Trump says he won’t participate in any more debates before the 2024 election
(WASHINGTON) — Former President Donald Trump said on Thursday he will not take part in any more debates ahead of the 2024 election.
In a post on his social media platform, Trump argued that Vice President Kamala Harris could’ve accepted an offer to debate on Fox News on Sept. 4, or could’ve negotiated a second debate before the ABC News debate.
“She was a no-show at the Fox Debate, and refused to do NBC & CBS. KAMALA SHOULD FOCUS ON WHAT SHE SHOULD HAVE DONE DURING THE LAST ALMOST FOUR YEAR PERIOD. THERE WILL BE NO THIRD DEBATE!” Trump posted on his social media platform. ” Trump wrote.
Harris had challenged Trump to another showdown immediately after Tuesday’s matchup in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
Harris took the stage at a rally in Charlotte, North Carolina, just after Trump’s announcement. Although she did not cite Trump’s social media post, Harris said he and she “owe it to the voters to have another debate.”
“Two nights ago, Donald Trump and I had our first debate, and I believe we owe it to the voters to have another debate,” Harris said. “Because this election and what is at stake could not be more important. On Tuesday night, I talked about issues that I know matter to families across America, like bringing down the cost of living, investing in America’s small businesses, protecting reproductive freedom and keeping our nation safe and secure.”
“But that’s not what we heard from Donald Trump,” she continued. “Instead, it was the same old show, that same tired playbook that we have heard for years, with no plans for how he would address the needs of the American people because, you know, it’s all about him, it’s not about you. Well, folks, I said it then, I say it now, it’s time to turn the page.”
ABC News’ Will McDuffie, Gabrielle Abdul-Hakim and Fritz Farrow contributed to this report.
(WASHINGTON) — Vice President Kamala Harris is enjoying a bounce in her favorability rating among Americans just days after President Joe Biden bowed out of the presidential race and endorsed her, according to an ABC News/Ipsos poll released Sunday.
The vice president’s favorability rating has jumped to 43%, with an unfavorability rating of 42%, according to the ABC News/Ipsos poll conducted using Ipsos’ KnowledgePanel. In an ABC News/Ipsos poll released a week ago, Harris’ favorability rating was 35%, while 46% viewed her unfavorability.
Following Biden’s July 20 announcement that he would end his reelection campaign, most major Democrats, including former President Barack Obama, endorsed Harris’ run and she hit the campaign trail.
The vice president, who has secured commitments from enough delegates to become the presumptive nominee if they all honor their commitments when voting, according to ABC News reporting, saw a major jump in her favorability rating among the politically crucial group, independents.
Forty-four percent of independents have a favorable view of Harris, up from only 28% a week ago. Her unfavorability rating among independents is now 40%, which is a slight drop from 47% last week.
There have been no discussions of another Democrat challenging Harris for the nomination and a slight majority of Americans, 52%, say she should be the Democratic nominee, the poll found. This number jumps to 86% among Democrats, compared to 51% of independents and only 20% of Republicans.
Harris has an edge over former President Donald Trump when it comes to how much enthusiasm Americans feel for them as nominees. Forty-eight percent of Americans say they would feel enthusiastic if Harris becomes the Democratic nominee. Fewer, 39%, say they are enthusiastic about Trump being the Republican nominee.
Enthusiasm for Harris as the Democratic nominee peaks among Democrats (88%) and Black Americans (70%). Forty-nine percent of independents express enthusiasm for Harris, whereas only 31% of independents are enthusiastic about Trump.
Trump’s favorability rating dropped slightly from 40%, measured in the week following the attempted assassination and the Republican National Convention, to 36% in the most recent poll.
Trump’s favorability rating among independents also saw a drop in the last week. Twenty-seven percent of independents have a favorable of Trump, which is down from 35% last week.
Political professionals have also been paying a significant amount of attention to a potential swing group of “double haters,” those Americans who have unfavorable views of both Biden and Trump.
In the ABC News/Ipsos poll last week, 15% of Americans held unfavorable views of both Trump and Biden.
