Nikki Haley responds to Liz Cheney’s criticism of her Trump support
(WASHINGTON) — Former Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley pushed back against criticism from former Republican Rep. Liz Cheney on Haley’s support for former President Donald Trump despite previous comments saying she found him unfit for office.
In an exclusive This Week interview on Sunday, ABC News co-anchor Jonathan Karl asked Cheney about Haley saying she’s on “standby” to campaign for Trump after the former South Carolina governor openly opposed him in the Republican primaries.
Cheney, who last week endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris, told Karl, “I can’t understand [Haley’s] position on this in any kind of a principled way. I think that, you know, the things that she said, that she made clear when she was running in the primary, those things are true.”
During the Republican presidential primary, Haley said Trump lacked focus and that “chaos follows him.” Months later, Haley said she would vote for Trump despite her disappointment with him.
Reacting to Cheney’s remarks, Haley told Fox and Friends Monday morning, “I respect her decision, but she can’t say my decision is not principled. It actually is.”
“We can either vote based on style or we can vote on substance. I’m voting based on substance,” she continued. “I’m looking at the fact we can’t live the next four years like we did the last four years. This is no contest.”
Seeking to contrast Trump with Harris on the economy, border and energy, Haley added, “We should be very clear, if you don’t like him, say you don’t like him, but you can’t say that his policies are worse than Kamala Harris’.”
Haley also directly criticized Trump and running mate Sen. JD Vance when asked about the “gender gap” with women supporting Harris more than Trump.
“I think it’s because Donald Trump and JD Vance need to change the way they speak about women. You don’t need to call Kamala dumb. She didn’t get this far, you know, just by accident — she’s here. That’s what it is. She’s a prosecutor,” Haley said. “You don’t need to go and talk about intelligence, or looks or anything else. Just focus on the policies. When you call even a Democrat woman dumb, Republican women get their backs up too.”
Last month, Trump said he’s “entitled” to the personal attacks aimed at Harris — because he doesn’t respect her and doesn’t “have a lot of respect for her intelligence.”
Haley reiterated that Trump should ditch those attacks to focus on substance.
“The bottom line is, we win on policy. Stick to the policies, leave all the other stuff. That’s how he can win,” Haley said.
Vice President Kamala Harris having worked there in college has repeatedly been brought up by speakers at the Democratic National Convention — almost as if it’s on a menu — and her campaign is using it as a symbolic, shorthand way of connecting her experience with that of working-class Americans.
Harris has noted in the past and now in campaign ads that she worked a summer job at McDonald’s in her late teens, between her freshman and sophomore years at Howard University in Washington, D.C.
Her early job is a common one among Americans, according to data from the chain which says one out of every eight Americans has worked at McDonald’s.
The giant burger chain did not immediately respond to ABC News’ request for comment.
Harris and Walz have pointed out that their working-class roots are in sharp contrast to former President Donald Trump’s much wealthier upbringing. Walz took a dig at a campaign event a few weeks ago, claiming that Trump wouldn’t be able to cut it as a fast-food worker.
“He couldn’t run that damn McFlurry machine if it cost him anything,” he said.
Texas Rep. Jasmine Crockett took a jab at the DNC.
“Let’s compare their resumes, shall we?,” she said. “One candidate worked at McDonald’s while she was in college at an HBCU, [Howard University]. The other was born with the silver spoon in his mouth and helped his daddy in the family business.”
The McDonald’s connection has extended to second gentleman Doug Emhoff, who not only worked there but also was named employee of the month, which he proudly recounted to the convention crowd, telling how the experience had helped shape his career.
“I still have the framed picture which you just saw, and there was a ring, golden arches and all. And then, I waited tables, parked cars. I was working full-time, so I could afford to go to college part-time. And thanks to partial scholarships, student loans, and a little help from my dad, I got myself through law school, and I got my first job as a lawyer,” he said.
Harris’ time behind the fast-food counter has even impressed one of the most famous — and notoriously frequent — McDonald’s customers, former President Bill Clinton, mocked in “SNL” skits as stopping there while jogging in Washington and eating other customers’ fries.
