Elon Musk joined Trump’s call with Zelenskyy: Sources
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(WASHINGTON) — Billionaire Elon Musk joined President-elect Donald Trump’s phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Wednesday, multiple sources with direct knowledge of the call told ABC News.
Musk was at Mar-a-Lago with Trump on election night as well as the day after, as previously reported by ABC News. Musk’s involvement in the call further highlights his influence in the upcoming administration.
Musk, the world’s richest person, had a profound impact on Trump’s campaign including a multi-billion dollar door-knocking operation, a social media megaphone and a $1 million sweepstakes for battleground voters.
Zelenskyy wrote on social media that he had an “excellent” call with Trump, but made no mention of Musk.
“I had an excellent call with President Trump and congratulated him on his historic landslide victory — his tremendous campaign made this result possible,” Zelenskyy wrote on X.
The call happened as Zelenskyy seeks to shore up long-term American military and financial support in its war with Russia.
On the campaign trail, Trump has often boasted that he would be able to stop the war in Ukraine, though he has yet to provide specifics as to how, often showing a willingness to work with both sides.
As of now, Musk is expected to return to Mar-a-Lago next week, but plans remain in flux, per sources familiar with the plans.
Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images/Julia Beverly/Getty Images
(WASHINGTON) — As we head into the final full week of campaigning before Election Day, the latest ABC News/Ipsos poll shows Kamala Harris with a slight 51-47% lead over Donald Trump among likely voters nationally — but the polls in the battleground states remain essentially deadlocked within the margin of error.
Fallout continues over racist comments made at Trump’s big rally on Sunday at Madison Square Garden and Harris is preparing for her “closing argument” Tuesday night on the Ellipse near the Capitol and White House in Washington.
Of the 41,989,199 total early votes, 21,111,171 were cast in person and 21,338,290 were balloted returned by mail.
On Monday, voters in Washington, D.C., can start casting their ballots early, in person. Almost all of the states that offer in-person early voting have begun offering it by now.
-ABC News’ Oren Oppenheim
Michelle Obama uses op-ed to reiterate message imploring men to support women’s reproductive health
The former first lady repeated her passionate message on women’s health being at stake this election in an op-ed published by the New York Times on Monday,
The op-ed featured excerpted remarks from her rally in Michigan on Saturday in which she blasted Trump’s record on the issue in comparison to Harris’, and made an appeal to men to support the women in their lives. The rally marked her first campaign appearance since her speech at the Democratic National Convention this summer.
“I am asking you, from the core of my being, to take our lives seriously,” she said. “Please do not put our lives in the hands of politicians, mostly men, who have no clue or do not care about what we as women are going through, who don’t fully grasp the broad-reaching health implications that their misguided policies will have on our health outcomes.”
Despite her stated aversion to partisan politics, the former first lady is ramping up her involvement in the final stretch of the 2024 campaign. She will headline a rally on Tuesday in battleground Georgia.
Harris counters dark and racist comments at Trump’s MSG rally
Harris is countering the dark and racist comments made by speakers at Trump’s Sunday rally at Madison Square Garden, while the former president’s campaign tries to distance itself from the comedian who referred to Puerto Rico as a “floating island of garbage.”
Harris will stump in two critical counties in the battleground state of Michigan to kick off the final full week of campaigning. First, she will visit Corning’s manufacturing facility in Saginaw before getting a tour at a union training facility in Macomb County.
The vice president will cap the day with a rally with her running mate, Gov. Tim Walz, in Ann Arbor. The rally will feature a concert by musician Maggie Rogers.
Trump will be in Georgia to deliver remarks at National Faith Advisory Board in Powder Springs before a 6 p.m. ET rally in Atlanta.
(DOUGLAS, Ariz.) -Vice President Kamala Harris will visit the U.S.-Mexico border on Friday — her first trip there in more than three years — to call for tougher security measures and attack former President Donald Trump on an issue that has plagued her, a senior campaign official said.
Harris plans to deliver remarks in Douglas, Arizona, a border town in the critical battleground state, where she will continue to criticize Trump for his role earlier this year in tanking a bipartisan bill that was the result of months of negotiations.
“The American people deserve a president who cares more about border security than playing political games,” Harris plans to say, according to the senior official, who was granted anonymity to discuss a speech the vice president has yet to deliver.
She will take a strong line in her remarks Friday and make the case that “American sovereignty requires setting rules at the border and enforcing them,” the senior official previewed.
As part of her trip, Harris will also meet with border patrol agents, the senior official said, and tout the pay raises the Biden administration gave agents and argue they “need more resources to do their jobs to keep America safe.”
Harris’ trip comes as immigration is a top issue for many voters ahead of the election. A recent ABC News/Ipsos poll found that 70% viewed immigration at the southern border as an “important” issue for them, and Trump led Harris by 10 points on who voters thought was best suited to handle it.
In 2021, President Joe Biden tasked Harris with the likely doomed-from-the-start assignment of solving the root causes of migration amid surges of migrants arriving at the southern border. Republicans have used this to label Harris the “border czar” though her task did involve U.S. policy at the border itself.
The last time Harris made a trip to the border was in June 2021. Her infrequent visits have also been another source attacks from her opponents.
