Trump responds angrily to Harris’ DNC speech in posts on social media platform
Republican Presidential candidate and former President Donald Trump speaks at the U.S.-Mexico border on August 22, 2024, south of Sierra Vista, Arizona. — Rebecca Noble/Getty Images
(NEW YORK) — Former President Donald Trump responded angrily to Vice President Kamala Harris even as she was delivering her nomination acceptance speech to the Democratic National Convention on Thursday night, posting more than 40 times on his social media platform as she spoke, attempting to clarify his stance on issues that Harris brought up as well as launching into critiques about Harris’ address.
“She’s done nothing for three and a half years but talk, and that’s what she’s doing tonight, she’s complaining about everything but doing nothing!” Trump posted on Truth Social as Harris was wrapping up her speech.
“She should leave the Speech right now, go to Washington, D.C., close the Border, allow fracking in Pennsylvania and other places, and start doing the things she’s complaining about aren’t done!” he continued.
The former president called into Fox News following Harris’s speech where he again reiterated that he felt Harris was complaining too much.
“She’s got four and a half, five months left. She can go there right now. She can do all of the things, many of the things that she’s talking about and complaining about. “It was a lot of complaining,” he told Fox News’ Bret Baier.
Early in Harris’ speech, Trump kicked off his reaction posts with personal attacks on her speaking style, saying she said “thank you” too many times and that she spoke about her childhood too much.
During her speech, Trump grew especially irate when Harris started to highlight Trump’s legal battles as well as his actions as a pro-Trump mob was breaking into the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
“IS SHE TALKING ABOUT ME?” the former president responded in all caps.
Trump went on to defend himself and Jan. 6 rioters as Harris talked about the day the U.S. Capitol was attacked by his supporters.
In one of his longest posts of the night, Trump defended his position on abortion, birth control and IVF as Harris accused him of wanting to sign a national abortion ban. Trump said Democrats are lying when they say he wants to limit birth control and IVF, claiming he does not want to do so.
“These are all false stories that she’s making up,” he continued about his support for birth control and IVF, writing in all caps as he got increasingly irritated.
Trump also tried again to distance himself from Project 2025 after Harris drew connections between the controversial blueprint for a conservative president’s second term and former Trump administration officials involved in it. He then tried to separate himself more in his appearance on Fox.
“Well, she knows I have nothing to do with Project 25,” said Trump. “A group of people got together. They did a thing. I haven’t even seen it. I don’t want to see it. I told them specifically I don’t want to see it. People know where I stand.”
Throughout Harris’ speech, Trump also attacked her with claims about Social Security, the economy, border security and crime.
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(WASHINGTON) — Three of the five 9/11 defendants at Guantanamo — including mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammad — have reached a plea agreement with prosecutors, the Pentagon announced Wednesday.
The trial of the five 9/11 conspirators had been stuck in legal delays for a very long time. No details about the specific terms and conditions of the pre-trial agreement have been made public. The other two conspirators who have agreed to the agreement aside from Mohammad are Walid Muhammad Salih Mubarak Bin Attash and Mustafa Ahmed Adam al Hawsawi.
Last September, ABC News reported that President Biden rejected a set of demands to form a basis for plea negotiations offered by the five defendants.
Biden agreed with U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin’s recommendation not to accept their demands known as a “joint policy principles” that they wanted prior to entering into plea agreement talks with prosecutors. According to the the New York Times, those demands included avoiding solitary confinement and receiving health treatment for injuries the detainees claim were a result of CIA interrogation methods when they were in the CIA’s
(WASHINGTON) — Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., said he is “heartbroken, devastated, mad” over the six hostages whose bodies were recovered Saturday in Gaza.
The hostages, which included 23-year-old Israeli American Hersh Goldberg-Polin, “were brutally murdered by Hamas terrorists shortly before we reached them,” Israel Defense Forces spokesperson Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari said. IDF officials identified the additional five hostages as Carmel Gat, Eden Yerushalmi, Alexander Lobanov, Almog Sarusi and Master Sgt. Ori Danino.
“If you want the hostages home, which we all do, you have to increase the cost to Iran. Iran is the great Satan. Hamas is the junior partner. They’re barbaric, religious Nazis — Hamas, they could care less about the Palestinian people,” Graham told “This Week” co-anchor Jonathan Karl during an interview on Sunday. “I would urge the Biden administration and Israel to hold Iran accountable for the fate of [the] remaining hostages and put on the target list oil refineries in Iran if the hostages are not released.”