Driven largely by an increase in Harris’ favorability, the proportion of Americans who dislike both nominees, Harris and Trump, now has been cut in half to 7%.
Turnout will be crucial in the Fall contest for the presidency and, compared to an ABC News/Washington Post Poll conducted in early July, there has been an increase in the proportion of Democrats saying they are absolutely certain to vote – going from 70% to 76%. This is now about equal to the 78% of Republicans who say they are certain to vote in the November contest.
Trump repeatedly bashed Harris and Democrats on the campaign trail this week and refused to stay committed to the second presidential debate, which would be hosted by ABC News, in September. He also lashed out against Biden for ending his campaign.
Biden vowed to focus on the final months of his presidency as he “passed the torch” to Harris during a speech to the nation Wednesday night. The president’s poor debate performance and declining polling numbers pushed many Democrats to call on Biden to end his race.
Following his sudden announcement of exiting the presidential race, Biden’s favorability though still low, has improved to 37%, a five percentage point increase from the prior week, with an unfavorability rating of 50%, a five percentage point decline from last week, the poll found.
Trump’s running mate JD Vance saw no change in his favorability rating in the last week, but the proportion of Americans viewing him unfavorably has increased.
The Ohio senator’s favorability rating is 24%, similar to his 23% rating in last week’s poll. But the proportion viewing him unfavorably has increased from 31% last week to 39% now, according to the poll.
When it comes to potential Democratic vice presidential candidates, the majority of Americans had no opinion or not enough knowledge to make one when it came to several names who have been floated in the last week, including Arizona Sen. Mark Kelley, Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro and Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear, the poll found.
METHODOLOGY – This ABC News/Ipsos poll was conducted using the probability-based Ipsos KnowledgePanel® July 26-27, 2024, in English and Spanish, among a random national sample of 1,200 U.S. adults with oversamples of Black and Hispanic respondents weighted to their correct proportions in the general population. Results have a margin of sampling error of 3.0 points, including the design effect, for the full sample. Sampling error is not the only source of differences in polls. Partisan divisions are 31-29-29 percent, Democrats-Republicans-independents. See the poll’s topline results and details on the methodology here.
ABC News’ Dan Merkle and Ken Goldstein contributed to this report.
(WASHINGTON) — Vice President Kamala Harris has officially gotten the vast majority of delegate votes in the virtual roll call that nominates her as the Democratic presidential nominee, the Democratic National Committee said in a statement released late Monday.
The roll call, which concluded on Monday evening, still needs to be certified by Convention Secretary Jason Rae, according to the statement, but the announcement makes Harris’s historic nomination effectively official.
“With the support of 99% of all participating delegates in the virtual roll call, Vice President Harris has historic momentum at her back as we embark on the final steps in officially certifying her as our Party’s nominee. We thank the thousands of delegates from all across the country who took seriously their responsibility throughout this process to make their voices – and the voices of their communities – heard,” party chair Jaime Harrison and Democratic National Convention Committee Chair Minyon Moore said in a statement.
Harris received 4,567 votes from delegates, according to the Democratic National Committee.
Harris is the first Black and South Asian woman to lead a major party ticket.
Harris had effectively been the party’s nominee since Friday, when Democratic National Committee Chair Jaime Harrison announced on a livestream call that Harris had earned enough Democratic Party delegate votes in a virtual roll call to secure the party’s nomination.
Harris was the only competitive candidate that launched a campaign to succeed President Joe Biden after his withdrawal from the race, and the only candidate that received enough delegate signatures to progress to the virtual roll call.
Convention delegates have been virtually voting by email or phone since 9 a.m. ET on Thursday in a virtual roll call set up by the Democratic National Committee. Delegates had until Monday at 6 p.m. ET to vote in the nomination process.
The DNC initially decided in May to hold a virtual roll call because of uncertainty over deadlines to get on the ballot in Ohio. The state legislature eventually rectified the issue, but the DNC has argued that Republican lawmakers in Ohio are acting in bad faith and that the Democratic candidate needs to be nominated earlier than the convention to avoid legal issues. Ohio leaders have denied this allegation.
