Trump picks Rep. Matt Gaetz to be attorney general

(GEORGIA) — Gabriel Sterling, the Chief Operations Officer of Georgia’s office of Secretary of State, noted in a statement on X that early votes cast Wednesday set a record for a second day.

“So, with the rest of today and absentees we could get close to 600,000 votes cast in Georgia. We continue on the record-setting pace and we are thankful for our election workers at the counties and our voters,” he said.

On the previous day, 312,206 people cast an early vote, shattering the 136,000 votes cast in the first day of early voting in 2002, according to state election data.

Sterling said earlier in the day that the 500,000 votes cast mark represented 10% of the turnout in the 2020 election.

As of Wednesday night, 33,359 absentee ballots have been returned and 33,150 of those ballots were accepted, according to the secretary of state’s office.

Georgia is seen as a crucial swing state for the presidential race, with both former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris have been actively campaigning throughout neighborhoods in the state.

Voting rights advocates have been pushing voters to choose the early voting option due to concerns about new rules including one that makes it harder to cast a provisional ballot on Election Day if a voter is sent to the wrong polling place. Georgia voters can choose any early voting election site in their county, according to state law.

Early voting in Georgia will continue until Nov. 1.

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Rep. Tom Emmer, R-Minn., shared details of how he is helping GOP vice presidential nominee Sen. JD Vance prepare for his upcoming debate on Tuesday with Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz.

Majority Whip Emmer, the third-ranking Republican in the House of Representatives, was invited to stand in for Walz, Vice President Kamala Harris’ running mate, to help Vance prepare to take on the governor’s “folksy” personality.

Speaking exclusively to “This Week” co-anchor Martha Raddatz on Sunday, Emmer said he’s spent the last month analyzing Walz’s previous debate performances.

“I’ve known Tim probably since he was first elected almost 20 years ago, and I worked with him directly for four years, I spent the last month just going back, all of his old stuff, to get his phrases down, his mannerisms, that sort of thing,” Emmer said. “My job was to be able to play Tim Walz so JD Vance knows what he’s going to see.”

Asked by Raddatz if he has participated in any mock debates yet and has officially played Walz, Emmer said he didn’t want to get ahead of Vance in sharing those details.

“The debate is on Tuesday night, so I’ll let your viewers decide that, I’m not going to get ahead of JD and the team,” Emmer told Raddatz. “If they want to talk about exactly what we did when we did it. How many times they can do that. For me, I did my job or have been doing my job in helping JD see what it is he’s going to be dealing with on Tuesday night.”

Emmer praised Vance, saying the Ohio senator will do a “great job” on Tuesday night and that “he’s got the issues on his side.”

“Vance could talk about the economy that Donald Trump fixed and that Harris and Biden broke. He can talk about the border that Trump fixed and they broke. He can talk about peace and stability around the world, which they don’t even have a clue [about]; they’ve caused all of this disruption,” Emmer said. “Once he understands that Tim Walz is just going to try and deflect and go into this folksy whatever, he’ll hold him accountable.”

As Vance heads into Tuesday night’s debate, he continues to struggle with his favorability numbers in national and state polling.

A recent AP-NORC poll found that Walz is viewed more favorably among registered voters than Vance.

In the poll, Walz has a 42% favorability rating among registered voters while Vance is at 27%. Along partisan lines, Walz also has better numbers — he has a 72% favorability rating among Democrats while Vance is at 51% among Republicans.

Pressed by Raddatz about what Vance needs to do to change Americans’ perception of him, Emmer rejected the polling.

“I think JD is very likable, and I think he’s well-liked, and I don’t buy into these snapshot polls that are being done for a specific reason,” Emmer said. “Once people get to know who [Walz] is and they know what his policies are, he’s more radical than Kamala Harris, people do not like him once they get to know him and JD will expose that on Tuesday.”

At his rally Saturday night in Prairie du Chien, Wis., Trump disparaged Harris’ mental acuity.

While attacking Harris over the situation at the southern border, Trump said: “Joe Biden became mentally impaired. Kamala was born that way. She was born that way. And if you think about it, only a mentally disabled person could have allowed this to happen to our country.”

Asked if he agrees with or approves of that language, Emmer did not answer directly.

“I think Kamala Harris is the wrong choice for America. I think Kamala Harris is actually as bad or worse as the administration, that we’ve witnessed for the last four years, Martha,” he said.

Pressed again by Raddatz if he agrees with Trump’s description, Emmer said, “I think we should stick to the issues.”

