Former President George W. Bush will not make formal election endorsement, office says
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(DALLAS) — Former President George W. Bush doesn’t plan to make an endorsement or voice how he or his wife Laura will vote in November, his office told ABC News Saturday.
The announcement came a day after Bush’s vice president, Dick Cheney, announced he would cross party lines and vote for Vice President Kamala Harris.
Cheney said former President Donald Trump “can never be trusted with power again.”
“In our nation’s 248-year history, there has never been an individual who is a greater threat to our republic than Donald Trump. He tried to steal the last election using lies and violence to keep himself in power after the voters had rejected him,” he said in a statement.
Cheney’s daughter, former Wyoming member of the House Liz Cheney, also announced this week that she would be voting for Harris.
(WASHINGTON) — In a social media post on Sunday, former President Donald Trump falsely accused Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign of using artificial intelligence to fabricate crowds a campaign rally in Michigan last week.
The picture referenced by Trump shows a large crowd waiting to see Harris speak at the Detroit Metropolitan Airport on Aug. 7
A Harris campaign official told ABC News that the photo Trump called into question was taken by a Harris campaign staffer and that it was “not modified by AI in any way.”
“The photo in question was taken by a staffer on their iPhone 12 Pro at 6:28PM on August 7, at the rally at the Detroit Airport,” the campaign official told ABC News in a statement.
ABC News obtained the original image and was able to verify the metadata matched with the timing of the event.
Harris’ Aug. 7 rally in Detroit, Michigan, was the third event of her battleground blitz since Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz joined the ticket. The campaign touts that more than 15,000 people attended the rally.
By comparison, the first public appearance that Trump and his running mate, Sen. JD Vance shared had more than 12,000 spectators in Grand Rapids, Michigan, Trump’s campaign said.
The Harris campaign said there were more than 10,000 supporters at each stop on Harris and Walz’s battleground state blitz last week.
The Harris campaign also disputed Trump’s accusations in multiple social media posts and attacked Trump for not campaigning in a swing state as the former president spent the weekend campaigning and fundraising in Western states.
In recent weeks, Trump has continued to make baseless claims that the Harris campaign pays for her crowd as his Democratic rival gains momentum with large-scale rallies.
The former president has long boasted about his crowd size. In a news conference last week, Trump claimed that “nobody’s spoken to crowds bigger than me.”
He grew increasingly angry when asked about Harris’ crowd size — comparing them to his own.
“Oh, give me a break,” Trump replied to the reporter.
“I have 10 times, 20 times, 30 times the crowd size. And they never say the crowd was big. That’s why I’m always saying, turn around the cameras,” Trump said.
Trump then went on to compare the crowd that gathered for his speech in Washington, D.C. on Jan. 6, 2021, to Martin Luther King Jr. ‘s 1963 March on Washington, which the civil rights leader delivered to an estimated crowd of 200,000 people, according to the U.S. Census.
“I’ve spoken to the biggest crowds. Nobody’s spoken to crowds bigger than me. If you look at Martin Luther King when he did his speech, his great speech, and you look at ours, same real estate, same everything, same number of people. If not, we had more. And they said he had a million people, but I had 25,000 people,” Trump said.
Trump’s next rally is on Wednesday at Harrah’s Cherokee Center in Asheville, North Carolina, which has a maximum capacity of 7,200 people; however, Trump’s venues often vary in size. After that, he is set to have a rally in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, at Mohegan Arena at Casey Plaza — a venue that holds nearly 10,000 people.
(CHICAGO) — Former director of communications for Trump’s transition team, Bryan Lanza, and former Senator Heidi Heitkamp spoke with ABC News about their opinions regarding Vice President Kamala Harris and her presidential campaign.
Lanza said that Harris has not had to answer for the various policy changes she’s made over the last 4 to 6 years, which he says leaves her answers ambiguous while making her solutions seem suitable for everyone. He also stated that Harris has significantly benefited from what he calls a “sugar high” of the media pumping her up and that the Democrats have just been so relieved that it’s no longer Joe Biden on the ticket.
