White House condemns ‘irresponsible’ Elon Musk post on assassination attempt
(WASHINGTON) — The White House on Monday decried a now-deleted post by Elon Musk on X as “irresponsible.”
In the Sunday night post — which he made after the second apparent assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump — Musk, who owns the platform, responded to a user who asked, “Why they want to kill Donald Trump?”
In his post, Musk wrote, “And no one is even trying to assassinate Biden/Kamala.”
Following intense backlash, Musk deleted the post and walked it back as a joke early Monday.
“Well, one lesson I’ve learned is that just because I say something to a group and they laugh doesn’t mean it’s going to be all that hilarious as a post on X,” Musk wrote.
“Turns out that jokes are WAY less funny if people don’t know the context and the delivery is plain text,” he added shortly after.
Responding to the post on Monday, the White House condemned Musk for having “joked about” or even “encouraged” violence.
“As President Biden and Vice President Harris said after yesterday’s disturbing news, ‘there is no place for political violence or for any violence ever in our country,’ and ‘we all must do our part to ensure that this incident does not lead to more violence,’ the statement read.
“Violence should only be condemned, never encouraged or joked about. This rhetoric is irresponsible,” the White House added.
Musk has endorsed Trump, and Trump has said he would tap Musk to lead a government efficiency commission if elected.
(LA CROSSE, Wis.) — Former President Donald Trump introduced a new campaign platform on Thursday aimed at helping Americans with the cost of IVF.
At a town hall moderated by his supporter, one-time Democrat presidential candidate Tulsi Gabbard, Trump said he and his team have been exploring ways to help those wanting in vitro fertilization.
“I’ve been looking at it, and what we’re going to do is for people that are using IVF, which is fertilization … the government is going to pay for it, or we’re going to get — we’ll mandate your insurance company to pay for it, which is going to be great. We’re going to do that,” he told Gabbard.
“We want to produce babies in this country, right?” he added.
Trump first spoke about the idea of government-funded or insurance-covered fertility treatments earlier in the day during a campaign stop in the battleground state of Michigan.
When asked by NBC News if it would be the government or insurance companies paying for IVF, the network reported that Trump said it would be the latter, “under a mandate.”
Meanwhile, Trump’s camp on Thursday night walked back comments the former president made earlier in the day suggesting he did not support Florida’s now-implemented six-week ban on abortions.
“I think the six week is too short, there has to be more time and I told them I want more weeks,” Trump told NBC.
“I am going to be voting that we need more than six weeks,” he added, noting that he believes abortion should be a states’ issue, something he’s said before.
Later, though, Trump Campaign National Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt attempted to clarify the candidate’s remarks.
“President Trump has not yet said how he will vote on the ballot initiative in Florida, he simply reiterated that he believes six weeks is too short,” Leavitt said in a statement.
Susan B. Anthony, Pro-Life America, President Marjorie Dannenfelser also released a statement Thursday night saying she had spoken to the president, and he told her he hasn’t “committed” to how he’ll vote on Florida’s Amendment 4. The amendment, if passed, would insert language into the state’s constitution that abortions determined medically necessary by a patient’s healthcare provider would be permitted.
“He has not committed to how he will vote on Amendment 4. President Trump has consistently opposed abortions after five months of pregnancy. Amendment 4 would allow abortion past this point. Voting for Amendment 4 completely undermines his position,” her statement read.
(WASHINGTON) — Since getting thrust into the race for president after President Joe Biden announced on Sunday he would step aside, Vice President Kamala Harris and her team have been racing to define her to the American people as their attention turns to the newly energized campaign before Donald Trump could beat her to the punch.
In a shift, the vice president, who has served as San Francisco’s district attorney and California’s attorney general, is leaning heavily into that part of her resume — which was largely a liability during her 2020 bid for the presidency, a campaign she abandoned before the first voters were cast in that primary.
“In those roles, I took on perpetrators of all kinds,” Harris told staffers at her campaign headquarters Monday in what was officially her first campaign event since getting in the race. “Predators who abused women, fraudsters who ripped off consumers, cheaters who broke the rules for their own gain.”
“So, hear me when I say I know Donald Trump’s type,” she added. “And in this campaign, I will proudly put my record against his.”
It’s a framing of prosecutor vs. convict that Harris and her team have pushed aggressively in early days of her nascent campaign
On Thursday, Harris attacked Trump over his legal woes in the first ad of her campaign. In it Harris said her vision of the future includes an America “where no one is above the law” as the former president’s mugshot and newspaper headlines following his conviction on 34 counts in New York flashed on screen.
“Their campaign says, ‘I’m the prosecutor and he is the convicted felon,” Trump said at a rally in Charlotte, North Carolina, his first since Biden dropped out. “That’s their campaign. I don’t think people are gonna buy it.”
Harris has also worked to define the race as being between someone who is fighting to protect Americans’ freedoms and Donald Trump, who she argues will strip them of their freedom.
“In this election, we each face a question: What kind of country do we want to live in?” Harris asked in that first ad titled “We Choose Freedom” and that features Beyonce’s “Freedom,” which the vice president walks out to at rallies.
“There are some people who think we should be a country of chaos. Of fear. Of hate,” she adds over images of Trump and his running mate, Sen. JD Vance of Ohio. “But us? We choose something different; we choose freedom.”
Speaking at the American Federation of Teachers convention in Houston Thursday, Harris said, “In this moment, across our nation, we witness a full-on attack on hard-won, hard-fought freedoms.”
Harris, said that those freedoms include the right to an abortion, pointing to the Supreme Court’s overuling of Roe v. Wade, for which she blames Trump, and vowing to fight to restore them.
