Trump campaign looks to Vance to help them over the finish line in Pennsylvania
Emily Elconin/Bloomberg via Getty Images
(PENNSYLVANIA) — From the moment he arrived in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, after being named former President Donald Trump’s running mate, it was clear that one of Sen. JD Vance’s primary roles was to help deliver battleground Pennsylvania for the former president.
The day Vance was announced as Trump’s vice presidential pick in July, Trump told ABC News Chief Washington Correspondent Jon Karl that he was “going to leave [Vance] in Pennsylvania.”
Pennsylvania’s importance in this election can’t be overstated — it’s a crucial swing state with 19 coveted electoral votes where Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris are neck and neck. Whoever wins the state is very likely win the presidential election. During the 2020 election, Pennsylvania was the state that sealed the presidency for President Joe Biden.
It is essentially a dead heat between Harris and Trump, with the former president barely leading Harris 47.9% to 47.8%, according 538’s latest polling average in the state.
The importance of Pennsylvania and other critical Rust Belt battleground states was reiterated in Vance’s acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention in July.
“I promise you one more thing, to the people of Middletown, Ohio, and all the forgotten communities in Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Ohio and every corner of our nation, I promise you this: I will be a vice president who never forgets where he came from,” Vance, and Ohio native, said at the RNC.
Vance’s background is similar to those who live in Pennsylvania, which he shared in his book, “Hillbilly Elegy” and talks about often on the campaign trail.
Over the past few months, Vance has worked hard to court voters in Pennsylvania. When visiting the state, he often emphasizes his background growing up in the Rust Belt state of Ohio, which borders Pennsylvania, and touches on the top issues important voters in the state. That Rust Belt connection is something the Trump campaign is banking on to help the former president win in the state.
“JD Vance is more than just an eloquent voice on the campaign trail to break down how Kamala broke everything from our economy to our southern border, and how President Trump will fix it and get our country back on track,” Kush Desai, the Trump campaign’s Pennsylvania spokesperson, told ABC News in a statement.
“His upbringing and life story are an inspiration to countless working-class Americans left behind in Kamala’s America who want a better life for themselves, their families, and their communities — Sen. Vance is personal testament to the future that a Trump-Vance administration has in store for our country.”
In the final two days before Election Day, Vance will have visited Pennsylvania twice. It will also be the state where he will hold his final campaign event before Election Day.
Similarly, Harris will also be holding her final campaign event in the state, signifying the critical role the state plays in securing the presidency.
“Harris will spend the day crisscrossing Pennsylvania, making her final pitch to Pennsylvania voters and mobilizing them to return their ballots and get to the polls on Tuesday. The final swing marks the Vice President’s 18th trip to Pennsylvania since launching her candidacy in July,” a campaign spokesperson said in a statement to ABC News.
Since joining the Republican ticket, Pennsylvania is the state Vance has visited the most, making 16 visits to the state and taking part in a total of 19 campaign events, according to ABC’s tracker of the senator’s campaign schedule. (Harris’ running mate, Gov. Tim Walz, has visited the state nine times, according to ABC’s tracker of his events.)
While campaigning in Pennsylvania, one of the issues Vance often hits on is fracking, an important industry in the state. During her 2020 presidential run, Harris supported a ban on fracking, but has backed away from that stance since becoming the Democratic nominee. Vance has also emphasized the loss of manufacturing jobs, bringing them back from overseas, often arguing that unleashing American energy would drive down the cost of manufacturing.
Will Martin, a spokesperson for Vance, told ABC News in a statement that American working families have been hit hard by the policies of the Biden-Harris administration and has worked to bring Trump’s message to voters in Pennsylvania.
“Under Donald Trump’s leadership, we are going to unleash a new golden age of American prosperity and Pennsylvania will be at the center of it all,” Martin told ABC News.
Ronald Rowe Jr., acting director of the U.S. Secret Service/Photo Credit: Bill Clark/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images)=
(WASHINGTON) — Accountability for the members of the Secret Service who were at fault for the July 13 assassination attempt against President-elect Donald Trump is “occurring,” acting Director of the Secret Service Ronald Rowe told a House task force investigating the incident on Thursday.
