Kamala Harris, Donald Trump shake hands again at 9/11 anniversary ceremony
(NEW YORK) — Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump shook hands again Wednesday morning as they arrived at the 9/11 anniversary ceremony in downtown Manhattan.
Harris, who was standing between New York Sen. Chuck Schumer and President Joe Biden, reached over the president to shake hands with Trump, who was standing next to former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg.
The greeting came less than 12 hours after Harris and Trump met for the first time at a presidential debate in Philadelphia, hosted by ABC News.
(CHICAGO) — Glenn Charles Jr. grew up on Chicago’s South Side. This week, his business is the first Black-owned company to be contracted for Exposition Services at the Democratic National Convention.
Speaking to ABC News outside the United Center, Charles reflected on the journey to get here and what it means for him and his team — which doubled in size in preparation for the convention.
“Our name is on most of the signage around the property, right?” he asked. “So just walking in the building and seeing the Show Strategies brand next to a DNC sign, that for me is kind of a moment.”
The four-day convention is bringing thousands of visitors to the city, and officials expect it to have a $150 to $200 million impact on the local economy.
Christy George, the executive director of the DNC’s Chicago 2024 Host Committee, called it “an incredible opportunity to showcase what Chicago is made of.”
“And the heart of Chicago is our people and all of our small businesses,” she said.
The committee sought to include as many local vendors as possible, she said, holding outreach summits across the city and working hand in hand with businesses through the application process.
“On the worker front, it’s in the hundreds. On the vendor front, it’s in the tens,” she said.
Eight of the 17 major contracts were given to minority and women-owned businesses, the committee announced previously.
“What we resulted with was a really diverse set of vendors for a number of our prime contracts,” she told ABC News. “It really, truly is going to be the most inclusive convention in history.”
Brook Jay, the CEO of All Terrain Collective, said being selected by the DNC was a boon to her business.
“I think having the DNC on our resume can do nothing but good things for this company,” she said. “We’ve been around since 1998 and we’ve done some of the most incredible projects you can imagine. But this definitely has been a highlight, and I think it really has piqued our interest about doing more things in politics.”
Jay said her company, which does experiential marketing, partnered with another woman-owned business and a Latino-owned business.
“We are really a true representation of what the Chicago landscape looks like,” she said.
Both Jay and Charles said putting together an event as large in scale as the DNC was a challenge, but that it was also an opportunity for their businesses to learn and grow.
“This industry is underrepresented from people that look like me, and also people from the South and West sides of Chicago who may not know that the hospitality and convention industry is a thriving industry that you can make a really good living off of,” Charles said. “So I wanted to be the representative for those individuals and give them direct insights to something that they probably have never witnessed before.”
(WASHINGTON) — President Donald Trump sparked criticism when he said the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian award, is “much better” than the Medal of Honor, the nation’s highest military honor, because soldiers are in “bad shape” or dead when they receive it – comments the former president’s campaign suggested were misinterpreted.
During an event at his Bedminster, NJ estate Thursday night, which was about antisemitism, Trump called attention to a major donor, Miriam Adelson – the widow of his friend and business mogul Sheldon Adelson – upon whom he bestowed the Medal of Freedom in 2018.
“Sheldon and Miriam were best friends together, and I was in their group. And we just had always a great relationship, known her for a long time,” Trump said. “Sheldon was one of the greatest businessmen in the world, and she’s turning out to be one of the greatest businesswomen of the world.”
Trump then recalled the moment Miriam Adelson received the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
“But I really, I watched Sheldon sitting so proud in the White House when we gave Miriam the Presidential Medal of Freedom,” he said. “That’s the highest award you can get as a civilian. It’s the equivalent of the Congressional Medal of Honor, but civilian version, it’s actually much better, because everyone gets the Congressional Medal of Honor, they’re soldiers. They’re either in very bad shape because they’ve been hit so many times by bullets, or they’re dead. She gets it and she’s healthy, beautiful woman.”
