Gov. Roy Cooper says Harris has ‘excellent’ chances in battleground North Carolina, will be helped by governor’s race

(WASHINGTON) — Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign and Jewish advocacy groups on Friday forcefully criticized what they called former President Donald Trump’s “dangerous” and “antisemitic” comments saying Jewish voters would be to blame if he lost the presidential election.

“I’ll put it to you very simply and as gently as I can: I wasn’t treated properly by the voters who happen to be Jewish,” Trump said at an event Thursday night in Washington that was meant to highlight antisemitism. “I don’t know. Do they know what the hell is happening if I don’t win this election? And the Jewish people would really have a lot to do with that if that happens, because at 40% that means 60% of the people are voting for the enemy.”

The backlash was fierce.

“Donald Trump is resorting to the oldest antisemitic tropes in the book because he’s weak and can’t stand the fact that the majority of America is going to reject him in November. But we know that words like these can have dangerous consequences,” Harris campaign national security spokesperson Morgan Finkelstein said in a statement. “As Trump has proven, including over the past few weeks with his lies about Springfield, Ohio, he will cling to fearmongering and intimidation, no matter the cost.”

Trump and his running mate, Sen. JD Vance of Ohio, have in recent days pushed the baseless claim that Haitian migrants in Springfield, most of whom are legally there, of stealing and eating neighbors’ pets — an accusation roundly refuted by local officials.

“When Donald Trump loses this election, it will be because Americans from all faiths, ethnicities, and backgrounds came together to turn the page on the divisiveness he demonstrates every day,” Finkelstein added.

Harris’ husband, second gentleman Doug Emhoff, who is Jewish himself, wrote on X Friday that Jewish Americans would not be “intimidated” by Trump’s attacks. “Last night, Donald Trump once again fanned the flames of antisemitism by trafficking in tropes blaming and scapegoating Jews. He even did it at an event purporting to fight antisemitism, no less,” Emhoff wrote. “This is dangerous and must be condemned. We will not be intimidated and will continue to live openly, proudly, and without fear as Jews.”

Non-partisan Jewish advocacy organizations also vocalized their strong opposition to Trump’s comment.

“Whoever a majority of the Jewish community votes for, Jews — roughly 2 percent of the U.S. population — cannot and should not be blamed for the outcome of the election,” the American Jewish Committee wrote in a statement. “Setting up anyone to say, ‘we lost because of the Jews’ is outrageous and dangerous. Thousands of years of history have shown that scapegoating Jews can lead to antisemitic hate and violence.”

Some Jewish voters will vote for Harris, and some will vote for Trump, the AJC said, adding that “None of us, by supporting the candidate we choose, is ‘voting for the enemy.'”

Anti-Defamation League CEO Jonathan Greenblat wrote on social media that Trump’s comments contradicted the message of the antisemitic event at which he was speaking and can make it worse for Jewish Americans.

“Preemptively blaming American Jews for your potential election loss does zero to help American Jews. It increases their sense of alienation in a moment of vulnerability when right-wing extremists and left-wing antizionists continually demonize and slander Jews,” Greenblat wrote “Let’s be clear, this speech likely will spark more hostility and further inflame an already bad situation.”

Amy Spitalnick, who leads the progressive-leaning Jewish Council for Public Affairs, encouraged more people to join growing chorus slamming Trump’s comment.

“Last night, Trump preemptively blamed the Jews for his possible electoral loss, after spending months calling Jews who don’t support him ‘crazy’ & ‘disloyal.’ Speaking out against this isn’t about partisan politics — it’s about fundamental Jewish safety,” Spitalnick wrote. “We need everyone to do so.”

Trump did receive backing from some on the political right. The Republican Jewish Coalition, a major Jewish political group that has endorsed Trump, praised Trump for his remarks on combatting antisemitism.

Matt Brooks, the CEO of the organization, told ABC News in a phone interview that he thought the comments about Jewish voters and the election were about motivating Jewish voters, and that Democratic claims otherwise are a deflection.

“I think what it was is the president trying to motivate the Jewish community,” Brooks said, adding that Trump “realizes what’s at stake” for American Jews, who feel unsafe in America due to a rise in antisemitism. (Brooks pointed to intimidation faced by Jewish students on college campuses as one example.)

“This is an absolute distraction, to deflect that [Trump] made many significant and important contributions to the Jewish community,” Brooks said.

He added that Trump was also indicating how close of an election it may be in battleground states, where given the likely slim margin, “if the Jewish vote doesn’t move in his favor, it may cost him the election.”

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(WASHINGTON) — Tulsi Gabbard, who once ran for president as a Democrat, is taking on a prominent role as part of former President Donald Trump’s 2024 campaign team.

On Thursday, she will moderate what Trump’s campaign is calling a “town hall” with him when he visits La Crosse in battleground Wisconsin.

Gabbard publicly endorsed Trump on stage in Michigan earlier this week, and joined his presidential transition team along with fellow former Democrat Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

“This administration has us facing multiple wars on multiple fronts and regions around the world and closer to the brink of nuclear war than we ever have been before,” Gabbard said. “This is one of the main reasons why I’m committed to doing all that I can to send President Trump back to the White House, where he can, once again, serve us as our commander in chief.”

