Harris campaign calls for second presidential debate, challenging Trump
Former President and Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump leaves at the end of an ABC News presidential debate with Vice President and Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris in Philadelphia, on Sept. 10, 2024. (Saul Loeb/AFP via Getty Images)
(PHILADELPHIA) — Less than an hour after the ABC News presidential debate ended Tuesday night, Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign called for another matchup, laying down a challenge to former President Donald Trump.
The campaign put out an email touting her performance at the debate and blasting Trump for his responses and demeanor.
The email ended with a direct question to the former president.
“Under the bright lights, the American people got to see the choice they will face this fall at the ballot box: between moving forward with Kamala Harris, or going backwards with Trump. That’s what they saw tonight and what they should see at a second debate in October. Vice President Harris is ready for a second debate. Is Donald Trump?” the email stated.
Trump responded personally — in an unusual visit to the “spin room” with reporters afterward.
“They want another debate because they lost,” he said. “So, we’ll, you know, think about that.”
Trump later appeared less inclined to participate, telling Fox News’ Sean Hannity, “I sort of think maybe I shouldn’t do it.”
“Well, I don’t know,” he said. “I have to think about it, but if you won the debate, I sort of think maybe I shouldn’t do it. Why should I do another debate? She immediately said, ‘We want another.’ That’s, you know, what happens when you lose you immediately want to do a rematch.”
Still, he kept it open without shutting it down completely, saying “let’s see what happens.”
“I am not inclined to do it because I won the debate by a lot. But I think we let it settle in, and let’s see what happens,” Trump said.
After remaining noncommittal to a second debate with Harris, Trump once again said it was only because Harris felt like she lost the debate last night.
“When two fighters fight and one loses, the first thing they do is ask for a debate, or they asked for a fight. So in this case, the debate. So we had two people. They lost very badly. The first thing they did is ask for a debate, because that’s what when a fighter loses, he says, I want a rematch. I want a rematch,” he said.
“Look, I’ve been told I’m a good debater. I think it was one of my better debates, maybe my best debate,” touted Trump who then started criticizing aspects of the debate he felt were unfair.
A second presidential debate has not been announced.
The vice presidential candidates are scheduled to debate on Oct. 1.
(NEW YORK) — Special counsel Jack Smith on Wednesday asked a federal appeals court to pause his appeal of the dismissal of President-elect Donald Trump’s classified documents case.
The move is part of Smith’s winding down of his two cases against Trump — the classified documents case and the federal election interference case — due to longstanding Department of Justice policy that prohibits a sitting president from facing criminal prosecution while in office.
“As a result of the election held on November 5, 2024, one of the defendants in this case, Donald J. Trump, is expected to be certified as President-elect on January 6, 2025, and inaugurated on January 20, 2025,” the filing said.
Smith asked to hold the appeal in abeyance and push the next filing deadline until Dec. 2 to “to afford the Government time to assess this unprecedented circumstance and determine the appropriate course going forward consistent with Department of Justice policy.”
Trump pleaded not guilty last year to 40 criminal counts related to his handling of classified materials after leaving the White House, after prosecutors said he repeatedly refused to return hundreds of documents containing classified information and took steps to thwart the government’s efforts to get the documents back.
District Judge Aileen Cannon, a Trump appointee, dismissed the case against Trump and his co-defendants this summer, ruling that Smith’s appointment as special counsel was unconstitutional because he was not appointed by the president or confirmed by Congress.
Prosecutors then appealed that decision to the Atlanta-based United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit.
The judge in Trump’s federal election interference case paused all upcoming deadlines in that case last week, following a request from Smith.
(NEW YORK) — Republicans in North Carolina and nationally are assessing the potential fallout for former President Donald Trump from a bombshell report alleging that Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson, the party’s gubernatorial nominee, posted disturbing and inflammatory statements on a forum of a pornographic website.
CNN reported Thursday that Robinson, behind an anonymous username he allegedly used elsewhere, made the comments more than a decade ago, including supporting slavery, calling himself a “black NAZI” and recalling memories of him “peeping” on women in the shower as a 14-year-old.
ABC News has not independently verified the comments were made by Robinson, and he insisted in a video posted to X prior to the story’s publication that “those are not the words of Mark Robinson.”
But Robinson, a Donald Trump ally, already has a history of incendiary remarks about Jews, gay people and others, and elections in North Carolina, one of the nation’s marquee swing states, rest on a knife’s edge, raising questions of how much the latest news will impact his race and other Republicans on the ballot with him — including the former president.
“I think this only heightens the level of toxicity that the Robinson campaign has, and the real question becomes, what’s the radioactive fallout at the top of the ticket along with down the ballot for Republicans here in North Carolina” asked Michael Bitzer, the Politics Department chair at Catawba College.
“This cannot be something that the voters aren’t going to recognize and probably play more into softening the Republican support. Is it isolated only to Robinson’s campaign, or does it start to impact Trump? Does it impact other statewide executive Republicans as well? We’ll just have to wait and see, but this feels like a pretty significant event in North Carolina politics.”
