Doug Emhoff blasts Gov. Sanders’ remarks about Harris not having biological children
(NEW YORK) — Second gentleman Doug Emhoff blasted remarks made by Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders, who said Vice President Kamala 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 defended his wife while speaking at a campaign event in Brooklyn, New York, Wednesday evening.
“As if keeping women humble, whether you have children or not, is something we should strive for. It is not,” the second gentleman said. “Women in this country will never humble themselves before Donald Trump.”
Emhoff referred to Sanders’ comment as “unbelievable,” and he expressed his appreciation for his wife, ex-wife Kerstin Emhoff, and their “big, beautiful, blessed family.”
Harris is the stepmom to Cole and Ella Emhoff, her husband’s children from his first marriage.
Kerstin Emhoff jumped to Harris’ defense as well, responding to a video of Sanders on X.
“Kamala Harris has spent her entire career working for the people, ALL families. That keeps you pretty humble,” she wrote Tuesday.
Sanders had been speaking at a Michigan town hall with former President Donald Trump on Tuesday when she made the comments. “So my kids keep me humble. Unfortunately, Kamala Harris doesn’t have anything keeping her humble,” she said.
During a visit Wednesday to a Bitcoin bar in Greenwich Village, New York, Trump was asked about Sanders’ remarks and whether Harris should be attacked for not having biological children.
“Well, I just don’t know what I think about it, you know,” Trump said during the event.
Ohio Sen. JD Vance previously commented on Harris and other women for not having children with his well-known “childless cat ladies” comment.
In the 2021 clip, which only recently resurfaced, Vance accused Harris and the Democrats of being “a bunch of childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives and the choices that they’ve made, and so they want to make the rest of the country miserable too.”
There has been much backlash to Vance’s remark, and some have even made mocked the comment by making it their own. Most famously, Taylor Swift signed her endorsement for Harris as a “childless cat lady.”
ABC News’ Will McDuffie, Gabriella Abdul-Hakim, Fritz Farrow, and Chris Donovan contributed to this report.
(WASHINGTON) — Attorney General Merrick Garland announced a sweeping crackdown Wednesday on dueling efforts by the Russian government to influence the upcoming 2024 election through covert networks aimed at spreading disinformation to American voters.
For months, the Biden administration has been publicly warning of Russia’s efforts to influence Americans through disinformation and propaganda to sow distrust in the election.
In a meeting Wednesday at the Justice Department, Garland and FBI Director Christopher Wray highlighted both foreign and domestic incidents of attempts to influence voters, as well as pervasive and growing threats against those who administer elections.
“The Justice Department will not tolerate attempts by an authoritarian regime to exploit our country’s free exchange of ideas in order to covertly further its own propaganda efforts, and our investigation into this matter remains ongoing,” Garland said.
The Justice Department alleged that two employees of Russia Today, or RT — a Russian state-controlled media outlet, implemented a nearly $10 million scheme “to fund and direct a Tennessee-based company to publish and disseminate content deemed favorable to the Russian government.”
To carry this out, the attorney general said the two employees — 31-year-old Kostiantyn Kalashnikov, also known as Kostya, and Elena Afanasyeva, 27 — allegedly directed the company to contract with social media influencers to amplify Russian propaganda.
“The company never disclosed to the influencers or to their millions of followers its ties to RT and the Russian government. Instead, the defendants and the company claimed that the company was sponsored by a private investor, but that private investor was a fictitious persona,” Garland said.
Russian entities also created fake websites to allegedly further influence the election, officials said.
“RT has used people living and working inside the U.S. to facilitate contracts with American media figures to create and disseminate Russian propaganda here. The content was pitched as legitimate independent news when, in fact, much of it was created in Russia by RT employees who work for the Russian government,” Wray said. “The second operation reveals even more malign activities by companies working under the direction and control of the Russian government, companies that created media websites to trick Americans into unwittingly consuming Russian propaganda.”
Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco said they will continue to investigate election threats without fear or favor.
“Russia remains a predominant foreign threat to our elections, and as the intelligence community has publicly reported, and as I have previously warned, Iran also is accelerating its efforts to influence our elections, including the presidential election,” Monaco said.
Wray also delivered a blunt message for Iran and China when asked what the bureau’s response would be to those who intend to meddle in the presidential election: “Knock it off.”
The attorney general said Russia is using new techniques Russia such as artificial intelligence and other cyber techniques.
“They’re now using bot farms in a way that was not possible before, and therefore it’s a bigger threat than it ever was before. I would just say that [the] reality is that Russia has meddled in our society and tried to sow discord for decades,” Garland said.
The DOJ also announced that it’s targeting a Russian disinformation campaign referred to as “Doppelganger.”
