Republican presidential nominee, former President Donald Trump attends a town hall event hosted by Fox News on October 15, 2024, in Cumming, Georgia.
| Photo Credit: AFP

Kamala Harris spent much of Tuesday (October 15, 2024) questioning Donald Trump’s mental state and fitness for office after the 78-year-old Republican’s latest televised town hall veered into a surreal, impromptu music session.

“Hope he’s okay,” the Democratic candidate posted on X.

Ms. Harris’s campaign, which has begun to aggressively challenge Mr. Trump on his health and mental stability, said that he appeared “lost, confused, and frozen on stage” during the Monday (October 14, 2024) event.

Former President Trump defended the event in the critical swing State of Pennsylvania, saying it was “so different.”

“It was amazing! The Q and A was almost finished when people began fainting from the excitement and heat,” Mr. Trump posted on his Truth Social network.

“We started playing music while we waited, and just kept it going. So different, but it ended up being a GREAT EVENING!”

He hit out at Vice President Harris, who released a White House medical report at the weekend that said she was fit for the highest office and challenged Mr. Trump to do the same.

“With all of the problems that she has, there is a real question as to whether or not she should be running for President! MY REPORT IS PERFECT — NO PROBLEMS!!!” Mr. Trump wrote.

‘Let’s just listen to music’

For about half an hour, the event in Oaks near Philadelphia was standard fare ahead of the November 5 election, as Mr. Trump took friendly questions from supporters on the economy and cost of living.

But it ended with a bizarre 39 minutes of music and dancing as Mr. Trump swayed awkwardly on stage following interruptions because of medical emergencies in the crowd.

“Who the hell wants to hear questions, right?” he said.

Mr. Trump has made a brief, jerky dance his signature at the end of rallies for years, nearly always to his exit song— the Village People’s 1978 disco anthem “YMCA.”

On Monday, however, he stayed on stage for nine songs, ranging from opera to Guns N’ Roses and Elvis, with the ex-president alternating his dance moves with standing in place and staring into the crowd.

Ms. Harris and Mr. Trump are locked in a dead heat, according to polls, and the election is set to be decided by seven swing states where the margins could come down to barely 10,000 votes each.

With only three weeks to go, the 59-year-old Democrat has increasingly been homing in on Mr. Trump’s health and age.

‘Obnoxious’ tariffs

It was the topic of her closing argument as she sat down with popular radio host Charlamagne tha God in an effort to boost her messaging to Black male voters— a part of the electorate where Trump has made gains.

After setting out her policies for improving the lives of Black men, she turned to Mr. Trump’s rallies and repeated a claim that riled him during their September debate— that bored supporters were leaving his rallies early.

“I will point out what everyone knows, which is that the people who worked the closest with Donald Trump when he was president— worked with him in the Oval Office, saw him at play in the Situation Room, his chief of staff, two secretaries of defence, his national security advisor and his former vice president — have all said he is dangerous and unfit to serve,” Ms. Harris said.

Mr. Trump’s own campaign schedule began with an Economic Club of Chicago event, where he said he was for slapping “obnoxious” tariffs on trading partners like Mexico so that companies move factories to the U.S.

“To me, the most beautiful word in the dictionary is the tariff,” Mr. Trump said, before heading for a rally in swing-State Georgia.

Mr. Trump is now the oldest person ever to be nominated for a presidential bid after President Joe Biden dropped out of the race following a disastrous debate that sparked fears about his own age.

He has not released a recent comprehensive report on his state of health, prompting fierce criticism from Harris.

Democratic presidential nominee Vice President Kamala Harris waves as she boards Air Force Two at LaGuardia International Airport, Wednesday, Oct. 9, 2024, in New York.
| Photo Credit: AP

With less than a month to go for the  U.S. elections, Democratic candidate and Vice President, Kamala Harris, has been engaged in an unusual spate of media interviews. Ms. Harris, who has not held a formal press conference since she became the presumptive nominee for her party at the end of July, is racing to let voters get better acquainted with her.  Her Republic opponent, Former President  Donald Trump, is much more of a known quantity. While Ms. Harris seeks to more clearly define her positions,  the other side has  stepped up its efforts to crystallize their definition of her – pegging Ms Harris to the Biden administration’s policies.