The senior official said the campaign hopes Harris’s trip to the border will help close the gap between Trump on the issue.
Trump held what amounted to a preemptive attack at a news conference in New York on Thursday.
“She should save her airfare,” Trump said. “She should go back to the White House and tell the president to close the border. He can do it with the signing of a – of a – just a signature on a piece of paper to the border control; instead, she’s going there to try to convince people she wasn’t as bad as everybody knows she was.”
Harris’ campaign is is releasing a new ad on Friday tied to her trip to the border. The 30-second ad, titled “Never Backed Down,” highlights Harris’ work as a prosecutor.
“She put cartel members and drug traffickers behind bars, and she will secure our border,” a narrator says in the ad. The ad says Harris’ plans for the border include hiring more law enforcement agents, boosting technology and to “stop fentanyl smuggling and human trafficking.”
In her remarks at the border, Harris will say tackling fentanyl will be “a top priority” for her as president and will propose installing new fentanyl detection machines at the border, a senior campaign official said. She will also continue to call on China to quash Chinese companies’ manufacturing of fentanyl precursor chemicals, the official added.
“We need a leader with a real plan to fix the border and that’s Kamala Harris,” the narrator says at the end of the ad.
ABC News’ Kelsey Walsh contributed to this report.
(WASHINGTON) — The FBI and Defense Department are investigating what could be a significant intelligence breach, disclosing what appears to be classified information about Israel’s plans to strike Iran, U.S. officials said Monday.
Here’s what we know so far:
Two leaked documents seem to divulge US analysis on Israel’s plans against Iran
Earlier this month, Israel vowed to retaliate against Iran for its Oct. 1 missile attack, when Iran launched 200 missiles at various targets inside Israel. It wasn’t clear, however, how or when Israel would respond.
Amid speculation on Israel’s next move, two documents marked “top secret” surfaced on social media last week that purported to show analysis by the U.S. military on Israeli operations.
One document purports to be from the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA), a military agency that collects, analyzes and distributes intelligence gleaned from satellite and aerial imagery. The second claims to contain intelligence generated by the National Security Agency. (NSA).
ABC News is not quoting directly from or showing the documents, which appear to detail movement of Israeli military equipment and munitions that could be used in a potential strike.
One of the documents claimed Israel could strike Iran without the U.S. seeing any further visual clues from above.
According to one person familiar with the investigation, the FBI was investigating the leak as part of a criminal probe. The White House said Monday the Defense Department was also investigating the disclosure and that officials have discussed the suspected breach with Israel.
“We’re deeply concerned, and the president remains deeply concerned about any leakage of classified information into the public domain. That is not supposed to happen, and it’s unacceptable when it does, so he’s deeply concerned about that,” White House national security spokesperson John Kirby told reporters on Monday.
Kirby said there is no indication more documents could be released, but “we’re certainly going to keep our antenna up and our eyes open for any potential future disclosures.”
When asked Monday about the leak, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin declined to talk specifics other than to say “we take these types of things very seriously. Very, very seriously.”
It’s not clear yet if the documents were leaked by an insider or stolen by a hacker
Both documents have markings indicating that, if authentic, they would have been shared with the so-called Five Eyes, the intelligence-sharing alliance made up of the United States, Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the United Kingdom.
The documents surfaced on a Telegram channel called Middle East Spectator, an anonymous blog that frequently publishes pro-Iran content. The channel’s administrator told ABC News they obtained the documents through an acquaintance who received them from an unknown source. The administrator denied being affiliated with any government.
The documents have markings indicating that, if authentic, they would have been shared with the so-called Five Eyes, the intelligence-sharing alliance made up of the United States, Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the United Kingdom.
It’s possible that a foreign entity such as the government of Iran stole the documents by hacking the systems of nations with access to the intelligence. But at least one official familiar with the investigation said the probe will focus aggressively on anyone who works for or with the U.S. government and had access to the material.
When asked about the possibility that the leak was done by an insider, Kirby declined to speculate.
“We’ll let the investigation pursue its logical course there,” Kirby said.
Earlier this year, Massachusetts Air National Guardsman Jack Teixeira pleaded guilty to six counts of willful retention and transmission of national defense information. According to prosecutors, Teixeira leaked information in a Discord chat room on the type of equipment the U.S. was sending Ukraine, troop movements in Ukraine and a plot by a foreign adversary to attack U.S. forces abroad.
What’s next?
Lawmakers are likely to have serious questions about how another major public disclosure of classified information could happen again after the Teixeira case.
House Speaker Mike Johnson told CNN on Sunday that lawmakers were receiving a classified briefing.
Another question is whether the leak has forced Israel to adjust its military plans.
“If it is true that Israel’s tactical plans to respond to Iran’s attack on Oct. 1 have been leaked, it is a serious breach,” said Mick Mulroy, an ABC News national security and defense contributor who served as the deputy assistant secretary of defense for the Middle East.
“Everyone that has access to this information has an obligation to keep it secure,” Mulroy said. “The men and women of the IDF [Israel Defense Forces] that would carry out this mission could be compromised because of this, the future coordination between the U.S. and Israel could be challenged as well.”
ABC News’ Christopher Looft and Luke Barr contributed to this report.
