Harris campaign office in Arizona shot at for third time in a month, police say
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(TEMPE, Ariz.) — The campaign office shared by Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign and the Democratic Party in Tempe, Arizona, was damaged by gunfire for the third time in less than a month on Sunday, police told ABC News on Wednesday.
The Tempe Police Department provided new details in its investigation, including a picture of the suspect’s vehicle it says is possibly a 2008-2013 silver Toyota Highlander, and announced that Silent Witness was offering up to a $1,000 reward “for any information that leads to the arrest or indictment of the suspect(s) involved in this crime.”
The shooting occurred between midnight and 1 a.m., around the same time the previous two incidents occurred, police said. No one was injured in any of the three shootings.
Harris is scheduled to travel to Arizona on Thursday for a rally and her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, was in the state on Wednesday.
After the second shooting on Sept. 23, police said they were taking “additional measures… to ensure the safety of staff and others in the area.” A motive for the shooting has not been determined as the investigation continues, according to police.
The office was shot at on Sept. 16 in an incident police said appeared to involve a BB or pellet gun. Police said that shooting caused “criminal damage.”
Law enforcement around the country is under heightened alert over an increase in political violence threats.
Senator JD Vance, a Republican from Ohio and Republican vice-presidential nominee, left, and Tim Walz, governor of Minnesota and Democratic vice-presidential nominee, during the first vice presidential debate at the CBS Broadcast Center in New York, US, on Tuesday, Oct. 1, 2024. (Al Drago/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
(WASHINGTON) — Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump praised their respective running mates — Gov. Tim Walz and Sen. JD Vance — as their campaigns worked to spin how well they performed at Tuesday night’s vice-presidential debate.
Despite several missteps from both candidates over the course of the debate, Harris said in a fundraising email Wednesday morning that Walz “offered a powerful showcase of the kind of leadership we deserve,” and Trump said in an interview Wednesday there was “brilliance” in Vance’s debate performance.
With just over 30 days until Election Day, the debate stage offered both candidates an opportunity to appeal to undecided voters and share their running mates’ visions for America — and now the Harris and Trump campaigns and surrogates are working to smooth over any moments where the vice-presidential candidates stumbled.
Harris campaign communications director Michael Tyler told CNN Wednesday morning that the campaign is “excited” by Walz’s performance.
“I think Vice President Harris’ reaction is the same as voters across the country, independent voters in particular, and those undecideds who saw Gov. Walz lay out a very clear vision for where he and the vice president want to take this country,” Tyler said.
Tyler called Vance a “slick debater,” but said “Gov. Walz clearly articulated the case in a plain-spoken way.”
But Walz struggled to explain why he had in the past “misspoke” about being in Hong Kong and witnessing the Tiananmen Square protests in the spring of 1989, despite the weekslong protest concluding in June, months before he traveled there.
Walz argued “my community knows who I am” and that he’s “not been perfect” and can be “a knucklehead at times.”
“No, I think he was pretty clear,” Tyler said when asked if Walz needed to go further than his comments during the debate in clearing up his misstatement on the protests.
“He said he misspoke. He was there in August. I think he’d earlier said it was June. This is a matter of months, 35 years ago. He was there during the summer of protests,” Tyler added.
In a play-by-play live commentary on social media, Trump painted Walz as appearing “nervous,” incompetent and even “weird.” Trump in particular seized on Walz struggling to answer for the alleged discrepancy in his visit to Hong Kong during the Tiananmen Square protests, portraying him as a liar.
Walz’s performance at times was shaky, with some suggesting if Walz did more news interviews since becoming the vice-presidential pick, he’d have been better prepared. When pressed on that, Tyler said “no,” it would not have helped, before pointing to a more aggressive strategy in campaign’s final weeks.
“I think what you will see him and the vice president continue to do over the course of the final month of this stretch is use every tool that we have at our disposal to continue to reach the voters,” Tyler said. “Yes, that will be inclusive of more media appearances, more interviews.”
On the campaign trail on Wednesday, Walz graded his debate performance: “Not bad for a football coach,” he said at a York, Pennsylvania, rally.
“I did not underestimate Sen. Vance as a slick talker,” Walz said. “But I also called out there — you can’t rewrite history. You can’t rewrite history.”
Trump, who said in a video posted before the debate that he planned to call out his own running mate if he made a “mistake,” praised Vance’s performance throughout Tuesday night.
“JD crushed it!” Trump posted on his social media following the conclusion of the debate.
And on Wednesday morning, in a phone call with Fox News Digital, Trump doubled down on his praise, saying Vance’s performance “reconfirmed” his choice of vice-presidential candidate.
“JD was fantastic last night — it just reconfirmed my choice,” Trump told Fox News Digital. “There was a brilliance to what he did.”
Trump campaign’s senior advisers Susie Wiles and Chris LaCivita immediately claimed victory following the debate, saying in a statement that Vance “unequivocally won tonight’s debate in dominating fashion,” and claimed “it was the best debate performance from any vice-presidential candidate in history.”
Walking into the spin room right Tuesday night, the former president’s eldest son Donald Trump Jr., who had strongly supported Vance as Trump’s running mate, told reporters that “there’s nothing to spin.”