In addition to responding to the Harris interviews these past few days, the Trump campaign’s recent emphasis has included making unsubstantiated claims about  Hurricane Helene, which has killed more than 200 people. Mr. Trump and his supporters have claimed that the government has run out of money for relief and that funds are being diverted to migrants rather than hurricane victims. The Federal Emergency Management Agency’s chief  and several Republican lawmakers are among those who have pushed back against these claims.

With Ms. Harris acquiring a slight lead in several polls this week, her campaign is trying to show more of what she stands for, while also focusing  on who she is standing against – by continuing to paint Mr. Trump as  a danger to the U.S. Constitution and as unfit for office on the basis of his character.

 In her appearance on  The View, one of the hosts  said, “When people say they don’t know enough about her, I say, just look at the opponent.” However, there appears to be a sense in the Harris campaign that this will not be enough. Ms. Harris’s media appearances were designed to cater to different segments– including independents, undecided and Republican voters

On the Call Her Daddy podcast, whose listeners are mostly young women, The Vice President spoke about agency and reproductive rights. She did an interview with Howard Stern, whose listeners include married white males;  she appeared with a panel of women on ABC’s The View and  CBS’s  ‘60 Minutes’, which both parties’ candidates have traditionally appeared on for decades.

Last week, Ms. Harris campaigned with former Republican Congresswoman Liz Cheney in Ripon, Wisconsin, the birthplace of the Republican Party. This week, she signaled that she had become more moderate in her positions. On ’60 Minutes’ she provided more details about her gun ownership and said, as she has done before, that she had sought “common ground” in backing away from a fracking ban and in adopting more hardline positions  on illegal migration. On ‘The View’ she said she planned to appoint a Republican to her cabinet.

The Trump campaign meanwhile has amped up its linking of Ms Harris to administration policies.

Creating distance between herself and Mr. Biden’s policies might have, however, become harder for Ms. Harris, when she said on The View that she would not have done anything differently from the current President (with the exception of appointing a Republican to her cabinet). 

Mr. Trump, who has previously responded to his opponents with  sexist and personal insults –  called Ms Harris’s statement “Election Defying” as he referred to the “dumb women” on the show. He  also called Mr .Stern a “beta male”.

While Ms. Harris deployed Ms. Cheney, Mr. Trump deployed Elon Musk, a billionaire entrepreneur and owner of social media site X. Appearing at Mr Trump’s rally in Butler County , Pennsylvania, last Saturday, Mr. Musk said “the other side [ Democrats ] wants to take away your freedom of speech” , adding that the U.S. Constitution’s   Second Amendment (right to bear arms) was there to protect the First Amendment (freedom of expression).   

Mr. Trump’s campaign and his supporters have argued that Democrats, including Ms. Harris, want to clamp down on the freedom of expression , based on comments Democrats have made in the context of curbing misinformation and hate speech.

Mr. Musk has also taken it upon himself to drive voter registration in favour of Republicans. He announced an offer of $47 to each person who could get a swing state registered voter to sign a petition supporting the First Amendment  and Second Amendment in a swing state.

Mr. Musk recently said in an October 7 interview with Tucker Carlson that if Mr. Trump did not win in November, it would be “the last election”.  According to Mr. Musk, a Harris administration would end the notion of ‘Swing States’ by flooding them with illegal migrants, who would eventually become citizens and vote for the Democratic Party.

Mr .Trump, however, has already suggested that this will be the last election if he does win. Addressing Christians at a Florida event on July 28 he had said,  “In four years, you don’t have to vote again, we’ll have it fixed so good you’re not going to have to vote.”

Liz Cheney
| Photo Credit: AP

Liz Cheney, one of Donald Trump’s fiercest Republican antagonists, will join Democrat Kamala Harris at a campaign event in Wisconsin on Thursday (October 3, 2024) aimed at reaching out to moderate voters and rattling the former president.

