election security is of preeminent importance right now.”

Trump again, just before the vote on Wednesday, called for a government shutdown if “every ounce” of the SAVE Act isn’t attached to a funding measure.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, the chamber’s top Republican, said it would be “politically beyond stupid” to allow a shutdown to take place with just seven weeks until Election Day.

“I think we first have to wait and see what the House sends us. My only observation about this whole discussion is the one thing you cannot have is a government shutdown,” McConnell said. “It’d be politically beyond stupid for us to do that right before the election, because certainly we’d get the blame.”

Democrats urged Johnson to drop his funding plan and bring a clean short-term measure to the floor to keep the government open.

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries told reporters last week that the only path forward is a bipartisan agreement that does not include “extreme” measures, such as the SAVE Act.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer on Monday also urged the House to pass a clean bill.

“In order to avoid a shutdown, the worst thing our colleagues in the House can do right now is waste time on proposals that don’t have broad bipartisan support,” Schumer said.

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(WASHINGTON) — An aide to Ohio Sen. JD Vance was informed by a top Springfield, Ohio, 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, according to a new 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.

Still, Vance did not delete a post on X he wrote that same morning asserting “reports now show that people have had their pets abducted and eaten by people who shouldn’t be in this country.” One day later, former President Donald Trump amplified the claim on the ABC News presidential debate stage with millions of viewers tuned in.

The Vance campaign, in an effort to defend the vice presidential pick, provided the Wall Street Journal on Tuesday with a police report to try to substantiate his claims. But the woman in the report, Anna Kilgore, told the Journal she was mistaken.

ABC News spoke with Kilgore, who lives near downtown Springfield, on Wednesday afternoon. Kilgore said her cat Missy Sassy went missing and they believed their Haitian neighbors were to blame for the disappearance. After filing the police report, Kilgore’s cat returned home safely several days later.

She told ABC News that she apologized to her Haitian neighbors who have lived next door for the past year, and they were very gracious and there seemed to be no hard feelings.

ABC has requested the police report but has not independently obtained it.

When asked what led her to believe her neighbors were behind the cat’s disappearance, Kilgore said, “because of rumors I heard.” When pressed on where she heard those rumors she continued with, “on Facebook and TikTok.”

Kilgore is a Trump-Vance supporter with signs and flags outside of her home. She was also wearing a “Trump 2024” t-shirt while speaking to ABC News.

When asked what she would say to Vance and his campaign, she simply said, “I wish I could take it all back.”

ABC News also asked her if this situation would have any impact on her vote in November, to which she simply said, “No.”

ABC News has reached out to Vance’s campaign for a statement on the Wall Street Journal report but has not yet received a response.

Vance appeared on several talk shows on Sunday where he was pressed about the Springfield controversy, which has led to the community experiencing threats.

He largely defended bringing national attention to the issue of immigration in Springfield. The Ohio town did experience an influx of 12,000 to 15,000 Haitian immigrants who are legally authorized to live and work there, and as a result some city resources have been strained. Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine recently announced measures to expand primary care access, allocate funds for translation services and more.

“If I have to create stories so that the American media actually pays attention to the suffering of the American people, then that’s what I’m going to do because you guys are completely letting Kamala Harris coast,” Vance said on CNN.

CNN anchor Dana Bash followed up with Vance about what he said about having to “create stories,” and Vance responded: “It comes from firsthand accounts from my constituents. I say that we’re creating a story, meaning we’re creating the American media focusing on it.”

“I didn’t create 20,000 illegal migrants coming into Springfield thanks to Kamala Harris’s policies. Her policies did that,” Vance added.

Harris on Tuesday said it was a “crying shame” what was happening to the Springfield community and criticized Trump and Vance for engaging in “that hateful rhetoric.”

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(WASHINGTON) — The International Brotherhood of Teamsters, one of the most prominent and influential unions in the country, said Wednesday it will not endorse any presidential candidate this year.

The 1.3-million-member union has historically thrown its weight around in presidential cycles and endorsed Democratic presidential candidates in recent cycles, with 1988 being the last time it supported a Republican, then-Vice President George H. W. Bush. However, hours before the union was set to announce its highly coveted endorsement on Wednesday, the Teamsters released polling of union members showing a nearly two-to-one preference for former President Donald Trump over Vice President Kamala Harris.