“She greeted every person with that thousand-watt smile and said, ‘How can I help you?’ Now she’s at the pinnacle of power and she’s still asking, ‘How can I help you?'” Clinton said at the DNC Wednesday night.
“I’ll be so happy when she actually enters the White House as president because she will break my record as the president who spent the most time at McDonald’s,” he joked.
It’s unclear whether Harris herself will bring up her McDonald’s experience during her nomination acceptance speech on Thursday night, but it could very well become something she can say she has in common with working-class voters on the campaign trail.
(NEW YORK) — The United States is dealing with a “heightened threat environment,” Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas says, as the FBI is investigating an apparent second assassination attempt against former President Donald Trump.
It’s not only the “historic threat of foreign terrorists” that persists, but also home-grown extremists, Mayorkas said Tuesday.
“We’re now speaking of individuals radicalized to violence because of ideologies of hate, anti-government sentiment, personal narratives and other motivations propagated on online platforms,” the secretary said during the POLITICO AI & Tech Summit.
Threats from both at home and abroad are worrisome, senior officials from the Department of Homeland Security, the FBI and members of Congress say. FBI Director Christopher Wray has previously said he sees “blinking red lights everywhere” in terms of terror threats.
On Sunday, Ryan Wesley Routh was allegedly lying in wait for nearly 12 hours near the Republican presidential nominee’s West Palm Beach golf course before a Secret Service agent spotted him, according to a criminal complaint.
Routh did not get off a single shot, Secret Service Acting Director Ron Rowe said Monday, and at no time was the former president in the sight line of the suspect. The suspect was taken into custody and faces charges of possession of a firearm as a convicted felon and possession of a firearm with an obliterated serial number, prosecutors said.
The former president has the same level of security that is “quite approximate” to President Joe Biden’s, Mayorkas said Tuesday, adding that agents did their job on Sunday and “they deserve to be commended for it.”
Trump, speaking Tuesday in a phone interview with ABC News’ Jonathan Karl, also praised the Secret Service for stopping the apparent assassination attempt.
“I’m fine. The Secret Service did a good job, actually,” he said.
Trump also spoke about the heightened threat environment, telling ABC News, “Probably always been dangerous, but it’s more so now, I think.”
In the wake of the July 13 attempted assassination of Trump at his rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, the Department of Homeland Security and the FBI issued a bulletin to law enforcement across the country warning them that violent extremists could try to conduct “follow-on or retaliatory” attacks at events over the next few months related to the 2024 presidential election.
During a March hearing in front of Congress, the FBI director testified that threats from various groups have reached a “whole other level.”
“Even before [Hamas’ attack against Israel on] October 7, I would have told this committee that we were at a heightened threat level from a terrorism perspective — in the sense that it’s the first time I’ve seen in a long, long time,” Wray said on March 11.
“The threats from homegrown violent extremists — that is jihadist-inspired, extremists, domestic violent extremists, foreign terrorist organizations and state-sponsored terrorist organizations — all being elevated at one time since October 7, though, that threat has gone to a whole other level,” he said at the time.
In the aftermath of the July 13 assassination attempt on Trump, the Secret Service said it changed the way the former president is protected. Former director Kimberly Cheadle, who came under scrutiny for the agency’s failure to prevent the assassination attempt, also resigned.
Secretary Mayorkas appointed a new acting director — Rowe — and praised him for stepping up and leading the agency.
“I appreciate his willingness to lead the Secret Service at this incredibly challenging moment, as the agency works to get to the bottom of exactly what happened on July 13 and cooperate with ongoing investigations and Congressional oversight,” Mayorkas said at the time. “At the same time, the Secret Service must effectively carry on its expansive mission that includes providing 24/7 protection for national leaders and visiting dignitaries and securing events of national significance in this dynamic and heightened threat environment.”
During an April hearing in front of a congressional committee, the secretary said there’s been a “dramatic increase” in the number of threats facing Jewish and Muslim people in the wake of Hamas’ Oct. 7 attacks.