“All disciplinary measures are imposed to promote the efficiency of the Secret Service and to encourage behaviors and principles that ensure the success of the agency’s mission,” he testified.
“Employees receiving proposals of discipline will be provided due process under agency policy as well as any applicable laws and regulations. But, let me be clear, there will be accountability, and that accountability is occurring. Consistent with applicable laws and regulations, I cannot comment further on specific disciplinary actions underway or being considered.”
At the same time, he said, the agency should not be defined by one failure.
Suspected gunman Thomas Matthew Crooks opened fire during the rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, shooting Trump in the ear, killing one spectator and wounding two others.
A Secret Service Mission Assurance report was released earlier in the year, along with a Department of Homeland Security independent review and a Senate report.
Rowe testified that since becoming director he has focused on preventing another July 13 shooting from happening again.
In his memo, he said the Secret Service increased its staffing levels on the president-elect’s detail, expanding the use of drones at venues, expanding counter-drone technology at venues, addressing the faulty radio issue by working with the Defense Department, using other federal law enforcement agencies to help with protective visits and expanding the ballistic countermeasures at Secret Service protected events.
At the president-elect’s residences, the Secret Service has worked with state and local partners to bolster security and use cutting-edge technology to do so.
“My goal is to improve our mission effectiveness and rebuild public trust,” Rowe said. “One of the key systemic changes was the directive to mandate a unified command in a singular location for all protective sites, something that was not done on July 13th in Butler. This co-location enhances our communications and intelligence-sharing mechanisms with state, local and federal partners to better anticipate threats and respond to them more swiftly.”
Rowe testified that he has also prioritized the mental health of agents, adding a chief wellness officer just this week.
“While I cannot undo the harm that has been done, I am committed to doing everything in my power to ensure that the Secret Service never has a failure like this again.”
California Democratic Sen. Alex Padilla said he will attend the 47th presidential inauguration on Monday in which President-elect Donald Trump will be sworn into office for his second term.
“I do plan to be there. Of course,” he told ABC “This Week” co-anchor Jonathan Karl.
When asked about his expectations for the Trump presidency, Padilla chuckled. “Hoping for the best, hoping for some good. But preparing for some bad, if the first administration was any indicator,” he said.
Though Padilla’s Democratic colleague Pennsylvania Sen. John Fetterman said he is rooting for Trump to be a successful president, Padilla’s support “depends on what helps me define success.”
“If we’re going to continue the progress of the last four years for the sake of our national security, for the sake of our economy and working class balance, then absolutely, Donald Trump or anybody else,” Padilla said. However, he added, “I’m not going to root for President Trump simply by his terms.”
Padilla also emphasized his willingness to work with the president-elect.
“Despite all the rhetoric on immigration and immigrants that we’ve heard from him for years and years and years, when he says publicly that he’s supportive of helping Dreamers, hey, I’m all ears,” he said, referring to migrants who were brought into the country without documentation as minors.
Speaking for his Democratic colleagues, Padilla said that the party is “ready to work with the new administration where [they] agree” in order to “build on [their] progress from the last four years.”
In regard to the TikTok ban implemented overnight, Padilla remained tight-lipped about whether he thinks Trump should reinstate the popular social media app.
“Look, we support the creative community and social media platforms, but clearly there have to be guardrails to protect against lots of harms that are increasingly evident,” he said, citing misinformation, disinformation, and addiction as issues that need to be addressed.
Trump announced on Sunday on Truth Social that he will issue an executive order intended to postpone the ban on TikTok “so that we can make a deal to protect our national security.” The incoming president also said he wants the U.S. to have a “50% ownership position in a joint venture.”
Padilla said he “looks forward” to Trump traveling to California to witness the fire damage firsthand and speak with affected families. The senator had invited Trump to do so last week, pointing out that the site of devastation is “just about 30 miles from [Trump’s] golf course in Rancho Palos Verdes.”
Padilla introduced a bipartisan legislative package with three wildfire-related bills on Friday.