“The Teamsters thank all candidates for meeting with members face-to-face during our unprecedented roundtables. Unfortunately, neither major candidate was able to make serious commitments to our union to ensure the interests of working people are always put before Big Business,” Teamsters President Sean O’Brien, who took on the role in 2022, said in a statement.

“Democrats, Republicans, and Independents proudly call our union home, and we have a duty to represent and respect every one of them. We strongly encourage all our members to vote in the upcoming election, and to remain engaged in the political process,” he added. “But this year, no candidate for President has earned the endorsement of the Teamsters’ International Union.”

Blue-collar union workers have been a mainstay of Democratic support for several cycles, but Trump has made inroads with voters without a college degree, a key demographic that helped eat away at Democrats’ union advantage.

Most of the country’s largest unions, including the AFL-CIO and United Auto Workers union, endorsed President Joe Biden before he dropped out, and that support was reiterated for Harris after she took over as Democrats’ nominee. The Teamsters, however, stayed out of the fray.

The union sought to hold meetings with Biden and Trump, and it met with Harris earlier this week before making any decision.

O’Brien ruffled Democrats’ feathers when he addressed the Republican National Convention earlier this summer — a move that was fiercely criticized by some of his counterparts — and praised Trump, though he accused the former president of backing “economic terrorism” when he expressed support for firing striking workers, which is illegal under federal law.

“I want to be clear. At the end of the day, the Teamsters are not interested if you have a ‘D,’ ‘R,’ or an ‘I’ next to your name,” O’Brien said on the stage in Milwaukee. “We want to know one thing: ‘What are you doing to help American workers?’ As a negotiator, I know that no window or door should ever be permanently shut.”

The union’s decision Wednesday marks a blow for both candidates.

Trump had wooed the union, inviting O’Brien to Mar-a-Lago and culminating in O’Brien’s primetime RNC speech.

Harris, meanwhile, has sought to shore up support among non-college educated voters, particularly in the industrial Midwest, a key region in this year’s election where the Teamsters hold sway. The Biden administration has also repeatedly touted its pro-union bona fides, and Biden himself became the first sitting president in history to walk a picket line. However, unions were peeved at the role the administration played in averting a rail strike in late 2022.

After the union’s announcement, the Harris campaign said she has “stood strong with organized labor for her entire career.”

“As the Vice President told the Teamsters on Monday, when she is elected president, she will look out for the Teamsters rank-and-file no matter what – because they always have been and always will be the people she fights for,” Harris campaign spokesperson Lauren Hitt said in a statement.

Trump’s campaign said while the Teamsters didn’t endorse a candidate, “they want President Trump back in the White House.”

“These hardworking men and women are the backbone of America and President Trump will strongly stand up for them when he’s back in the White House,” Trump campaign press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a statement.

The internal polling the Teamsters released earlier Wednesday showed that straw polls of members supported Biden over Trump by an 8-point margin, 44-36%.

In explaining its decision, the Teamsters union cited the lack of “majority support” for Harris and “no universal support among the membership” for Trump. However, it did note that Harris had pledged to sign pro-union federal legislation and that Trump would not commit to vetoing national “right to work” legislation, which would allow workers to opt in or out of unions in unionized workplaces — laws that are enacted in several states that national groups like the Teamsters say weakens collective bargaining power.

Still, the Teamsters’ National Black Caucus and several Teamsters’ local chapters got out in front of the national organization and endorsed Harris on their own in recent weeks, including Local 623 in Philadelphia, which pointed to work done during the Biden administration, Harris’ pledge to “expand union rights” and challenge “any anti-union ‘right to work’ legislation,” and the “threat posed by Donald Trump.”

ABC News’ Fritz Farrow, Oren Oppenheim, Gabriella Abdul-Hakim and Will McDuffie contributed to this report.

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(WASHINGTON) — House Speaker Mike Johnson on Wednesday will forge ahead with a vote on his government funding plan despite it being expected to fail.