Asked about the moment when Vance refused to say if Trump lost the 2020 presidential election, Donald Trump Jr. insisted that the American public are “not worried about that.”
Yet the Harris campaign was quick to zero in on the exchange.
A Harris campaign official claimed a focus group of undecided battleground-state voters they conducted said this back-and forth was the “biggest gap” between the two candidates. The campaign clipped the exchange for a new ad released Wednesday morning.
Jason Miller, senior Trump campaign adviser, in the spin room Tuesday night said, “JD’s a very likable guy. I think his life experience connects with voters.”
“I think Sen. Vance helped us win today because he had a tremendous performance,” Miller said.
(WASHINGTON) — President-elect Donald Trump’s picks for defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, and director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, are continuing to try to shore up support with senators ahead of confirmation hearings next month.
Gabbard will meet with incoming Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., on Thursday. She is also expected to meet with GOP Sen. Bill Hagerty, a member of the Senate Judiciary and Foreign Relations Committees.
This is Gabbard’s first week making the rounds on Capitol Hill since being tapped by Trump to oversee a sprawling network of 18 agencies in his new administration, despite her inexperience in the intelligence field.
A former Democratic congresswoman and member of the National Guard, Gabbard has face scrutiny for 2017 meetings with Syria’s authoritarian leader Bashar Assad (whose regime was toppled this week) and for controversial views on Russia.
Trump remarked on Gabbard, and his other Cabinet picks, during his interview with Time for the magazine’s “Person of the Year” honor. The interview was conducted on Nov. 25.
Trump said he was surprised by the criticism of Gabbard.
“I mean, I think she’s a great American,” he said. “I think she’s a person with tremendous common sense. I’ve watched her for years, and she has nothing to do with Russia. This is another, you know, a mini Russia, Russia, Russia scam.”
When asked if he’d rethink her possible appointment if foreign allies began withholding intelligence, Trump said, “I think probably, if that’s what’s happening. No, I don’t see it. Certainly, if something can be shown to me.”
Hegseth, another embattled Trump pick, is also back on Thursday to meet with senators, including Kentucky Republican Rand Paul. Notably, he’s also expected to meet with Democrat Sen. John Fetterman, the first to meet with him.
Hegseth’s faced pushback amid allegations of sexual impropriety, public drunkenness and other misconduct — which he’s largely denied. But this week, it appeared he was gaining some Republican support.
Trump’s doubled down on support for Hegseth, and pressure from his MAGA allies on potential GOP skeptics has shown early signs of paying off.
Kash Patel, Trump’s pick to lead the FBI, was also spotted back in the Senate hallways on Thursday.
Trump, in the Time interview, was pressed on if he was still considering recess appointments to install his Cabinet picks. Recess appointments would bypass the Senate’s constitutionally-mandated “advice and consent” role regarding Cabinet officials. Trump made a demand that whoever leads the Senate Republican Conference in the new Congress be open to them.
“I really don’t care how they get them approved, as long as they get them approved,” Trump said.
“But I think I have a very good relationship with Senator Thune and the others, all of them. I think almost, almost everybody, many of them I was very instrumental in getting, if not this season, last season, the season before that, I would say more than half,” Trump added.
So far, one of Trump’s pick faced insurmountable opposition.
Former Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz, also accused of sexual misconduct, was Trump’s first pick for attorney general. Gaetz withdrew his name from consideration as opposition mounted to his selection.
Trump was asked by Time what he’d do if the Senate balked at any more of his choices.
“Well, I don’t think they will,” he said. He said he told Gaetz, “You know, Matt, I don’t think this is worth the fight.”
(PHOENIX) — President Joe Biden in Arizona on Friday apologized to Native Americans for the federal government forcing their children into boarding schools where he said they were abused and deprived of their cultural identity.
“For Indigenous peoples, they served as places of trauma and terror for more than 100 years. Tens of thousands of Indigenous children, as young as four years old were taken from their families and communities and forced into boarding schools run by the U.S. government and religious institutions,” he said.
“Nearly 1000 documented Native child deaths, though the real number is likely to be much, much higher. Lost generations, culture and language. Lost trust. It’s horribly, horribly wrong. It’s a sin on our soul,” he continued.
“I formally apologize as president of United States of America for what we did,” he said, emphatically. “I formally apologize!”
The White House had called his trip to Gila River Indian Community outside Phoenix — his first to Indian Country as president — “historic.”
Beforehand, officials said he would discuss the Biden-Harris administration’s record of delivering for tribal communities, including keeping his promise to visit the swing state, which is happening close to Election Day.
“The president also believes that to usher in the next era of the Federal-Tribal relationships we need to fully acknowledge the harms of the past,” the White House said.
“For over 150 years, the federal government ran boarding schools that forcibly removed generations of Native children from their homes to boarding schools often far away. Native children at these schools endured physical, emotional, and sexual abuse, and, as detailed in the Federal Indian Boarding School Investigative Report by the Department of the Interior (DOI), at least 973 children died in these schools,” the White House said.
“The federally-run Indian boarding school system was designed to assimilate Native Americans by destroying Native culture, language, and identity through harsh militaristic and assimilationist methods,” it said.