Robinson, who casts himself as a conservative family man and is running for North Carolina’s open governorship against Democratic state Attorney General Josh Stein, is already behind in the polls.
While he holds statewide office and has broad name recognition, Robinson boasts a highly controversial record, including calling the Holocaust “hogwash” and homosexuality “filth,” and he drew claims of hypocrisy when he admitted this year that he had paid for his wife to get an abortion, seemingly in contrast with his stated opposition to the procedure, which he’d previously likened to “murder” and “genocide.”
North Carolina’s gubernatorial race is still considered competitive given the state’s tight partisan divide, but Republicans in the state told ABC News they had already viewed him as trailing, and that Thursday’s report won’t help.
“He’s already got a lengthy history of publishing comments like that on the internet. These are perhaps a little more graphic. In terms of does this by itself serve as a guillotine, I don’t know. But it feels like the cumulative weight is starting to add up now,” said one North Carolina GOP strategist. “It flies in the face of everything he presents of himself publicly. So, cumulatively plus the hypocrisy of this, it’s obviously hurtful to him.”
Republicans were more divided on what it means beyond Robinson’s own candidacy.
North Carolina is a must-win state for Trump, and losing it would impose significant pressure on him to perform in other swing states.
Trump is already running ahead of Robinson — while polls show Robinson trailing, they also show a neck-and-neck race in the state between the former president and Vice President Kamala Harris. The main question now is whether the news depresses Republican turnout in a state where even a small nudge in turnout one way or the other can make decide the victor.
“[Robinson] was already toast. The question is if it hurts Trump, something the campaign is very worried about,” said Doug Heye, a veteran GOP strategist with experience working in North Carolina. “It doesn’t directly cost him voters, but his endorsed pick continues to be a big distraction and has no money to drive out the vote.”
“He’s a baby blue anchor around Trump’s chances in the Tar Heel State,” added Trump donor Dan Eberhart. “This is not good news for Trump’s campaign at all.”
Democrats are already seizing on the news to try to connect Robinson to Trump, who has repeatedly praised him, even calling him at one point “Martin Luther King on steroids.”
Kamala HQ, an X page that serves as one of the Harris campaign’s rapid response tools, posted a slate of videos featuring Trump speaking positively about Robinson.
“His campaign was toast before this story, so the real impact is on all of the Republicans who have endorsed and campaigned alongside him,” said Bruce Thompson, a North Carolina Democratic fundraiser.
However, Trump has been able to navigate his own headwinds, including felony convictions in New York, questioning Harris’ race and more to remain the leader of his party and a viable presidential candidate, leading some Republicans to doubt that Robinson’s struggles will impact the presidential campaign.
“Doubt it impacts at all down-ballot,” said Dave Carney, a GOP strategist who chairs a pro-Trump super PAC.
“I don’t think it helps, but it won’t hurt,” added Sean Spicer, Trump’s first White House press secretary.
Trump campaign spokesperson Karoline Leavitt sounded a confident note, saying in a statement that the former president’s team would “not take our eye off the ball.”
“President Trump’s campaign is focused on winning the White House and saving this country. North Carolina is a vital part of that plan. We are confident that as voters compare the Trump record of a strong economy, low inflation, a secure border, and safe streets, with the failures of Biden-Harris, then President Trump will win the Tarheel State once again,” she said.”
Still, sources familiar with the matter said the Trump campaign was bracing for a story to come out about Robinson and is planning on putting more distance between the former president and the embattled nominee Robinson — but initially did not have plans to call on him to drop out.
“He seems to not be impacted by what’s going on down-ballot underneath him,” the North Carolina Republican strategist said of Trump. “There’s no way it helps him. But does it hurt him? I don’t know, I think that’s an open question.”
(WASHINGTON) — From the June 28 debate between President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump to the Oct. 1 vice presidential debate of Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz and Ohio Sen. JD Vance, at least 134 people were killed in 148 mass shootings across the United States, according to the Gun Violence Archive.
But during those roughly three months and since, the issue of gun violence prevention, according to some advocates, has been overshadowed by a flurry of hot-button campaign topics: The state of the economy, abortion rights, wars raging in the Middle East and Ukraine, two assassination attempts on Trump and the shifting political landscape in which Vice President Kamala Harris succeeded Biden as the Democratic nominee.
“Gun violence is still one of the most important issues facing our country. We still have an ongoing epidemic,” said Nicole Hockley, the CEO of Sandy Hook Promise — a gun violence prevention group she co-founded following the 2012 mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, that left 20 children, including her son, and six adult staff members dead.
In an interview this week with ABC News, Hockley cited a Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Violence Solutions report that said for three straight years gun violence has been the leading cause of death in the United States for adolescents under the age of 19.
In an ABC News/Washington Post/Ipsos poll released in August, gun violence was ranked eighth in importance among voters after the economy, inflation, health care, protecting democracy, crime and safety, immigration and the Supreme Court.