“When I am president of the United States and when Congress passes a law to restore those freedoms, I will sign it into law. We are not playing around,” she said at the historically Black Zeta Phi Beta Sorority, Inc.’s Grand Boulé in Indianapolis on Wednesday.
But the Trump campaign is trying to define Harris in ways they think could hurt her prospects and that they hope the American people will buy.
Sources told ABC News that Trump’s attacks will largely focus on Harris’ role leading the administration’s effort on the migrant crisis and use it to make the case that the administration failed to secure the border.
Prior to Biden stepping down, Trump began ramping up personal attacks against the vice president, going after her laugh by nicknaming her “Laffin’ Kamala” and dubbing her “nuts.”
“You can tell a lot by a laugh,” Trump said at a rally in Michigan on Saturday. “I call her Laffin’ Kamala. You ever watch her laugh?… She’s crazy. She’s nuts.”
At the North Carolina rally he unleashed a barrage of false claims, referring to her as “Lyin’ Kamala Harris,” as a “radical-left lunatic” and a liar before suggesting that she is okay with the “execution” of a baby.
“She wants abortions in the eighth and ninth month of pregnancy, that’s fine with her right up until birth. And even after birth, the execution of a baby because that’s not abortion. That’s the execution of a baby,” Trump falsely claimed before touting the U.S. Supreme Court decision that sent the issue back to the states.
In the early days of his administration, Biden tasked Harris with leading his administration’s efforts to address the root causes of migration, primarily tackling economic and social issues in the Northern Triangle countries of El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras. But in the face of migrant surges at the border, Republicans have placed blame on Harris, who they disparagingly, inaccurately nickname the “border czar.”
“Kamala Harris was appointed border czar, as you know, in March of 2021 and since that time, millions and millions of illegal aliens have invaded our country and countless Americans have been killed by migrant crime because of her,” Trump said during a press call Tuesday.
The Harris campaign responded to these attacks by pointing the finger at Trump for his opposition to a bipartisan deal to secure the border and address immigration.
“The only ‘plan’ Donald Trump has to secure our border is ripping mothers from their children aand a few xenophobic placards at the Republican National Convention. He tanked the bipartisan border security deal because, for Donald Trump, this has never been about solutions just running on a problem,” Harris campaign spokesperson Kevin Munoz said in a statement.
“Like everything with Donald Trump, it’s never been about helping the country, it’s only about helping himself,” Munoz added. “There’s only one candidate in this race who will fight for bipartisan solutions to strengthen border security, and that’s Vice President Harris.”
Trump allies, in a sign they are struggling to define Harris, have also resorted to describing the presumptive nominee as someone who is unqualified and chosen because of her race and gender, with some calling her a so-called “DEI” (diversity, equity, and inclusion) candidate.
Former presidential candidate Nikki Haley, who is now a supporter of Trump, told CNN’s Jake Tapper on Thursday that these attacks are “not helpful.”
Harris has seized being thrust into the spotlight with her newly minted campaign, positioning herself as leader during moments she would otherwise have to wait for Biden’s lead.
After meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu–separately from Biden’s own meeting—Harris came before the cameras to outline her view on the war in Gaza, which had become a political headache for the president in recent months. (Biden, himself, did not speak with reporters after his meeting.)
Biden has been plagued domestically over criticism of his response to the war and for not being more forceful against Netanyahu as scores of civilians get killed in Gaza, and for continuing to supply Israel with weapons.
And although her policy stances on the war largely don’t stray far from Biden’s, Harris on Thursday notably signaled a future shift.
“We cannot allow ourselves to become numb to the suffering,” Harris said. “And I will not be silent.”
(WASHINGTON) — Republican vice presidential candidate JD Vance is set to attend a high-dollar fundraiser in the Hamptons next weekend, according to a copy of the invitation obtained by ABC News.
The event is set to be hosted by a number of big-name Trump donors, including billionaire hedge-fund manager John Paulson and Omeed Malik, the president of the investment firm 1789 Capital.
Trump’s former secretary of commerce, Wilbur Ross, is also listed as a host for the fundraiser, which is billed as an “afternoon event with next Vice President of the United States.”
The fundraiser is set to be held in Southampton, New York, next Sunday, the invite said. Tickets to the roundtable event cost $25,000, with an “attendee” ticket going for $5,000. Inclusion in the host committee costs $50,000 per person, the invite said.
A person familiar with the event said it is expected to raise somewhere in the millions.
Notably, the event is also set to be cohosted by two former George W. Bush appointees. Cliff Sobel was the ambassador to the Netherlands under Bush, as well as ambassador to Brazil under the Bush and Obama administrations. Jeffrey served as Under Secretary, Economic, Energy and Agricultural Affairs after being nominated by Bush in 2007.
The event comes as both Trump and Vance have been on an aggressive fundraising blitz in recent weeks, with under three months to go until the election. Vance has been crisscrossing the country, raising money in California, Texas, North Carolina, Missouri, Oklahoma, and Minnesota.
Trump’s fundraiser at the home of billionaire financier Howard Lutnick’s home in Bridgehampton, New York, earlier this month was similarly backed by wealthy allies including Malik, Paulson and Richard Kurtz. Lutnick said that event brought in $15 million for the campaign and the Republican Party.
Trump’s campaign and the Republican National Committee’s joint fundraising operation together raised a total of $138.7 million in the month of July — an uptick from their June fundraising total — and entered August with $327 million in cash on hand, the campaign said.
It trailed the $310 million the Harris campaign said it raised in July, as they entered August with $377 million cash on hand. That haul was buoyed by the $200 million the campaign said it raised within a week of President Joe Biden dropping out of the race.
It’s unclear how much the operation had raised before Harris took over the campaign. The money was raised by the Biden and Harris campaigns, the Democratic National Committee, and their joint fundraising committees.