“We’ll see what happens with the bill,” Johnson told reporters. “The quarterback’s calling the play. We’re going to run the play. I’m very confident.”

Johnson’s measure would fund the government for six months but also includes the SAVE Act, a bill backed by GOP leadership and former President Donald Trump that would require individuals to provide proof of U.S. citizenship to vote. Democrats have said the legislation is a non-starter, noting it is already illegal for non-citizens to cast a ballot in federal elections.

Johnson was set to try to pass the funding plan last week but pulled it from the floor because he didn’t have the votes.

Some Republicans in his caucus oppose the measure because they say it would contribute to the deficit while defense hawks say they won’t vote for it because the six-month extension would effect the Department of Defense’s readiness.

Still, he’s dug in on the measure and is not talking about what the next steps should be if it fails. Congress needs to pass a funding measure before Oct. 1 to avoid a shutdown.

Trump has openly called for Republicans to let the government close if they don’t pass the SAVE Act. He wrote on his social media platform that if they “don’t get absolute assurances on Election Security, THEY SHOULD, IN NO WAY, SHAPE, OR FORM, GO FORWARD WITH A CONTINUING RESOLUTION ON THE BUDGET.”

Asked about Trump’s comments that Republicans should let funding lapse in such a scenario, Johnson responded “No, look, President Trump and I have talked a lot about this. We talked a lot about it with our colleagues who are building consensus on the plan. We all believe that election security is of preeminent importance right now.”

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, the chamber’s top Republican, said it would be “politically beyond stupid” to allow a shutdown to take place with just seven weeks until Election Day.

“I think we first have to wait and see what the House sends us. My only observation about this whole discussion is the one thing you cannot have is a government shutdown,” McConnell said. “It’d be politically beyond stupid for us to do that right before the election, because certainly we’d get the blame.”

Democrats have urged Johnson to drop his funding plan and bring a clean short-term measure to the floor to keep the government open.

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries told reporters last week that the only path forward is a bipartisan agreement that does not include “extreme” measures, such as the SAVE Act.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer on Monday also urged the House to pass a clean bill.

“In order to avoid a shutdown, the worst thing our colleagues in the House can do right now is waste time on proposals that don’t have broad bipartisan support,” Schumer said.

ABC News’ Allison Pecorin, Mariam Khan and Alexandra Hutzler contributed to this report.

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(NEW YORK) — Former President Donald Trump’s efforts to appeal to New York, a blue state, continue with a large-scale rally in Long Island on Wednesday — Trump’s second rally in the state on top of the multiple campaign stops he did in between his court appearances for his New York civil fraud trial.

Trump is set to speak Wednesday evening at the Nassau Coliseum — a venue that holds 16,000 spectators, but the campaign alleges 60,000 tickets were requested, which would make it one of Trump’s largest rallies this campaign cycle.

Outside the Coliseum ahead of Trump’s event, vendors lined up selling various Trump merchandise. The celebration, which included music blaring through speakers, featured golden cars with Trump’s face on the front and bedazzled Trump jackets.

The line for attendees stretched around the building hours before doors opened.

Trump’s rally is set for the same day he was initially scheduled to be sentenced in his New York civil fraud trial. The judge in the case delayed his sentencing from Sept. 18 until Nov. 26 — after the presidential election.

Ahead of his Wednesday rally, Trump has worked to court New Yorkers by promising to reverse a tax policy he signed into law in 2017. In a post on his social media platform, Trump claimed he would “get SALT back,” suggesting the elimination of the cap on state and local tax deductions. In his 2017 tax law, Trump capped deductions at $10,000.

A majority of New York’s congressional Republican delegation have been pushing to reverse the SALT deduction cap on Capitol Hill, spearheading the ongoing debate around the issue.

However, while many local Republicans have celebrated Trump’s posture change, it also comes as he has recently rolled out a series of tax breaks, raising concerns about significant increases to the deficit.

“WHAT THE HELL DO YOU HAVE TO LOSE? VOTE FOR TRUMP! I will turn it around, get SALT back, lower your Taxes, and so much more,” the former president posted on his social media network ahead of his Wednesday rally.