“The issues are, Donald Trump fixed it once. They broke it. He’s going to fix it again. That – those are the issues,” he said.

On Friday, Harris visited the southern border for the first time in more than three years, where she announced several border policies she would pursue as president, including barring migrants who illegally cross the border from reentering the country for five years and enacting stricter criminal penalties for repeat offenders.

When asked if he opposes these policies that Harris is proposing, Emmer argued that Harris has had several years to act on the border issue and is only taking action now because of how critical the issue is for voters heading into the election.

“This is too little too late. Nobody can believe her because her actions have said something completely different for four years.”

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(DENVER) — GOP vice presidential nominee Sen. JD Vance is standing by former President Donald Trump’s false claims that Venezuelan gangs have invaded and conquered Aurora, Colorado.

Trump has repeatedly claimed that members of the Venezuelan Tren de Aragua gang have “taken over” apartment complexes and “overrun” the city, as he did in a rally in the city on Friday.

Mike Coffman, the Republican mayor of Aurora, said Trump’s claims are “grossly exaggerated” and “have unfairly hurt the city’s identity and sense of safety.”

Asked by “This Week” co-anchor Martha Raddatz on Sunday if he supports Trump making those claims, Vance did not back down.

“Well, Martha, you just said the mayor said they were exaggerated. That means there’s got to be some element of truth here,” Vance said.”

Raddatz followed up with Vance, saying the issues in Aurora were limited to a handful of apartment complexes and that the mayor released a statement saying the city’s “dedicated police officers have acted on those concerns and will continue to do so.”

Vance responded, saying Democratic nominee Vice President Kamala Harris caused the issues in Aurora.

“Unfortunately, when you let people in by the millions, most of whom are unvetted, most of whom you don’t know who they really are, you’re going to have problems like this.”

“Kamala Harris, 94 executive orders that undid Donald Trump’s successful border policies. We knew this stuff would happen. Bragged about opening the border, and now we have the consequences, and we’re living with it. We can do so much better, but frankly, we’re not going to do better, Martha, unless Donald Trump calls this stuff out. I’m glad that he did.”

In the aftermath of Hurricane Helene, which devastated parts of states in the southeastern U.S., including Florida, North Carolina, and Georgia, Trump has falsely suggested that aid from FEMA meant for the hurricane was going to migrants and that the federal government is going out of their way to not help people in Republican areas.

Asked if he believed that true, Vance defended the president.

“What the President said is that fundamentally, FEMA aid is distracted by going to illegal migrants,” Vance responded. “We’ve got Republican congressmen who are on the ground who represent that area saying that they have to call the White House to get food and water to FEMA? I don’t, frankly, think there’s anything malicious going on here, Martha, but I do think that we’ve had an incompetent response to this particular crisis, particularly in Western North Carolina, which, to be fair, was hit harder than a lot of us expected it.”

Vance called the federal government’s response to the crisis incompetent, saying members of the military are still “trickling” into western North Carolina.

Raddatz pushed back against the false claims that the government is not assisting people in Republican areas and citing Pentagon officials who said that active duty troops were staged and ready to go before being called upon and were instantly out the door.

On Friday in Georgia, Vance said that the attorney general is the second-most important government role after the president.

Raddatz pressed Vance if Trump would go after his political opponents if he won another term.

“No, he was president for four years, and he didn’t go after his political opponents. You know, who did go after her political opponents? Kamala Harris, who has tried to arrest everything from pro-life activists to her political opponents,” Vance said.

To follow up, Raddatz told Vance that Trump has said in the past that those who have cheated will be prosecuted.

“Well, he said that people who violated our election laws will be prosecuted. I think that’s the administration of law,” Vance said. “He didn’t say people are going to go to jail because they disagree with me.”

Vance continues to refuse to acknowledge that Trump lost the 2020 election. In an interview with “This Week” earlier this year, Vance said he wouldn’t have certified the results of the 2020 race until states submitted pro-Trump electors.

Raddatz pressed Vance again on the 2020 election.

“In interview after interview, question after question, and in the debate, you refuse to say that Donald Trump lost the 2020 election,” Raddatz said. “So I’m just going to assume that if I ask you 50 times whether he lost the election, you would not acknowledge that he did. Is that correct?”

“Martha, you’ve you asked this question. I’ve been asked this question 10 times in the past couple of weeks. Of course, Donald Trump and I believe there were problems in 2020,” Vance said.

Pressed again by Raddatz, Vance replied, “I’ve said repeatedly I think the 2020 election had problems. You want to say rigged? You want to say he won? Use whatever vocabulary term you want.”

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