Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson hospitalized after suffering second-degree burns at truck show: Campaign
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(MOUNT AIRY, N.C.) — Mark Robinson, North Carolina’s Republican candidate for governor, was hospitalized after suffering burns at a campaign event Friday evening in Mount Airy, his campaign said.
Robinson’s campaign said he suffered second-degree burns at a truck show.
“This evening following an incident at a campaign appearance at the Mayberry Truck Show in Mt. Airy, Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson was treated at Northern Regional Hospital for second-degree burns. He is in good spirits, appreciates the outpouring of well wishes, and is excited to return to the campaign trail as scheduled first thing tomorrow morning,” Mike Lonergan, the campaign’s communications director, said in a statement.
Robinson, the current lieutenant governor of the state, has been under fire after being accused of posting inflammatory comments on the message board of a pornography website more than a decade ago, according to a report published by CNN earlier this month. Robinson has denied the accusations.
Since the release of the report, several of Robinson’s key staffers have “stepped down” from the campaign, including general consultant and senior advisor Conrad Pogorzelski, III; campaign manager Chris Rodriguez; finance director Heather Whillier; and deputy campaign manager Jason Rizk.
(WASHINGTON) — The gender gap is considered a crucial factor in the presidential election between Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump.
Both candidates tried to turn the gap to their advantage, with Harris making reproductive freedom a centerpiece of her campaign while Trump focused heavily on motivating men to turn out to the polls.
Men and women have long voted differently in presidential races, with the gender gap averaging 19 points in exit polls since 1996. But several pollsters told ABC News they were bracing for a “gender chasm” this year given the contrast of a man and a woman at the top of the ticket as well as the prominence of abortion rights as an issue after the fall of Roe v. Wade.
Preliminary results from exit poll data, which may change as polls are updated throughout election night, provide some insight on vote preferences among men and women.
Nationally, Harris has a 10-point advantage with women — 54% to Trump’s 44% — but her support is off a slim 3 points from President Joe Biden’s support with the group in 2020.
Trump, meanwhile, is leading by an identical 10-point margin among men.
There is also a huge gender gap between young men (who are roughly split between Harris and Trump 49%-47%) and young women who back Harris by 26 points.
ABC News has not projected a winner in these races.
Georgia
In Georgia, preliminary results show Harris with a 7-point advantage with women over Trump: 53% support to Trump’s 46%.
Compared to 2020 exit polls, Harris is running slightly behind Biden with women. Women went for Biden by 9 percentage points. Biden ultimately flipped the state blue for the first time in decades, eking out a narrow victory over Trump there by less than 12,000 votes.
Trump has a 12-point advantage with men in Georgia, preliminary results show: 55% to Harris’ 43%. That is the same gap he had there in the 2020 election against Biden.
Among younger voters, those ages 18 to 29, women are swinging for Harris by 29 points. Trump, meanwhile, only has a 2-point advantage among men in the same age group.
North Carolina
In North Carolina, preliminary results show women going for Harris by 13 points while men go for Trump by 15 points.
That is a much wider gender gap than the state saw in 2020, according to exit polls. Biden won women by 7 points there while Trump won men by 9 points.
Among younger voters, Harris has a 33-point lead with women while Trump has a 23-point lead with men.
Pennsylvania
In Pennsylvania — a battleground that is considered to be a possible tipping point state — Harris has a 12-point lead among women: 55% compared to Trump’s 43%.
Trump’s lead with men is slightly higher: he has a 14-point among men: 56% compared to Harris’ 42%.
Again, preliminary exit poll results show a wider gender gap between Harris and Trump than between Biden and Trump. In 2020, women went for Biden by 11 points and men for Trump by 11 points.
Women ages 18 to 29 are swinging for Harris by a 40-point margin, while Trump is leading with men in that age range by 24 points.
Arizona
In Arizona, women are going for Harris by 3 points: 51% to Trump’s 48%.
Trump, meanwhile, boasts a bigger lead among men: 52% support from the group compared to Harris’ 45%.
That’s also a wider gender gap than in 2020, when Biden won women by 3 points and Trump men by 2 points.
Michigan
Harris boasts a 8-point advantage with women in the battleground state, according to preliminary results: 53% compared to Trump’s 45%.
Trump has a 11-point lead among men: 54% compared to Harris’ 43%.
Among younger voters ages 18 to 29, Harris has a 16-point lead with women while Trump has a 20-point lead with men, according to preliminary results.
Wisconsin
Harris is winning with women in Wisconsin by 11 points: 55% compared to Trump’s 44%. She is running slightly behind Biden’s 13-point advantage with women in 2020.
Trump has a 9-point lead with men: 54% compared to Harris’ 45%. Trump in 2020 won men by 10 points in the state.