Graham urged President Joe Biden and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to “tell the Ayatollah [Ali Khamenei] what he values is on the target list. Until that happens, nobody is coming home.”
Graham, one of former President Donald Trump’s closest allies on Capitol Hill, also criticized Vice President Kamala Harris for not attending Netanyahu’s speech to a joint session of Congress in July, saying: “She boycotted Bibi’s speech to Congress, sending a signal to Hamas and Iran that America does not really have Israel’s back.”
At the time, a Harris aide insisted to ABC News that the vice president did not preside because of a scheduling conflict, not to boycott or snub the Israeli prime minister. When pressed by Karl on Sunday that Republican vice presidential candidate JD Vance also decided to not attend the address, Graham defended the Ohio senator, saying: “JD has been unequivocally supporting Israel. She [Harris] has been horrible. She is slow-walking weapons. She did not attend the speech, and that juiced up every terrorist in the region.”
“I would say on foreign policy, she [Harris] has been a wrecking ball,” Graham said.
Graham said Trump should highlight her failure on foreign policy and her role with the southern U.S. border at the ABC News presidential debate scheduled for Sept. 10.
While he acknowledged Harris “obviously has some talent” given her political experience, Graham said overall “her job performance has been lousy” as vice president. He urged Trump to focus on issues in a head-to-head race, saying: “Every poll says the same thing. The American people trust you with what matters the most to them — the economy, inflation, border security and just managing the government.”
“If I were you, my friend, I would focus on those issues laser-like and you will win this race,” he added.
Trump last week added a new campaign pledge to get IVF paid for by the government or covered by insurance. When asked Sunday about Trump’s IVF announcement, Graham told Karl: “I think he [Trump] just tried to show his support for IVF treatments that, you know, we’ve been accused, the party has, of being against birth control. We are not. We’ve been accused of being against IVF treatments. We’re not.”
Graham said he’d support a tax credit for Americans using IVF and other treatments to become pregnant.
“I would support a tax credit,” Graham said. “That makes sense to me, to encourage people to have children.”
However, when pressed by Karl, the South Carolina senator said he does not support mandating insurance companies to cover what Trump proposed regarding IVF.
“You wouldn’t support this idea of mandating insurance companies to cover this, would you?” Karl asked.
“No. No, I wouldn’t because there’s no end to that,” he said. “I think a tax credit for children makes sense, means tested. … I’ll talk to my Democratic colleagues. We might be able to find common ground here.”
The presidential debate set to be held by ABC News will take place at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia on Sept. 10 and will be moderated by “World News Tonight” anchor and managing editor David Muir and ABC News Live “Prime” anchor Linsey Davis. It will be produced in conjunction with ABC station WPVI-TV/6abc, and will air live at 9 p.m. ET on the network and on the ABC News Live 24/7 streaming network, Disney+, and Hulu.
(WASHINGTON) — President Joe Biden said on Friday that he would be returning to the campaign trail next week to continue to take on rival Donald Trump, as he contends with the fallout from his COVID-19 diagnosis and growing calls from Democrats for him to bow out, including from Ohio Sen, Sherrod Brown on Friday evening, the fourth senator to do so.
“I look forward to getting back on the campaign trail next week to continue exposing the threat of Donald Trump’s Project 2025 agenda while making the case for my own record and the vision that I have for America: one where we save our democracy, protect our rights and freedoms, and create opportunity for everyone,” Biden said in a statement.
“The stakes are high, and the choice is clear,” Biden added. “Together, we will win.”
The president also criticized Trump’s Thursday night keynote speech at the Republican National Convention, saying the former president “focused on his own grievances, with no plan to unite us and no plan to make life better for working people.”
“Last night the American people saw the same Donald Trump they rejected four years ago,” Biden wrote.
Biden has been sidelined since Wednesday when he was diagnosed with COVID-19 moments before delivering remarks in Las Vegas at the UnidosUS conference, the largest Latino civil rights group in the country. He abruptly cut his trip short and flew to his beach home in Rehoboth Beach, Del.
