Pelosi blames Harris’ loss on Biden’s late exit and no open Democratic primary
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(WASHINGTON, D.C) — Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, in portions of a New York Times podcast interview published Friday, blamed Vice President Kamala Harris’ election loss on President Joe Biden’s late exit from the presidential race and the lack of Democratic primary.
Pelosi told Lulu Garcia-Navarro, a host of “The Interview,” that “had the president [Biden] gotten out sooner, there may have been other candidates in the race,” the paper said in a story about the Thursday interview. The exchange won’t be posted in full until Saturday.
“The anticipation was that, if the president were to step aside, that there would be an open primary,” Pelosi said.
“And as I say, Kamala may have, I think she would have done well in that and been stronger going forward. But we don’t know that. That didn’t happen. We live with what happened. And because the president endorsed Kamala Harris immediately, that really made it almost impossible to have a primary at that time. If it had been much earlier, it would have been different,” she added.
As ABC News has reported, Pelosi worked behind the scenes to urge Biden to drop out of the presidential race following his performance at CNN’s debate.
The Times reported Pelosi also took issue with Independent Sen. Bernie Sanders saying, after Harris’ loss, that “It should come as no great surprise that a Democratic Party which has abandoned working class people would find that the working class has abandoned them.”
“Bernie Sanders has not won,” she said. “With all due respect, and I have a great deal of respect for him, for what he stands for, but I don’t respect him saying that the Democratic Party has abandoned the working-class families.”
The paper reported she suggested that cultural issues were more to blame for Democrats’ losses among working-class voters.
“Guns, God and gays — that’s the way they say it,” she reportedly said. “Guns, that’s an issue; gays, that’s an issue, and now they’re making the trans issue such an important issue in their priorities; and in certain communities, what they call God, what we call a woman’s right to choose.”
(WASHINGTON) — Former President Donald Trump has been spreading false claims about the Biden-Harris administration’s response to Hurricane Helene, including the baseless claim that the administration is using Federal Emergency Management Agency money to house illegal migrants. Some of Trump’s allies, including Elon Musk, have been amplifying those claims.
Those claims are not true. But ironically, Trump attempted something similar to what he falsely claims the Biden/Harris administration is doing when he was president.
Back in 2019, Trump used money from FEMA’s disaster fund for migrant programs at the southern border. In August 2019, the Trump administration told Congress it intended to shift $271 million in funding from DHS — including $155 million from FEMA’s Disaster Relief Fund — to pay for detaining and transporting undocumented immigrants and temporary hearing locations for asylum-seekers.
According to a FEMA monthly report, $38 million was given to Immigration and Customs Enforcement in August of that year.
At the time, Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer called it “backwards and cruel” to divert FEMA money at the start of hurricane season.
“Congress appropriated these funds to meet the American people’s priorities and I strongly oppose this effort to undermine our constitutional authority,” Schumer said at the time.
The White House has been hitting back at the misinformation, stressing that funding for migrant services is run through a separate spigot at Customs and Border Patrol and is not related to FEMA’s disaster recovery efforts. FEMA has also created a fact-checking page on its website.
As for the Harris campaign, they’re letting the Biden administration take the lead on combating misinformation, while amplifying the official response.
But the vice president called Trump out Monday afternoon for pushing falsehoods.
“There’s a lot of mis- and disinformation being pushed out there by the former president about what is available, in particular, to the survivors of Helene,” Harris said. “And, first of all, it’s extraordinarily irresponsible. It’s about him. It’s not about you.”
(WASHINGTON) — President-elect Donald Trump on Thursday took credit for killing the House Republican-proposed government funding bill, telling ABC News there will be a government shutdown unless Congress eliminates or extends the limit on government borrowing.
“We’re not going to fall into the debt ceiling quicksand,” Trump said in an exclusive phone interview. “There won’t be anything approved unless the debt ceiling is done with.”
Trump said he is concerned that if government borrowing reaches the limit set by the debt ceiling, it could lead to an economic depression. Under current law, the federal government would hit its borrowing limit sometime in the spring of 2025, during the first months of the second Trump presidency. Trump said he wants it taken care of now, while Joe Biden is president.
“By doing what I’m doing, I put it into the Biden administration,” Trump said. “In this administration, not in my administration.”
“The interesting thing is, [the debt ceiling] possibly means nothing, or it means [the] depression of 1929,” Trump added. “Nobody really knows. It means nothing, but psychologically it may mean a lot, right? In other words, it doesn’t have a real meaning other than you’ve violated something. And that may be just, one day, half a story, or it may lead to the depression of 1929 and nobody wants to take the chance, except the Democrats.”
Congress must pass a funding bill by Friday night to avoid a shutdown of major federal services.
Trump said he is more concerned about the debt ceiling, which was not part of the spending bill rejected by the House on Wednesday after Trump and ally Elon Musk weighed in, than he is in the level of government spending.