Heitkamp disagreed with Lanza and rebutted by saying that when Harris talks about day care, paid family leave, affordable education and affordable housing — they are each her own ideas. The former North Dakota senator also accused the Republican Party of whining when they talk about the Harris campaign as being borne of canceling a taxpayer-funded primary.
Heitkamp and Lanza debated on the first day of the Democratic National Convention.
ABC NEWS: Joining us now is former senator and ABC News contributor Heidi Heitkamp and former Trump communications adviser Bryan Lanza. Thank you both so much for joining us.
Let’s start with you, Heidi. We’re talking about the momentum, really, Kamala Harris has going into the convention. What do you feel that she’s on solid ground about? And what do you think she still has work to do on?
HEITKAMP: Well, she’s going to have a lot of work to do because you can’t just build on kind of this change in the hey, I wouldn’t say sugar high, but the kind of momentum that you had. I think you already see it plateauing somewhat.
And so she’s got to come out. She’s got to energize young people, which I think she can do because young people have been pretty discouraged. They look at a ticket between Joe Biden and President Trump and they go, ‘you know, they don’t look like me. They don’t know my problems.’ They see her and they really see someone I think that they’re interested in learning more about. And if she can energize young people, suburban women, I think she’s on the way to victory. But that’s, that’s not a given.
ABC NEWS: And Bryan, same question to you. What do you think is working and where do you think that she has work to do still when it comes to convincing maybe some of those Nikki Haley supporters or independents who might still be on the fence?
LANZA: Well, thank you for having me. And, you know, clearly where it’s working is not answering any questions. She doesn’t have to answer the various policy changes that she’s made over the last 4 to 6 years and not have an answer that sort of makes her ambiguous and makes her solution for everybody. But you saw on Friday when she rolled out, you know, some of her economic policies and she talked about, you know, price controls.
You know, that sort of drew some criticism from some very liberal newspapers and even drew some criticism from Nancy Pelosi, who said she’d like Kamala Harris to govern from the center.
So I think she’s benefited a lot from, I’ll call it, a sugar high of the media sort of pumping up Kamala Harris. And the Democrats just been so relieved that it’s not Joe Biden on the ticket anymore. But as with all sugar highs, they all crash. And we’re starting to see the crash now as she talks more and more about policy, which she can’t defend because she’s been a part of this administration that has been, has stood by during record inflation, record illegal immigration, two wars and possibly a third.
I mean, the world is on fire and it was under their watch.
ABC NEWS: Heidi, I just want to put his response right to you. Heard him there. He says sugar high comes first and then, and then you crash.
HEITKAMP: Yeah, I don’t believe that. I think that when you look at what she’s been able to accomplish so far, I think they thought the steam was going to go out of this momentum a lot earlier. And it hasn’t. And I think, you know, I’m going to just take issue with this idea that she’s been speaking to concerns of the American people.
When she’s talking about day care, when she’s talking about paid family leave, she’s talking about making education affordable, housing affordable. Those are all ideas that she has, you know, she has poll tested — they are true. And they have someone who isn’t talking about this at all.
ABC NEWS: And Bryan, Republicans have been very critical of this passing of the torch from Biden to Harris. How do you think that this will play out for voters who think that President Biden was forced out by members of his own party?
LANZA: Clearly he was, and from my perspective, I love the fact that the primaries don’t have to exist at the presidential level anymore. It’s a political operative I’ve found rather annoying, hard to predict, and a tremendous waste of resources.
So I think with the Democrats breaking the seal and canceling out 14 million votes, you’re canceling a taxpayer-funded primary. I think that sets a precedent for less primaries going forward, not more. And so I think they, you know, passing the torch sort of thing. They’ve been successful at it, you know, not having to address the 14 million people who voted millions of dollars of taxpayers that instituted the election and come out to 1,800 phone calls to get it, to get the nomination.
But I think that the, the sort of the end of their argument about threat to democracy. So it cost them a very valuable talking point that they had, but they ultimately got here and, you know, good for her. She unified her party. But by that, I mean, it wasn’t because 14 million people voted. They vacated 14 million people’s votes to get her here.
ABC NEWS: Heidi, I really do have questions for you. But it’s more interesting to get your reaction to Bryan because I see you reacting, shaking your head as he’s talking.