Boarding Air Force One Wednesday, Biden struggled to walk up the shorter stairs that pull out from under the plane. And after arriving in Dover, he again struggled deplaning, and Secret Service appeared to physically help him into the waiting SUV.
But Biden’s determination to return to the campaign trail appears to be because his team is reenergized by Trump’s speech.
“He’s playing the greatest hits from 2016 – Trump has not changed, he has not moderated, he has gotten worse,” a Biden adviser said Thursday night. “And he is making no appeal to moderates.”
The president said Trump laid out a “dark vision” for America’s future and that “Together, as a party and as a country, we can and will defeat him at the ballot box.”
But his party is not together. Democrats remain split on whether Biden can beat Trump in November and on Friday at least 10 Democrats joined the chorus calling on Biden to resign, including Texas Rep. Marc Veasey, the first member from the influential Congressional Black Caucus to do so.
“Mr. President, with great admiration for you personally, sincere respect for your decades of public service and patriotic leadership, and deep appreciation for everything we have accomplished together during your presidency, it is now time for you to pass the torch to a new generation of Democratic leaders,” Veasey co-wrote in a letter with Reps. Jared Huffman, Chuy Garcia, and Mark Pocan.
“We must defeat Donald Trump to save our democracy… At this point, however, we must face the reality that widespread public concerns about your age and fitness are jeopardizing what should be a winning campaign,” the four congressmen added.
Brown, in a close reelection fight, said in a statement that many Ohioans had contacted him.
“Over the last few weeks, I’ve heard from Ohioans on important issues, such as how to continue to grow jobs in our state, give law enforcement the resources to crack down on fentanyl, protect Social Security and Medicare from cuts, and prevent the ongoing efforts to impose a national abortion ban. These are the issues Ohioans care about and it is my job to keep fighting for them,” he said.
“I agree with the many Ohioans who have reached out to me. At this critical time, our full attention must return to these important issues. I think the President should end his campaign,” he said.
Democratic Sen. Martin Heinrich of New Mexico and Democratic Rep. Greg Landsman, who represents a battleground Ohio district, both also pointed to Trump and the risk to “democracy” for reasons Biden should exit.
“There is too much on the line, and we have to be able to make that case to the American people about the change we need and the country we all deserve,” Landsman wrote in his statement. “After weeks of consideration and hundreds of conversations with constituents, I have come to the conclusion that Joe Biden is no longer the best person to make that case.”
Rep. Zoe Lofgren of California, a close ally of former Speaker Nancy Pelosi, in a letter addressed to the president on Thursday, but was first reported on Friday, made a similar argument doubting Biden can effectively run a winning campaign.
“I want to be clear that should you formally become the Democratic nominee for President I will do everything I can to promote your candidacy and to work for your success,” Lofgren wrote in the letter obtained by ABC News. “Unfortunately, I greatly doubt that the outcome will be positive, and our country will pay a dreadful price for that.”
“I’m not here to say that this hasn’t been a tough several weeks for the campaign,” O’Malley Dillon said. “There’s no doubt that it has been, and we’ve definitely seen some slippage in support, but it has been a small movement, and you know this, the reason is because so much of this race is hardened already.”
In what was a bruising day for the president, with the calls from congressional Democrats urging him to drop out swelling to 34 by ABC News’s count, Biden did get critical support from the Congressional Hispanic Caucus.
The group’s political arm, BOLD PAC, on Friday endorsed the president, a week after his call with the group, saying he and Vice President Kamala Harris “have delivered for the Latino community.”
Amid news of more congressional Democrats on Friday joining calls for Biden to step aside, his campaign said it recognizes that the “urgency” of beating Donald Trump has led some Democrats to publicly abandon their support of the president leading the ticket — though they remain confident the party will unite by November.
“While the majority of the caucus and the diverse base of the party continues to stand with the President and his historic record of delivering for their communities, we’re clear-eyed that the urgency and stakes of beating Donald Trump means others feel differently,” Biden campaign spokesperson Mia Ehrenberg said in a statement to ABC News.
“We all share the same goal: an America where everyone gets a fair shot and freedom and democracy are protected,” Ehrenberg added. “Unlike Republicans, we’re a party that accepts – and even celebrates – differing opinions, but in the end, we will absolutely come together to beat Donald Trump this November.”