“We’re certainly operating in a charged political environment, and there are many reasons for that,” Rep. Seth Magaziner, D-R.I., a member of the House Homeland Security Committee, told ABC News on Monday.
“Certainly the partisanship of our country in recent years has something to do with it, easy access to buy military-style weapons also plays a role in it, and also importantly, our adversaries are purposefully trying to stoke divisions within our country between Americans through social media and other means,” he said.
The intelligence community has warned of foreign actors, mainly Russia, China and Iran, carrying out influence operations in the United States with an aim to divide the country ahead of the 2024 presidential election.
Earlier this month, the Justice Department alleged that two employees of Russia Today, or RT — a Russian state-controlled media outlet, implemented a nearly $10 million scheme “to fund and direct a Tennessee-based company to publish and disseminate content deemed favorable to the Russian government.”
“So it’s important that the Department of Justice just announced a series of actions to prosecute individuals who are involved in a Russian plot to try to divide Americans against each other politically,” said Magaziner, who’s also the ranking member on the House Subcommittee on Counterterrorism, Law Enforcement, and Intelligence.
“And we need all of our federal agencies, the Department of Justice, Homeland Security, CISA [Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency] and others, to remain vigilant and to expose those foreign actors who are trying to turn Americans against each other,” he added.
John Sandweg, former general counsel at the Department of Homeland Security under then-President Barack Obama, agreed.
“The situation is inflamed by a multitude of factors, but I do think it is important to emphasize the role that foreign state adversaries are playing — not only with regards to their support for extremist groups abroad, or efforts to disrupt and influence the election, but also through their efforts to further divide us as a nation,” Sandweg told ABC News on Monday, adding this is an “unprecedented” threat environment.
(NEW YORK) — Former President Donald Trump’s advisers may have publicly insisted he doesn’t need any debate prep, but the former president is preparing more than he’s letting on, sources tell ABC News.
Trump is holding informal policy sessions with a small team of advisers, including GOP Rep. Matt Gaetz and former Democratic Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, who once challenged Vice President Kamala Harris on the debate stage in 2019, the sources said.
Gaetz has been firing questions at Trump around some of the more challenging issues, such as his legal troubles, including his federal indictments on election interference and retaining classified documents, criminal conviction in the New York hush-money case and stance on abortion, according to the sources.
Two people familiar with Trump’s preparation also told ABC News that Trump has been briefed on Harris’ past debates, including the headline-making moment when she hit back at former Vice President Mike Pence with the words, “Mr. Vice President, I’m speaking.” That exchange went viral then, and Trump has privately told his allies he won’t let that happen to him.
Sources told ABC News that Trump’s recent press address on Friday has left some on the GOP side with pre-debate concerns.
While Trump has continued with his campaign schedule, his movements on Friday puzzled some Republicans. Trump, following his appeal of the $5 million a federal jury awarded writer E. Jean Carroll after finding him liable for sexually assaulting and defaming her, came before the cameras rattling off — in often vivid detail — the accusations of sexual misconduct from multiple women over the years. All of which he has denied.
Meanwhile, as ABC News previously reported, Harris has been engaged in traditional debate prep in Pittsburgh.
The cameras caught her in the city on Sunday on a walk with second gentleman, Doug Emhoff. But, she ignored two shouted questions on Trump’s claims that he’ll jail his political opponents and how she plans to respond to personal attacks from Trump on the debate stage.
On Saturday, Trump posted on TruthSocial, writing, “… the 2024 Election, where Votes have just started being cast, will be under the closest professional scrutiny and, WHEN I WIN, those people that CHEATED will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the Law, which will include long term prison sentences so that this Depravity of Justice does not happen again.”
Trump’s false claims of election fraud in the 2020 election have continually been disproven.
Harris, on Sunday, did respond to a third question shouted at her by the media about whether she was ready by echoing, “ready,” and giving a thumbs up before disappearing around the side of a building.
In related news, Trump’s running mate, Sen. JD Vance, will appear in the spin room following the debate, ABC News has confirmed.
The ABC News presidential debate will take place on Sept. 10 at 9 p.m. ET and air on ABC and stream on ABC News Live, Disney+ and Hulu.