According to a 2023 Pew Research Center survey, 61% of Americans say it’s too easy to legally obtain a gun in this country and 58% believe U.S. gun-control laws should be stricter.
“I do appreciate that there are many other large issues and hot topics like the economy, like abortion, like foreign wars that are of interest to voters as well,” said Hockley, whose nonpartisan group does not endorse candidates nor donate to campaigns.
She added, “Perhaps there is an assumption, rightly or wrongly, that everyone already knows what each candidate’s opinion is and what they are likely to do in terms of gun violence prevention, whereas they might not be as clear on things like policies around the economy.”
Debates over gun violence During the three national debates in the presidential campaign, the subject of gun violence prevention appears to have received less discussion compared to the other contentious topics, some advocates said.
In the Sept. 10 debate between Harris and Trump, hosted by ABC News, gun violence came up when Trump — who was shot in the ear during a July 13 assassination attempt in Butler, Pennsylvania, that left one campaign rallygoer dead and two others wounded — alleged, “She wants to confiscate your guns.”
The accusation prompted Harris, who oversees the first-ever White House Office of Gun Violence Prevention, to respond, “Tim Walz and I are both gun owners. We’re not taking anybody’s guns away. So stop with the continuous lying about this stuff.”
Harris, the former California Attorney General, also said, “I’m the only person on this stage who has prosecuted transnational criminal organizations for the trafficking of guns, drugs and human beings.”
Ten days after debating Trump, Harris reiterated that she is a gun owner during a televised sit-down interview with Oprah Winfrey, adding, “If somebody breaks in my house, they’re getting shot.”
The most extensive conversation on guns during the debates came during the vice presidential debate when Walz touted his record in Minnesota on combating gun violence, saying his administration had passed an assault weapons ban and enhanced red-flag gun laws to keep weapons out of the hands of people poised to harm themselves or others.
“These are reasonable things that we can do to make a difference,” Walz said about gun violence prevention during the debate.
Vance and Trump oppose most gun-control laws, including an assault weapons ban and national red-flag laws proposed by Harris. The National Rifle Association has endorsed the Trump-Vance ticket.
“Now, more than ever, freedom and liberty need courageous and virtuous defenders,” Doug Hamlin, executive vice president and CEO of the NRA, said in a statement in July. “President Trump and Senator Vance have the guts and the grit to stand steadfast for the Second Amendment.”
During the debate, Vance said on gun violence prevention measures, “Governor Walz and I actually probably agree that we need to do better on this.”
Addressing school shootings, Vance said at the debate, “I, unfortunately, think that we have to increase security in our schools. We have to make the doors lock better. We have to make the doors stronger. We’ve got to make the windows stronger. And of course, we’ve got to increase school resource officers because the idea that we can magically wave a wand and take guns out of the hands of bad guys, it just doesn’t fit with recent experience.”
‘The lockdown generation’
Angela Ferrell-Zabala, executive director of Moms Demand Action, a grassroots movement of Americans fighting for public safety measures, said that despite the myriad issues in this campaign cycle, gun violence prevention still resonates with voters nationwide.
“First and foremost, I get to travel all across this country and meet with our volunteers and partners and candidates running up and down the ballot, and there are so many people that are not running away from this issue but running on it and actually winning,” Ferrell-Zabala told ABC News. “This is a priority for many folks.”
She said that from her experience, young people, who have grown up in the era of school lockdowns and active shooter drills, are particularly energized over the issue of gun violence prevention and plan to vote their conscience.
“This is a big issue. This is a top three for all voters and for young people, this is particularly hitting them because they are the lockdown generation. Many of them are survivors of gun violence themselves,” said Ferrell-Zabala, whose group has endorsed the Harris-Walz ticket.
According to the 2023 Pew Research Center survey, 88% of respondents also favored preventing mentally ill people from buying guns and 79% wanted the minimum age for buying guns raised to 21.
Ferrell-Zabala said most aspects of gun violence prevention should not be considered political, including requiring gun owners to secure their weapons to prevent them from falling into the hands of children or people intent on harming others or themselves.
“They are being used as political issues, but they are not. The majority of people, polls show time and time again, are for common sense gun laws because they know they are going to save lives in this country,” Ferrell-Zabala said. “And what you’re seeing is a product of a gun industry and extremist politicians that are trying to back this guns-everywhere culture, where guns are everywhere for anyone anytime. That’s unacceptable, frankly.”
Hockley said that many of the children who survived the Sandy Hook massacre that claimed the life of her 6-year-old son, Dylan, have now reached the age of 18 and will be voting in their first presidential election.
“I believe that they will be very much voting to stop this epidemic,” Hockley told ABC News. “I’m sure they’ll have other concerns as well, women’s rights, human rights. Gun violence prevention is also a human right, the right to live to your full potential. These students have seen the worst of what our country can offer in terms of school violence and I very much believe and hope that they will be voting that as one of their main issues.”