In May, Trump pledged to turn New York red during a campaign rally in deep-blue South Bronx, New York, attempting to court the Hispanic and Black voters that make up a majority of the area’s population.

“We have levels of support that nobody’s seen before … Don’t assume it doesn’t matter just because you live in a blue city. You live in a blue city, but it’s going red very, very quickly,” Trump said at the time.

The Trump campaign has worked to court New Yorkers this campaign cycle, attempting to at least pull enthusiasm away from Democrats and help make down-ballot races more competitive.

This is also his first large-scale campaign rally after an apparent assassination attempt on Trump while he was golfing in West Palm Beach on Sunday. The day prior, Trump held a town hall where nearly 4,000 Michigan voters attended; the Nassau rally is expected to be four times the size.

Trump had also made multiple smaller campaign stops in New York City before and after his mandated court appearance throughout his seven-week hush money payment criminal trial earlier this year to highlight several campaign messaging at each stop.

In mid-April, he visited a small bodega in Harlem that was the scene of a fatal stabbing two years earlier to highlight what he claimed was the failure of Democratic prosecutors in New York to ensure public safety as they prosecute him. Later that month, he visited a construction site in midtown Manhattan to boast support from union workers and working class voters.

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(WASHINGTON) — When former President Donald Trump was shot in the ear at a campaign rally in July, he made an initial pitch for unity. It didn’t last long.

And he’s taken a decidedly different tack after a second apparent assassination attempt Sunday at his Florida golf club.

Less than 24 hours later, Trump laid blame for the political violence on Democrats, telling Fox News Digital the rhetoric of President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris was “causing me to be shot at” while also asserting they are “destroying the country — both from the inside and out.”

Harris, he posted on social media, “has taken politics in our Country to a whole new level of Hatred, Abuse, and Distrust. Because of this Communist Left Rhetoric, the bullets are flying, and it will only get worse!”

He also claimed, without evidence, that the suspects in both cases were “radical left” despite their motives not having been publicly determined. (Investigators are currently examining Florida suspect Ryan Wesley Routh’s frustration with Trump’s position on Ukraine, sources told ABC News. In the Pennsylvania rally shooting, the suspected gunman, Thomas Mathew Crooks, was a registered Republican but had also made a small donation to a progressive group in 2021.)

Regardless, Trump’s running mate, Sen. JD Vance, doubled down on the “blame Democrats” strategy at a campaign stop in Michigan on Tuesday.

“I think that it’s time to say to the Democrats, to the media, to everybody that has been attacking this man and trying to censor this man for going on 10 years, cut it out or you’re going to get somebody killed,” Vance said.

Susan Benesch, founding director of the Dangerous Speech Project, said Trump’s statements are “impossible not to put it in the context of his relentless use of violent rhetoric.”

“So, he’s a pot calling the kettle black,” Benesch said. “At the same time, that doesn’t mean that it is false when he says his political opponents are describing him as a threat to democracy.”

Harris and Biden condemned Sunday’s incident and shared their relief that Trump was safe. Biden called Trump and they had a “nice” conversation, the former president told ABC News. Harris said she also checked in with Trump and “told him what I have said publicly, I said there is no place for political violence in our country.”

“We can and should have healthy debates and discussion and disagreements, but not resort to violence to resolve those issues,” Harris said.

Still, Trump’s campaign has shared a list of over 50 quotes from Democrats they suggested lead to the second assassination attempt. Most of them include language from Biden, Harris and other party leaders that cast Trump as a “threat to democracy.”

The statements were often made when the lawmakers were discussing Trump’s false claims about the 2020 election, what unfolded on Jan. 6, 2021, or Trump’s pledges to take political retribution if elected in November.

Republican leaders are also pointing to a 2023 comment from Democratic Rep. Dan Goldman in which he said Trump was “destructive to democracy” and should be “eliminated” — which Goldman apologized for, saying while he believed Trump should be defeated in the election he “certainly wish no harm to him and do not condone political violence.”

White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre was asked on Tuesday if President Biden would stop calling Trump a “threat to democracy” given recent developments. Jean-Pierre suggested he would not, saying he had a responsibility to “be honest with the American people” about the possible dangers posed by the former president.