(WASHINGTON) — President-elect Donald Trump has shown no qualms about making or sticking by picks for his Cabinet no matter the baggage they carry — even some accused of sexual assault.
It’s a far cry from the days when much smaller-scale scandals, such as marijuana use or hiring an undocumented worker as a nanny, sunk candidates put forward by Presidents Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton, experts said.
“We’re in untested waters,” Jonathan Hanson, a political scientist and lecturer in statistics at the University of Michigan’s Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy, told ABC News.
Hanson and other experts said the public has become less concerned about some indiscretions, such as minor and one-time drug and alcohol arrests. Ronald Reagan’s Supreme Court nominee Judge Douglas Ginsburg admitting to smoking pot when he was younger would never have gotten much negative blowback today, Hanson said.
Two of Bill Clinton’s picks for attorney general — Zoe Baird and Kimba Wood — both withdrew amid questions over their hiring immigrants in the country illegally as babysitters. Former Senate Democratic Leader Tom Daschle — Clinton’s choice for health and human services secretary — had to bow out after it was revealed he didn’t pay taxes for the use of a car and driver.
“It’s true that people’s standards have shifted, but the question is, when does it really cross a line?” Hanson said.
Trump’s picks bring the debate to a new level, he argued.
Trump himself campaigned in the shadow of his hush money felony criminal conviction and after a Manhattan civil jury found him liable for sexually abusing E. Jean Carroll. Trump has repeatedly denied the allegations in both cases.
Matt Gaetz was already a controversial figure before his nomination while under a House Ethics Committee investigation for alleged sexual abuse and illicit drug use.
The former Florida congressman has denied all the allegations and the investigations by the Justice Department ended with no charges being brought and the House Ethics Committee ended when Gaetz resigned from his seat.
Trump’s pick to head the Pentagon, Pete Hegseth, paid a woman who alleged he had sexually assaulted her in 2017, an accusation he denied and for which he was not charged.
The New York Times published an email Friday that Hegseth’s mother, Penelope Hegseth, sent him in 2018 in the context of his divorce from his second wife, saying he had routinely mistreated women for years.
“I have no respect for any man that belittles, lies, cheats, sleeps around and uses women for his own power and ego,” she wrote in the message, according to the Times.
She said she later apologized and told the paper that she sent the e-mail in anger, adding “I know my son. He is a good father, husband.”
The New Yorker reported Hegseth was allegedly forced to step down from two non-profits veterans’ groups that he ran due to “serious allegations of financial mismanagement, sexual impropriety, and personal misconduct.” The magazine cited “a trail of documents, corroborated by the accounts of former colleagues.”
ABC News has not independently confirmed The New Yorker or The New York Times reporting.
Tim Parlatore, a lawyer for Hegseth, called the New Yorker piece, “outlandish claims laundered …by a petty and jealous disgruntled former associate,” in a response to the magazine.
Jason Miller, a senior Trump adviser, told CNN on Tuesday that the allegations in The New Yorker about Hegseth are “innuendo and gossip,” and said the Trump transition has no concerns about his pick to lead the Department of Defense.
Hegseth has said the sex assault allegation from 2017 was “fully investigated” and that he was “completely cleared” although a police report did not say that. He has avoided talking about the allegations while he met with Republican lawmakers over the last couple of weeks to garner support.
Hanson notes Trump named Gaetz and Hegseth after a majority of voters sent him back to the White House despite his own criminal indictments, including attempting to overturn the 2020 election. The sentencing for Trump’s New York conviction has been postponed indefinitely while the federal cases have been dismissed.
That, along with the Republicans taking control of Congress, Hanson said, might have motivated Trump to push forward with his controversial picks.
“It does raise the question if we are holding people to different standards than we used to,” he said. “There has been this notion to shrug it all off, thinking, ‘Everyone is corrupt. At least he’s open about it.'”
Edward Queen, a faculty member at Emory University Center for Ethics, said this thinking has been linked to what he said is growing distrust in the American political system.