Among younger voters ages 18 to 29, Harris has a 18-point lead with women while Trump has a 5-point lead with men, according to preliminary results.
Nevada
In Nevada, Harris is winning women 53% to Trump’s 43% — a 10-point gap.
Trump is winning men by a slightly larger margin, according to preliminary results: 55% to 41%.
Doug Mills/The New York Times/Bloomberg via Getty Images
(WASHINGTON) — Vice President Kamala Harris forcibly panned the recent “harmful” attacks on Springfield, Ohio’s Haitian migrants during a National Association of Black Journalists panel in Philadelphia on Tuesday where she delivered her most extensive comments on those attacks and on race more largely, a topic she has shied away from focusing on — a stark contrast from her 2019 run for president.
“It’s a crying shame,” Harris said when asked about former President Donald Trump and his running mate, Sen. JD Vance, spreading the unsubstantiated claims that Haitian migrants in Springfield, Ohio, were stealing and eating neighbors’ pets. “I mean, my heart breaks for this community.”
A spokesperson for the city of Springfield told ABC News these claims are false, and that there have been “no credible reports or specific claims of pets being harmed, injured or abused by individuals in the immigrant community.”
A rash of bomb threats have targeted schools, government buildings and elected officials’ homes in Springfield, forcing evacuations and closures. Harris noted that some children in Springfield had to evacuate their schools because of bomb threats on what was picture day for them.
“Children. Children. A whole community put in fear,” she said.
The vice president said those in power should understand the weight of their words and be measured in what they say. She argued that Trump’s comments about the migrants in Springfield have lost him the public’s trust.
“When you are bestowed with a microphone that is that big, there is a profound responsibility that comes with that, that is an extension of what should not be lost in this moment, this concept of the public trust to then understand what the public trust means,” she said. “It means that you have been invested with trust to be responsible in the way you use your words, much less how you conduct yourself, and especially when you have been and then seek to be again, president of the United States of America.”
She called on the rhetoric to stop and for Americans to “turn the page.”
“I know that people are deeply troubled by what is happening to that community in Springfield, Ohio, and it’s got to stop,” Harris told the panel. “And we’ve got to say that you cannot be entrusted with standing behind the seal of the president of the United States of America, engaging in that hateful rhetoric that, as usual, is designed to divide us as a country, is designed to have people pointing fingers at each other.”
Harris called the former president’s comments about migrants in Springfield “exhausting” and “harmful.”
“I think most people in our country, regardless of their race, are starting to see through this nonsense and to say, ‘You know what, let’s turn the page on this,'” she said. “This is exhausting and it’s harmful and it’s hateful and grounded in some age-old stuff that we should not have the tolerance for.”
Harris’ comments on Tuesday marked her harshest rebuke of the unfounded claims about Springfield’s Haitian migrants. Despite being asked multiple times by reporters about them, Harris had previously declined to comment.
The panel comes just days after an apparent assassination attempt on Trump at his West Palm Beach golf club. The White House said Harris had a “cordial” call with the former president on Tuesday.
“I checked on to see if he was OK, and I told him what I have said publicly, ‘there is no place for political violence in our country,'” Harris said of the call. “I am in this election, in this race, for many reasons, including to fight for our democracy and in a democracy, there is no place for political violence. We can and should have healthy debates and discussion and disagreements, but not resort to violence to resolve those issues.”
Asked if she felt Secret Service could keep her and her family safe, Harris said, “I do.”
“But I mean, you can go back to Ohio, not everybody has Secret Service, and there are far too many people in our country right now who are not feeling safe.”
The panel discussion also featured Harris’s most extensive remarks on race since launching her presidential bid over the summer.
She tied many of her economic proposals to the Black community, including her small business tax credit, saying “part of what I also know is that our young Black men, our Black men, just like any group of people … are really the backbone of our economy overall. And when they do better economically, we all do better.”
But in the time since she got into the race, at a similar NABJ panel interview in July, Trump got into a fiery back-and-forth with reporters and falsely questioned Harris’ race.
“So I’ve known her a long time, indirectly, not directly, very much, and she was always of Indian heritage, and she was only promoting Indian heritage,” Trump said during that heated exchange. “I didn’t know she was Black until a number of years ago, when she happened to turn Black, and now she wants to be known as Black. So I don’t know, is she Indian or is she Black?”
Harris — the child of an Indian mother and Jamaican father, both immigrants to the United States — has not directly responded to Trump’s comments. In an August interview with CNN, after being asked to comment on the personal attacks Trump has lobbied at the vice president surrounding her racial identity, Harris dodged.
“Same old, tired playbook,” she told the network. “Next question, please.”
And when asked to comment on the same attacks during ABC News’ debate last week, instead of speaking about her own racial identity, Harris chose a more generic answer.