Others have also noted a contrast between Democrats’ criticism of Trump and Trump’s more inflammatory — and sometimes patently false — statements on everything from election integrity to immigration to his targeting of perceived political enemies.

In one more extreme example, Trump appeared to defend the Jan. 6 Capitol rioters who were chanting “Hang Mike Pence,” telling ABC News Chief Washington Correspondent Jonathan Karl “the people were very angry.” Though Trump has adamantly denied claims from former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson that she heard Trump say “hang” repeatedly while watching the attack unfold on television, and she did not provide further evidence for the assertion.

“He has used rhetoric to attack the peaceful transition of power. He has used rhetoric to attack his opposition. No president has ever done that before. It’s not normal and it’s not democratic,” said Jennifer Mercieca, a historian of political rhetoric at Texas A&M University.

“So, when Democrats point that out, those are true facts, right?” she told ABC News.

Benesch, whose independent research team working on rhetoric that inspires violence, agreed there “is no question that the bounds of mainstream American political discourse shifted” since Trump entered politics.

“I think it is really important to recognize that he and his supporters are not the only ones who now speak in ways that normalize or even encourage violence, but he and his supporters have been doing it and are doing it much more than anybody else on the American political scene,” Benesch said.

Former Trump White House aide Alyssa Farah Griffin, who is now a co-host of “The View,” wrote on X that everyone has “a duty to take the temperature down” but that it was “simply dishonest for Trump [and] his allies to say his opponents shouldn’t use the very language he regularly uses: fascist, enemy within, vermin, traitors, you won’t have a country.”

The Trump campaign, in response to experts who say his own history of inflammatory rhetoric plays a large role in what’s become a heightened threat environment, told ABC News: “Only one candidate in this election has been shot at twice, and it’s not Kamala Harris.”

“The violence is coming from the political left and it’s the responsibility of Kamala Harris, as the Democrat Party nominee, to condemn the false inflammatory lie that President Trump is an alleged threat to democracy,” said campaign spokesperson Karoline Leavitt. “He is not, and she knows it.”

Benesch said the solution to deescalate the current atmosphere would be for leaders or influencers to convincingly condemn their own party’s language. But she expressed little confidence that would happen before the election.

“Unfortunately, nobody has a political incentive to denounce such rhetoric on their own side or in their own group, but that’s what it’s going to take,” she said. “Or such severe violence that it frightens leaders and influencers into demanding that their own supporters tone it down.”

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(FLINT, Mich.) — Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders on Tuesday took aim at Vice President Kamala Harris’ family life, saying the presidential candidate “doesn’t have anything keeping her humble.”

The governor said during a rally for former President Donald Trump that her children are a “permanent reminder of what’s important” and they “keep me humble.”

“You can walk into a room like this where people cheer when you step onto the stage and you might think for a second that you’re kind of special,” Huckabee Sanders told a crowd in Flint, Michigan. “Then you go home, and your kids remind you very quickly you’re actually not that big of a deal.”

She added, “So my kids keep me humble. Unfortunately, Kamala Harris doesn’t have anything keeping her humble.”

Whether politicians have biological children has become a partisan issue in recent weeks, following comments made by Sen. JD Vance, who is running alongside Trump. In a resurfaced interview from 2021, Vance argued that voters without children should be subject to a higher tax rate.

Vance also in 2021 took aim at Harris, saying she was among a group of “childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives and the choices that they’ve made.” Speaking to Fox News, Vance accused that group of wanting “to make the rest of the country miserable too.”

When Taylor Swift endorsed Harris earlier this month, the pop star signed her endorsement with “Taylor Swift, Childless Cat Lady.”

Harris is the stepmother of two adult children, Cole and Ella Emhoff, from the first marriage of her husband, second gentleman Doug Emhoff.

“Cole and Ella keep us inspired to make the world a better place,” Kerstin Emhoff, their mother, said on social media in response to Huckabee Sanders.

She added, “Kamala Harris has spent her entire career working for the people, ALL families. That keeps you pretty humble.”

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