Miriam Adelson was awarded the Medal of Freedom as a “committed doctor, philanthropist, and humanitarian.” “As a committed member of the American Jewish community, she has supported Jewish schools, Holocaust memorial organizations, Friends of the Israel Defense Forces, and Birthright Israel, among other causes,” the Trump White House wrote in part.
The Kamala Harris campaign pounced on Trump’s words, saying he “knows nothing about service to anyone or anything but himself.”
And progressive veterans group VoteVets said in a statement: “It isn’t just that Donald Trump doesn’t respect Veterans and their sacrifice. It’s that Donald Trump hates Veterans and their sacrifice, because he looks so small in comparison to them.”
In a statement, the Trump campaign said the former president was referring to the experience of giving the award, not denigrating the Medal of Honor or the actions of servicemembers.
“President Trump was simply saying how it can be an emotionally difficult experience to give the Congressional Medal of Honor to veterans who have been wounded or tragically killed defending our country, as he proudly did when he was Commander in Chief,” said campaign spokesperson Brian Hughes.
Trump, who holds himself up as a champion of the military and regularly discusses his record of rebuilding the military while in office, has drawn fire for swipes at servicemembers.
One of the most notable examples was when he criticized another Republican, John McCain — the late Arizona senator and former presidential candidate — who spent five years as a POW during the Vietnam War, casting doubt on his status as a war hero.
“I like people who weren’t captured,” Trump said in 2015. At the time, the remarks set off a firestorm, including from members of the Republican party, who called for him to drop out of the 2016 presidential race.
More recently, Trump came under scrutiny when The Atlantic reported in 2020 that he had called those who died in war “suckers” and “losers.” Trump has vehemently denied the reported remarks, which President Biden repeated on the campaign trail before he dropped out of the race. ABC News has not independently confirmed the story.
During the Bedminster event, Trump highlighted the importance of the Jewish vote, while also making false claims about various Democrats, including Harris.
“We’re here tonight because we believe that this vicious outbreak of militant and antisemitism is very militant. Must be given no quarter, no safe harbor, no place in a civilized society. We must reject it in our schools, reject it in our foreign policy, reject it in our immigration system and reject it at the ballot box,” Trump told the crowd.
Trump then repeated a dual loyalty trope – that itself has been criticized as antisemitic – that American Jews owe a dual loyalty to Israel or having two separate interests that conflict, telling the audience, “Jewish people have to not vote by habit. You vote by habit for Democrats, and the Democrats are really against you.”
Trump continued to make similar comments, suggesting that Jewish people need to “stop” voting for Democrats. “You have to be smart,” Trump said, before discussing his list of accomplishments such as the Abraham Accords and withdrawing from the Iran nuclear deal.
(WASHINGTON) — Kamala Harris’ presidential campaign expressed optimism about its path to the presidency this week, telling reporters in a memo that the change atop the ticket could help the vice president reach a new crop of voters as the campaign plans an aggressive approach to key battleground states.
The extraordinary and rapid ascension of Harris to be the presumptive Democratic nominee “opens up persuadable voters,” campaign manager Jennifer O’Malley Dillon wrote.
“The race is more fluid now. The Vice President is well-known but less well-known than both Trump and President Biden, particularly among Dem-leaning constituencies,” she added.
O’Malley Dillon said some in this “expanded universe of winnable voters were previously Democrats and support down-ballot Democrats this cycle,” a possible reference to the fact that some polls showed Biden with less support than Democrats running further down the ballot.
The memo outlined a plan to capitalize on Harris’ appeal with Black, Latino and women voters. It also suggested Harris could attract people who did not vote for the Democratic ticket in 2020 but moved toward Democrats in the years since.
Meanwhile, O’Malley Dillon stressed that the campaign has “multiple pathways” to 270 electoral votes and plans to “play offense” in the competitive Blue Wall states of Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, as well as the Sun Belt states of North Carolina, Georgia, Arizona and Nevada.
Since Sunday, Harris has earned the backing of Democratic Party leaders and enough Democratic National Convention delegates to make her the nominee if they kept true to their pledges — a major milestone for the vice president.
The memo comes a day after the vice president had her first campaign event in battleground Wisconsin on Tuesday, sharply framing her race against former President Donald Trump.