“I think it’s a — a tragedy that we have someone who wants to be president who has consistently over the course of his career attempted to use race to divide the American people,” she told ABC News’ David Muir.
Harris is not new to people falsely questioning her “Blackness.” During her presidential run in 2019, Harris faced questions about whether she was Black enough to identify as a Black candidate.
“I’m Black, and I’m proud of being Black,” Harris said on “The Breakfast Club” radio show in February of that year. “I was born Black. I will die Black, and I’m not going to make excuses for anybody because they don’t understand.”
Harris’ 2019 campaign also put a larger focus on race compared to her current run for president.
At the NBC debate in 2019, Harris strong-armed her way into the opportunity to take on then-Vice President Joe Biden on efforts to desegregate public schools, specifically school busing programs.
“As the only Black person on this stage, I would like to speak on the issue of race,” Harris said, interjecting as the moderators were moving on to someone else.
During that debate, Biden brought up his ability to work with politicians across the aisle, fondly recounting his relationship with segregationist Sens. James O. Eastland of Mississippi and Herman E. Talmadge of Georgia. Harris, who directly benefited from busing programs, jumped in to respond.
“It was not only that, but you also worked with them to oppose busing,” Harris continued. “And you know, there was a little girl in California who was part of the second class to integrate her public schools, and she was bused to school every day. And that little girl was me.”
In another departure from her time as a candidate in 2019, as vice president, and as Biden’s running mate during his bid for reelection, Harris hardly mentions one of her top issues: Black maternal mortality.
In 2020, Harris had a section on her website’s issues page devoted to “Health Justice For Black Communities,” with a commitment to “fight to end the Black maternal mortality crisis.” Now, her website only says she’ll “combat maternal mortality” more generally. She introduced the Maternal CARE Act to tackle the issue while in the Senate. The bill mentioned “Black women” 10 times.
ABC News has reached out to the Harris campaign for comment on the shift between her two presidential campaigns, and whether this is part of political calculation ahead of the general election. They did not respond by the time of publication.
(DOUGLAS, Ariz.) -Vice President Kamala Harris will visit the U.S.-Mexico border on Friday — her first trip there in more than three years — to call for tougher security measures and attack former President Donald Trump on an issue that has plagued her, a senior campaign official said.
Harris plans to deliver remarks in Douglas, Arizona, a border town in the critical battleground state, where she will continue to criticize Trump for his role earlier this year in tanking a bipartisan bill that was the result of months of negotiations.
“The American people deserve a president who cares more about border security than playing political games,” Harris plans to say, according to the senior official, who was granted anonymity to discuss a speech the vice president has yet to deliver.
She will take a strong line in her remarks Friday and make the case that “American sovereignty requires setting rules at the border and enforcing them,” the senior official previewed.
As part of her trip, Harris will also meet with border patrol agents, the senior official said, and tout the pay raises the Biden administration gave agents and argue they “need more resources to do their jobs to keep America safe.”
Harris’ trip comes as immigration is a top issue for many voters ahead of the election. A recent ABC News/Ipsos poll found that 70% viewed immigration at the southern border as an “important” issue for them, and Trump led Harris by 10 points on who voters thought was best suited to handle it.
In 2021, President Joe Biden tasked Harris with the likely doomed-from-the-start assignment of solving the root causes of migration amid surges of migrants arriving at the southern border. Republicans have used this to label Harris the “border czar” though her task did involve U.S. policy at the border itself.
The last time Harris made a trip to the border was in June 2021. Her infrequent visits have also been another source attacks from her opponents.
The senior official said the campaign hopes Harris’s trip to the border will help close the gap between Trump on the issue.
Trump held what amounted to a preemptive attack at a news conference in New York on Thursday.
“She should save her airfare,” Trump said. “She should go back to the White House and tell the president to close the border. He can do it with the signing of a – of a – just a signature on a piece of paper to the border control; instead, she’s going there to try to convince people she wasn’t as bad as everybody knows she was.”
Harris’ campaign is is releasing a new ad on Friday tied to her trip to the border. The 30-second ad, titled “Never Backed Down,” highlights Harris’ work as a prosecutor.
“She put cartel members and drug traffickers behind bars, and she will secure our border,” a narrator says in the ad. The ad says Harris’ plans for the border include hiring more law enforcement agents, boosting technology and to “stop fentanyl smuggling and human trafficking.”
In her remarks at the border, Harris will say tackling fentanyl will be “a top priority” for her as president and will propose installing new fentanyl detection machines at the border, a senior campaign official said. She will also continue to call on China to quash Chinese companies’ manufacturing of fentanyl precursor chemicals, the official added.
“We need a leader with a real plan to fix the border and that’s Kamala Harris,” the narrator says at the end of the ad.
ABC News’ Kelsey Walsh contributed to this report.