(WASHINGTON) — The largest prisoner exchange with Russia since the Cold War took months of detailed negotiations that directly involved the president, government officials told ABC News.
The deal, which freed Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich and former U.S. Marine Paul Whelan, involved several nations and included key exchanges by President Joe Biden, according to the officials. The deal also freed Alsu Kurmasheva, a Russian-American journalist, and Vladimir Kara-Muza, a legal permanent resident of the U.S.
“In the context of the war against Ukraine and the overall degradation of our relations with Russia, securing the release of Americans detained in Russia has been uniquely challenging,” White House National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan said Thursday.
Biden said at a press conference on Thursday, “If anyone questions if allies matter, they do, they matter.”
Negotiations gained traction in last 2 weeks: Sources
Even on the day he announced he was no longer seeking re-election, Biden, who was recovering from COVID-19, was on the phone working to secure this deal, a senior administration official told ABC News.
“The hour before he released that statement – literally an hour before he released that statement – he was on the phone with his Slovenian counterpart urging them to make the final arrangements and get this deal over the finish line,” the official said.
“This exchange is not by accident. It really is the result of a heck of a lot of leadership by President Biden and by the strength of relationships,” a senior administration official said.
Alexei Navalny’s death affected negotiations
Sullivan revealed Thursday that the U.S. and its allies were working on a prisoner deal that would have included the release of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, who was arrested by Russian officials in 2021.
Russian authorities announced Feb. 16 that Navalny had died while in prison.
The U.S. negotiation team “felt like the wind had been taken out of our sails in terms of efforts to get Paul and Evan back home,” upon learning of Navalny’s death, a senior administration official told ABC News.
But Sullivan, who happened to have a meeting scheduled with Evan’s family that day, felt differently, according to the official.
“He still saw a path forward, he thought it was going to be a little bit more of a rocky path, and it might take us a little bit longer than we thought,” the official said.
“He gathered the team together and he told him to not let Navalny’s death totally torpedo our opportunities to get these folks out,” the official said. “And he instructed them to come up with some additional options to make it politically viable, particularly politically viable to the Germans.”
Germany played key role in release
One key sticking point, according to Sullivan, was that Russia “would not agree to the release of these individuals without an exchange that included Vadim Krasikov,” who was in German custody for allegedly gunning down a Kremlin opponent in Germany.
“That required extensive diplomatic engagement with our German counterparts, starting at the top with the President himself, who worked this issue directly with Chancellor [Olaf] Scholz. We are deeply grateful to Germany for their partnership,” Sullivan said.
To get the German’s on board, a senior administration official credited not only Sullivan’s work to get a proposal in place, but also Biden’s relationship with German Chancellor Scholz.
“All culminated, really, in a call by President Biden to Chancellor Scholz, and then a follow-on visit by Chancellor Scholz in February, where, basically, Chancellor Scholz responded to the president saying, ‘For you, I will do this.’ The president then turned to Jake and said, Get it done,'” the official said.
The administration official stressed that “nobody’s turning a blind eye” to the crimes of Krasikov, or his connection to Russian intelligence service, but said “tough decisions” needed to me made to get these four innocent people back home and to their families.
Swap won’t affect Russian-US relations
There should be no expectation of improved U.S.-Russia relations going forward, according to a senior administration official.
This official said the administration has shown it can hold Russia accountable for its aggression on the world stage while “compartmentalizing out” the work on securing the release of Americans that are wrongfully detained.
“I would be cautious and would counsel anyone to be cautious in surmising from this that it’s some sort of breakthrough in the relationship and it portends some détente with Russia or an easing of the tensions in our relationship.”
This official said Russia’s ongoing war against Ukraine, pressure on NATO allies and across Europe, and the “burgeoning defense relationship” Putin is forming with China, North Korea and Iran are “of significant concern.”
“We will not see a policy change by President Biden and the administration when it comes to standing up to Putin’s aggression.”
ABC News’ Ivan Pereira contributed to this report.