“One of the consequences of the decline of trust is that everyone has done ‘it’ therefore ‘it’ doesn’t matter. And that’s disturbing,” he told ABC News.
At the same time, Hanson said, history shows the public traditionally has been against corruption, cronyism and other questionable behavior by public officials.
“There are voters in the middle who voted for Trump that would be unhappy for a vote for these troubling nominees,” Hanson said. “That will come back to hurt Republicans who may have ridden on his momentum.”
Jeff Spinner-Halev, the Kenan Eminent Professor of Political Ethics at the University of North Carolina, however, told ABC News that the general public has not kept up with the ins and outs of the confirmation process on Capitol Hill, and the outcry may not be that loud.
“It will have limited influence,” he said of the public reaction. “What will matter if a few senators are concerned about the controversies or competency of the candidate verses how much they care about the wrath of President Trump.”
The Senate must confirm each Cabinet choice, and while the GOP will have the majority, some Senate Republicans who back Trump also question whether his picks’ ethical issues make them impossible to approve, according to Hanson.
“Putting my shoes in a senator’s for a moment, they don’t want to walk the plank for a vote,” Hanson added. “If they feel that a nominee is too unpopular, they don’t want to stick their hand in the air and say ‘yes’ — but if they do, he said, they would need to weigh the consequences of looking the other way.”
He sees the fact that some GOP senators signaled Gaetz wasn’t acceptable as proof some standards still exist. For example, Gaetz withdrew his name from the nomination eight days after Trump announced it due to the increased scrutiny and more details about his scandals came to light.
Gaetz said in a social media post that his nomination process would have been “a distraction.”
“No one was really looking to defend this guy, and the message got sent to the president-elect’s team that this isn’t going to work,” Hanson said.
“I do think it is a positive sign because, at some point, lines were crossed. Some candidates are just a bridge too far, and it may be the case with some of the other appointees,” he added.
Steven Cheung, Trump’s choice for White House communications director and campaign spokesman, reiterated his claim that “voters gave President Trump a mandate to choose Cabinet nominees that reflect the will of the American people and he will continue to do so.”
“President Trump appreciates the advice and consent of Senators on Capitol Hill, but ultimately this is his administration,” he said in a statement after Gaetz withdrew.
Hanson predicted there will continue to be increased scrutiny of Trump’s Cabinet picks as Senate confirmation hearings get closer, but he warned that the opposition might have limits.
“It depends on how much fight will come from Democrats and interest groups that engage with politics. It will be interesting to see what happens because there is plenty of opportunity here for Democrats in the Senate to make a lot of noise,” he said.
“We will also be in a situation where there may be only enough clout and power to fight only the most controversial of nominees and let others pass,” he said.
Spinner-Halev said that Republican senators, in particular, may not want to cross Trump too many times and may just limit their opposition to his picks with the most baggage.
“One of the worries the Republicans will have is if a person [who is nominated] is incompetent,” he said. “The danger for the Trump administration and Republicans general is if these people are incompetent and mess up and then the public notices. This is what happened with George W. Bush and [Hurricane] Katrina where he said [FEMA Director Michael Brown] was doing a ‘heck of a job.’ That hurt him badly.”
Queen said there is a possibility that some Republican senators may put ethics before partisanship when all is said and done.
“It’s not unreasonable to assume that there are a number of senators who realize there will be consequences of their choices and their decisions that it will be bad for the country as a whole,” he said.
In the long term, Hanson said it is unclear if Trump’s selections will usher in a new norm of presidential picks who buck ethics and experience standards.
He noted that American history has shown several cycles of reform brought on by demand of a public frustrated with dysfunction and improper behavior, such as in the aftermath of the Nixon administration in the 1970s.
“Now that they see what is happening, they may be reminded what the Trump presidency was like the first time around,” he said of Americans who supported him. “There may be a bunch of people who say this is not what I voted for, and that could affect things tremendously.”
Spinner-Halev said the future will depend on how informed the public is over the next four years.
“There is a lot that happens in Washington that’s not in the public eye, and I think it’s important that the public keeps an eye on the bureaucratic ongoings,” he said.