The DOJ has seized 32 internet domains it claims have been used by the Russian government and government-sponsored actors to allegedly engage in the Doppelganger influence campaign by spreading propaganda intended to reduce international support for Ukraine, bolster support for pro-Russian policies and influence American voters, according to newly unsealed court records.
Garland on Wednesday also highlighted domestic efforts to threaten election officials around the country.
Since March, the Election Threats Task Force has participated in more than 25 engagements, trainings and tabletop exercises, including both with law enforcement partners and partners in the election community, the attorney general said.
Over the next several weeks, task force representatives will be on the ground meeting with election workers and, in early November, both in advance of and after Election Day, the FBI will host federal partners at its headquarters command center to address events, issues and potential crimes related to the elections in real time, Garland said.
“Election officials and administrators do not need to navigate this threat environment alone,” he added.
CNN first reported news of the expected law enforcement actions.
In a statement Wednesday, Secretary of State Antony Blinken outlined the steps the State Department said it’s taking to “counter Kremlin-backed media outlets’ malicious operations seeking to influence or interfere in the 2024 U.S. elections.”
The measures include introducing a new visa restriction policy to penalize adversaries, designating RT’s parent company and subsidiaries as entities controlled by a foreign government, and offering cash rewards for information on the Russian intelligence-linked hacking group RaHDit under its “Rewards for Justice” program.
“Today’s announcement highlights the lengths some foreign governments go to undermine American democratic institutions. But these foreign governments should also know that we will not tolerate foreign malign actors intentionally interfering and undermining free and fair elections,” Blinken said.
In addition, the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control said Wednesday that it’s designating 10 individuals — including several RT employees — and two entities as part of the U.S. response to “Moscow’s malign influence efforts targeting the 2024 U.S. presidential election.”
The head of a “hacktivist” group RaHDit and two associates were also part of Wednesday’s sanctions, the Treasury Department said in a statement.
ABC News’ Shannon Kingston and Molly Nagle contributed to this report.
(WASHINGTON) — Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign kicked off a weekslong 50-stop “reproductive freedom bus tour” across battleground states in West Palm Beach, Florida — former President Donald Trump’s backyard — on Tuesday.
The campaign said “reproductive rights storytellers” will join campaign surrogates along the route to help emphasize the split screen on the issue between the Harris-Walz campaign and Trump and his running mate, Sen. JD Vance.
Women’s reproductive rights are a key voter issue driving suburban women to the polls, and has been a spotlight since the Supreme Court overruled the constitutional right to abortion that had been the law nationwide for almost 50 years.
“Our campaign is hitting the road to meet voters in their communities, underscore the stakes of this election for reproductive freedom, and present them with the Harris-Walz ticket’s vision to move our country forward, which stands in stark contrast to Donald Trump’s plans to drag us back,” Harris-Walz Campaign Manager Julie Chavez Rodriguez wrote in a statement.
The bus tour began just days after Trump announced a sweeping new policy proposal on in vitro fertilization, promising to make the costly treatments free. The former president has not yet provided any specific details about how he would fund the initiative.
Trump’s initiative is seen as a way to court those suburban women as November approaches.
On a phone call with reporters on Friday, Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren, who has been campaigning for Harris, said “American women are not stupid” and that they understand the promise is coming from Trump, who has consistently bragged about being responsible for the Supreme Court’s decision to overrule Roe v. Wade.
“It was Donald Trump who opened the door for any extremist judge or extremist state legislature to ban IVF without legal protection for abortion and IVF,” Warren said.
Tuesday’s bus tour kicked off in West Palm Beach — not far from Trump’s home in Mar-a-Lago.
“Now my friends, I ask you, what better place to kick off the Harris/Walz reproductive freedom bus tour than in Donald Trump’s backyard?” Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, a Florida Democrat, said.
Democratic Sen. Amy Klobuchar spoke at the event and called on women to have their voices heard.
“Americans have shown us time and time again that they will not tolerate a country where our daughters have fewer rights than their mothers and grandmothers, and they believe that women have the right to make their own health care decisions and not politicians,” Klobuchar said.
Chavez Rodriguez said the campaign is mobilizing around women’s reproductive rights.
“Today, by launching this bus tour, we are reminding Trump of the fact that by pulling our reproductive freedom and putting it on the ballot, he is going to have an incredible amount of energy and organizing that he is going to have to contend with.”
Later in the bus tour, there will be appearances from reproductive rights advocates Amanda Zurawski, Hadley Duvall and Kaitlyn Joshua throughout the tour as well, according to the campaign.
So far, the Harris-Walz campaign already has events scheduled in Arizona, Nevada, Florida and Georgia for the bus tour — with more stops scheduled throughout the fall.
This election cycle, seven states, including the critical battleground states of Arizona and Nevada, will vote on abortion-related ballot initiatives in November.
According to a New York Times/Siena Poll released in August, abortion was a top-three issue among all registered voters in swing states with 14% of registered voters saying it was the most important issue in deciding their vote this November.