“I don’t mind the spending for the farmers and for disaster relief from North Carolina, etc., but that’s all,” he said, referring to $100 billion in disaster relief aid and $10 billion in assistance to farmers.
When asked about concerns about a potential shutdown, the president-elect reiterated there will be a shutdown if the debt ceiling isn’t addressed, and claimed it would be Biden’s fault.
“Shutdowns only inure to the person who’s president,” Trump said. “That’s what I tried to teach [former House Speaker] Kevin McCarthy, but I obviously didn’t do a very good job [with] a shutdown because he kept giving them extensions into my territory, a shutdown only hurts or inures to the person who happens to be president.”
As for House Speaker Mike Johnson’s fate, Trump said, “If he’s strong, he’ll survive it. If he’s strong, he will survive it.”
Joel Angel Juarez for The Washington Post via Getty Images
(WASHINGTON) — Vice President Kamala Harris is doing a series of moderated conversations with former Wyoming Republican Rep. Liz Cheney in suburban cities in the battleground states of Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin on Monday — the day before in-person voting begins in Wisconsin.
With roughly two weeks until Election Day, the effort is part of the Harris campaign’s effort to reach swing voters in the crucial battleground states. Harris is speaking with Cheney in the suburban areas of Chester County, Pennsylvania; Oakland County, Michigan; and Waukesha County, Wisconsin.
The conversations were to be moderated by Bulwark publisher and longtime Republican strategist Sarah Longwell and conservative radio host and writer Charlie Sykes.
Both Harris and former President Donald Trump have events scheduled for battleground states this week as they work to win over voters in what’s expected to be a close contest. On Monday, Trump is spending time in in the battleground state of North Carolina.
While in Pennsylvania, Harris and Cheney worked to pick off Republicans disaffected with their party’s nominee who may vote for the vice president and focus on the dangers Trump poses to the country and to democracy — especially white suburban women who voted Republican.
“There are months in the history of our country which challenge us, each of us, to really decide when we stand for those things that we talk about, including, in particular, country over party,” Harris said.
Cheney, a staunch Trump critic who endorsed Harris in September despite their party and policy differences, said “every single thing in my experience and in my background has played a part” in her supporting Harris.
“In this race, we have the opportunity to vote for and support somebody you can count on. We’re not always going to agree, but I know Vice President Harris will always do what she believes is right for this country. She has a sincere heart, and that’s why I’m honored to be in this place.”
At the Michigan event, Cheney said that she understood why some Republicans would find it difficult to publicly support Harris.
“I certainly have many Republicans who will say to me, ‘I can’t be public.’ They do worry about a whole range of things, including violence. But, but they’ll do the right thing,” she said.
“And I would just remind people, if you’re at all concerned, you can vote your conscience and not ever have to say a word to anybody, and there will be millions of Republicans who do that on November 5th, vote for Vice President Harris,” she added.
Cheney voted to impeach Trump following the events of Jan. 6, 2021, and was vice chair of the House select committee that investigated the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol. She received backlash from Trump and other Republicans for her criticism of the former president and was censured by the Republican National Committee.
Since her endorsement of Harris, Cheney has campaigned for the vice president — including in battleground Wisconsin, where she called Trump petty, vindictive and cruel.
Cheney is among a handful of prominent Republicans, including her father, former Vice President Dick Cheney, who have pledged to support Harris’ bid.
The number of actual votes these events could move, with just two weeks to go, is small — yet could be significant in states expected to be decided by slim margins, Joe Zepecki, a Milwaukee-based Democratic strategist, told ABC News.
Ideally, Zepecki said, the events would bring over “Republicans available to Harris who might need one last reminder, one last push in that direction.”
George Levy, a 66-year-old voter from Delaware County, outside Philadelphia, said he was an independent until Trump entered the political arena in 2015.
“I’m never going back. I’ll be a Democrat from now on,” he told ABC News as he waited in line to enter the intimate theater in Malvern, Pennsylvania, a Philadelphia suburb that was the site of the first Cheney discussion of the day.
“[Cheney] did the right thing for our country, and I’m proud of her for doing that,” he said. “I know she doesn’t agree with many Democratic policies, but she believes in our country and loves our country, and I appreciate her speaking out.”
In a social media post on Monday, Trump attacked Harris for campaigning with Cheney, claiming that the former Wyoming Republican congresswoman is going to lead the United States to go to war with “every Muslim Country known to mankind” like her father and former Vice President Dick Cheney “pushed” former President Georgia W. Bush to the war in the Middle East.
Harris’ events this week will feature more interactivity where voters see the vice president taking questions — including during her town hall with CNN on Wednesday in Pennsylvania.
ABC News’ Sarah Beth Hensley contributed to this report.