HEITKAMP: I hope Bryan encourages the entire Republican Party to only talk about this switcheroo as some kind of threat to democracy, as opposed to something that needed to happen in order to present the candidate that the public wanted to see. And so the more they complain about this, it’s just whining.
They now have a race between Kamala Harris, who their principal at once upon a time said would be easier to defeat than Joe Biden. So why not be happy about it? As Republicans, they know better. They know that Kamala Harris is is, has already surged in the polls. This race, which was in a very dire condition for the Democratic Party, now is dead even. And she has momentum behind her. And so keep complaining. Keep talking about it because it’s not going to win any votes.
ABC NEWS: Bryan, I’ll give you 15 seconds; Final word here.
LANZA: You know I’m not complaining. You asked the question, but, listen, from our standpoint, once this question, once the election gets back to the issues that matter, inflation, immigration, the wars, it’s clearly, it’s clear that President Trump has the advantage.
There’s a reason Joe Biden is not on the ballot today because he wasn’t able to sell success on those particular issues. And Kamala has less ability to sell that success. Sell that, especially with her sort of liberal San Francisco values and these dangerous liberal policies that she helped introduce on Friday.
ABC NEWS: Bryan Lanza, Heidi Heitkamp, thank you both so much. Good conversation. We appreciate the back and forth. All right. Give both perspectives and opinions on here. We appreciate it.
Michael Blackshire / Los Angeles Times via Getty Images
(WASHINGTON) — Vice presidential nominees Sen. JD Vance and Gov. Tim Walz will campaign in Arizona on Wednesday as early voting begins in a state that could decide the presidential race and control of the Senate.
Both Vance and Walz will hold rallies in Tucson on Wednesday. Vance will also participate in a town hall later in the day in Mesa hosted by the Conservative Political Action Conference, while Walz will hold an event in Chandler with Senate candidate Rep. Ruben Gallego and Jim McCain, son of former Republican Sen. John McCain.
With less than a month until Election Day, the race between former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris to win the battleground state remains tight. According to FiveThirtyEight’s latest forecast, Trump leads Harris by just over 1 percentage point in the state.
The Trump campaign said Vance will encourage Arizonians to vote early in this year’s election, a sharp departure from the rhetoric Trump used in 2020 when he questioned mail-in ballots and voting early.
Wednesday’s swing for Vance is his third visit to the state since becoming Trump’s running mate in July and Walz’s trip is his second since he was picked by Harris to be her running mate in August.
Harris and Trump will also visit Arizona later this week — Harris will campaign there on Thursday and Trump on Sunday.
In 2020, Trump narrowly lost the state to President Joe Biden by just over 10,000 votes. As ABC News has previously reported Trump attempted to pressure then-Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey to overturn the results of the presidential race.
Trump dispatched former Vice President Mike Pence to pressure Ducey to find fraudulent votes in the state, and while Pence did call Ducey multiple times in the aftermath of the election, he did not follow those orders.
Speaking on the “Ruthless” podcast last Thursday, Vance shared that he feels good about the campaign’s chances in Sunbelt states such as Arizona, Georgia, and North Carolina, but that more work needs to be done in the Rust Belt states, including Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania.
Arizona’s first day of early voting also coincides with the Senate debate between Gallego and Republican Kari Lake in a race that will help decide which party controls the Senate in 2025.
Currently, Gallego leads Lake by just under 8 percentage points, according to FiveThirtyEight.
Lake, who lost the Arizona gubernatorial race in 2022, alienated many moderate Republicans by feuding with Ducey and upsetting supporters of the late Sen. McCain. Lake has also continued to deny the validity of the 2020 and 2022 elections but has changed how she approaches her campaign, trying to court those moderate Republicans she lost in 2022.
Ducey endorsed Lake in August, saying that too much is at stake in this election cycle.
“I will be voting for Republicans up & down the ballot in November — and both Donald Trump and Kari Lake have my endorsement,” Ducey posted on X. “Differences aside, there is too much on the line and only a Republican in the White House and a majority in the House and US Senate can ensure it.”
A spokesperson for Gov. Tim Walz did not respond to ABC News’ request for comment on this story.