Trump, whose stance on abortion has wavered at times over the past year, recently criticized Florida’s six-week abortion ban.
“I am going to be voting that we need more than six weeks,” he said to NBC News last month.
His campaign attempted to walk back that comment before Trump clarified that he’ll be voting “no” on Florida’s Amendment 4 — also known as the “Right to Abortion Initiative” — come November, despite continuing to claim that a ban at six weeks is “too short.”
This isn’t Harris’ first time hitting the campaign trail to focus on reproductive rights. She had already been tapped to lead reproductive rights discussions under President Joe Biden’s former campaign. In January, she embarked on a “reproductive freedom tour” on the 51st anniversary of Roe v. Wade, making stops in Florida and Arizona.
(WASHINGTON) — Republican senators ABC News spoke with Thursday squirmed when asked about former President Donald Trump falsely questioning Vice President Kamala Harris’ racial identity during his interview at the National Association of Black Journalists convention a day earlier — as the former president doubled down on the false attack.
In a social media post Thursday morning, former President Donald Trump shared a family portrait of Vice President Kamala Harris and wrote, “Your warmth, friendship, and love of your Indian Heritage are very much appreciated.”
His social media post reiterated his false claim that Harris only emphasized her Asian-American heritage — something he mentioned during his interview at the NABJ convention on Wednesday.
During the interview, he falsely questioned Harris’ race. Harris is the daughter of a Jamaican father and an Indian mother.
“I didn’t know she was Black until a number of years ago when she happened to turn Black and now, she wants to be known as Black. So, I don’t know, is she Indian or is she Black?” Trump said during the NABJ interview.
He went on to say that “she was Indian all the way, and then all of a sudden she made a turn, and she went — she became a Black person.”
Trump allies in the Senate tried to focus less on the former president’s comments at NABJ — when he called Harris’ race into question — and instead pivoted to what they believe are his policy accomplishments in his first term.
Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., a close ally of the former president’s, said Trump would be better served focusing on policy.
Asked if it was appropriate for Trump to question Harris’ race, Graham replied: “No, I don’t think so.”
“I’ve known the vice president for a while, she has always embraced her heritage proudly as she should,” Graham said. “My problem with Vice President Harris is the policy choices she’s made. I think she’s live a consequential life, but on policy the country is on fire — the world is on fire and the country is in decline. And I think we need new leadership so so that will be my approach.”
When pushed on whether Trump’s comments were productive in pushing voters toward focusing on policy, Graham dodged, saying “I think the way back into power is to compare [Trump’s] presidency with what’s going on today, offer solutions to problems — that’s the way back into power.”
Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., pushed repeatedly on whether Trump’s comments were appropriate, conceded that they were likely a distraction.
“I think it shifts away from the discussion I want to focus on, but it may very well be that we have a difference of opinions about what is going to move the voters,” Tillis said. “I for one think its the failure on the economy the failure on the border and the failure on national security.”
Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, who is running to lead the Senate Republican Conference when McConnell steps down this fall, sidestepped questions repeatedly.
“I really don’t have anything to say about that. I did think it was relevant that he showed up and she did not and I appreciate the fact he is willing to even appear in front of hostile environments like that one,” Cornyn said.
Asked about Trump’s apparent confusion about Harris being biracial, Cornyn suggested that “I think we are all a combination of something right?”
House Republican leaders have privately told their conference to focus their attacks against Harris on her record, sources familiar with the conversation told ABC News.
The guidance came after a number of House Republicans made references to Harris’ race and gender when asked by reporters about her bid for the White House with some — such as Rep. Tim Burchett and Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene — calling her a “DEI Vice President” or “DEI hire.”
Separately, sources also told ABC News, Speaker Mike Johnson also privately told members to focus on drawing a contrast with Harris’ record against the “strength” of Trump. Johnson has privately and publicly insisted this has nothing to do with race.
Sources told ABC News that one member said, “pointing out she’s not a white man, is not a winning campaign message.”
Several Democratic senators condemned Trump’s comments about Harris’ race.
Senator Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., said Trump’s comments were “disgusting.”
She said she admires the way Harris responded to the comments, which Harris on Wednesday night called “the same old show” with “divisiveness and disrespect.”
“I really admire what VP Harris said when she said she is ready to turn the page on that and start again with [a] new leader who is completely focused on how we make this government work better for hard-working families,” Warren said.
Sen. Raphael Warnock, D-Ga., called Trump’s comments a “distraction.”
“This is a distraction. And that’s what the former president majors in – the politics of distraction and division. But I don’t think it will stand. Because Kamala Harris is focused on the people that she wants to represent in this country,” Warnock said.
ABC News’ Lalee Ibssa, Soorin Kim, Kelsey Walsh, Rachel Scott and Jay O’Brien contributed to this report.