Trump called Gabbard an “amazing person” and that he looked forward to working with her.

Gabbard, a military veteran who represented Hawaii in Congress for eight years, has also been aiding Trump as he prepares for his first debate against Vice President Kamala Harris on Sept. 10. Gabbard debated Harris and President Joe Biden in the 2020 Democratic primary, and made headlines at the time for taking aim at Harris’ record as a prosecutor.

Since leaving the Democratic Party in 2022 to register as an independent, Gabbard’s adopted several views that align with those held by Trump and his Republican allies.

That includes opposition to U.S. support for Ukraine in its fight against Russian invaders; criticism of the criminal indictments against Trump; and statements railing against the so-called deep state and “woke” ideologies of the Democratic Party.

Gabbard, an anti-interventionist when it comes to foreign policy, has accused President Joe Biden’s administration of stoking tensions around the globe — describing Democrats as a “cabal of warmongers” when she became an independent.

“This war and suffering could have easily been avoided if Biden Admin/NATO had simply acknowledged Russia’s legitimate security concerns regarding Ukraine’s becoming a member of NATO, which would mean US/NATO forces right on Russia’s border,” she wrote of the Russia-Ukraine war on X, formerly known as Twitter, in 2022.

She also shared false information alleging U.S. involvement in Ukraine biological weapons laboratories. Her comments received pushback from the likes of Utah Sen. Mitt Romney, a Republican, who described her comments as “treasonous lies” that were “parroting false Russian propaganda.”

The State Department, around the time such claims were being spread, said the Kremlin was intentionally proliferating “outright lies that the United States and Ukraine are conducting chemical and biological weapons activities in Ukraine.”

The year Russia invaded Ukraine, Gabbard made multiple appearances on Tucker Carlson’s show on Fox to discuss the conflict, clips of which were aired on Russian-state media.

After leaving the Democratic Party, she campaigned for election-deniers in the 2022 midterm cycle, including Arizona’s Kari Lake and New Hampshire’s Don Bolduc — both of whom were defeated.

During an event for Bolduc, she compared President Biden (who she endorsed in the 2020 primary after bowing out of the race) to Adolf Hitler.

In 2023 comments to Fox’s Jesse Watters, Gabbard continued to make comparisons to Hitler as she said Biden and the party’s focus on diversity was similar to the “geneticist core principles embodied by Nazism and Adolf Hitler.”

More recently, she’s accused Biden of weaponizing law enforcement to go after his political opponent after Trump was indicted on federal charges stemming from his handling of classified material and his efforts to overturn his 2020 election loss.

At the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) earlier this year, she suggested, like many Republicans have, that the criminal charges against Trump were an effort to interfere in the 2024 election.

“The Democrat elite and their cronies are using our criminal justice system to prosecute and distract the Republican presidential candidate in the midst of his campaign,” she said.

After Biden dropped out of the race, Gabbard turned her focus toward Harris — though asserted a larger “deep state” was at work in the federal government.

“Biden’s out, Kamala is in. Don’t be fooled: policies won’t change. Just like Biden wasn’t the one calling the shots, Kamala Harris won’t be either. She is the new figurehead for the deep state and the maidservant of Hillary Clinton, queen of the cabal of warmongers. They will continue their efforts to engulf the world in war and taking away our liberty,” Gabbard claimed on X.

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(NEW YORK) With just weeks to go until the presidential election, a Georgia judge has ruled that certification of election results by county officials in the state is “mandatory” — a new ruling that is likely to be heralded by election experts amid rising fears that rogue election officials could seek to delay or decline to certify results after Election Day due to allegations of fraud or error.

“Election superintendents in Georgia have a mandatory fixed obligation to certify election results,” the order states.

Judge Robert McBurney, as part of an ongoing election case, found that the law is clear: “the superintendent must certify and must do so by a certain time.”

“There are no exceptions,” he wrote in the Monday night ruling.

The ruling comes after Georgia’s controversial State Election Board recently passed new rules that some voting rights activists are concerned would cause chaos in the certification process. One of those new rules allows election officials to conduct a “reasonable inquiry” prior to certification.

Specifically, McBurney’s ruling Monday noted that certification by the county superintendents must occur, even in the case where there are concerns about fraud or error.

“While the superintendent must investigate concerns about miscounts and must report those concerns to a prosecutor if they persist after she investigates, the existence of those concerns, those doubts, and those worries is not cause to delay or decline certification,” McBurney wrote. “That is simply not an option for this particular ministerial function in the superintendent’s broader portfolio of functions.”

Broadly, McBurney noted that the election officials must still certify the results, but report concerns to authorities:

“And if in the course of her canvassing, counting, and investigating, a superintendent should discover what appears to her to be fraud or systemic error, she still must count all votes — despite the perceived fraud — and report her concerns about fraud or error to the appropriate district attorney,” the judge wrote.

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