Ms. Cheney was the top Republican on the House committee that investigated the January 6, 2021, insurrection, earning Mr. Trump’s disdain and effectively exiling herself from her own party.

Ms. Cheney lost her Wyoming seat to a Trump-endorsed candidate two years ago and she endorsed Ms. Harris, the Democratic nominee, last month. The two women will appear together in a historic white schoolhouse in Ripon, where a series of meetings held in 1854 to oppose slavery’s expansion led to the birth of the Republican Party.

Ms. Harris is opening a two-day stay in Wisconsin and Michigan, and Mr. Trump will be in Michigan on Thursday as the two candidates grapple for wins in the “blue wall” battleground states, which also include Pennsylvania.

eMs. Harris’ visit to Wisconsin comes one day after a federal judge unsealed a 165-page court filing outlining prosecutors’ case against Mr. Trump for his attempt to overturn his 2020 election defeat. Mr. Trump has pleaded not guilty to charges of conspiracy and obstruction.

It’s uncommon, to say the least, for a candidate to give a nod to the origins of the opposing party in the closing weeks of a presidential campaign. Not only that, the Cheney name was once anathema to Democrats who deplored Dick Cheney, Ms. Liz’s father, for his role as vice president under George W. Bush.

But now both Cheneys are backing Harris, part of a cadre of current and former Republican officials who have broken with the vast majority of their party, which remains in Mr. Trump’s corner. Ms. Harris wants to portray her candidacy as a patriotic choice for independent and conservative voters who were disturbed by Mr. Trump’s unwillingness to cede power. Mr. Trump continues to deny his defeat with false claims of voter fraud.

Ms. Harris on Friday will hold a campaign rally in Flint, Michigan, continuing her tour of states that have been critical to Democratic victories. Mr. Trump won Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan in 2016, and Joe Biden won them in 2020.

Pennsylvania:

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump said on Saturday he believed Democrat Kamala Harris will be easier to beat than President Joe Biden even as some polls showed her edging ahead in the race for the Nov. 5 presidential election.

Trump, the former president, spoke at a rally in Wilkes-Barre in northeastern Pennsylvania, a state looming large in the campaign. Vice President Harris will conduct a bus tour of western Pennsylvania starting in Pittsburgh on Sunday, ahead of the kickoff of the Democratic National Convention on Monday in Chicago.

“I believe she will be easier to beat than him,” said Trump, referring to her as “radical” and a “lunatic.”

Trump has sought to portray Harris as far left on a number of policies. At the rally, he highlighted her previous call for a ban on fracking, an industry important to the state. Harris’ campaign has recently indicated she would not support a ban.

He also continued to attack Harris on personal terms, even as some political analysts say such comments could hurt Trump with moderate voters.

“Have you heard her laugh? That is the laugh of a crazy person,” Trump said, adding that he was displeased by the illustration of Harris on the cover of the latest issue of Time magazine. “I’m much better looking than her.”

In a meandering speech, Trump repeated his false claim that he lost the 2020 election due to fraud, dismissed the threat of climate change and said his plan to impose across-the-board tariffs on foreign goods would not act as a tax on U.S. consumers, an assertion that most economists contest.

The Mohegan Sun Arena, where Trump appeared, has a capacity of roughly 8,000 and was nearly full when he started speaking. But the crowd began to thin after the one-hour mark. He spoke for more than 100 minutes in total.

Pennsylvania was one of three Rust Belt states, along with Wisconsin and Michigan, that helped power Trump’s upset victory in 2016. Biden, who grew up in Scranton, Pennsylvania, flipped the trio back to the Democrats in 2020.

With 19 electoral votes out of the 270 needed to secure the White House, compared with 15 in Michigan and 10 in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania may be the biggest prize in this year’s election and potentially tip the balance for either candidate.

Harris’ entry into the race after Biden ended his reelection bid last month has upended the contest, erasing the lead Trump built in the final weeks of Biden’s campaign. Harris is leading Trump by more than two percentage points in Pennsylvania, according to the poll tracking website FiveThirtyEight.

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Trump won Pennsylvania in 2016 by about 44,000 votes, a margin of less than one percentage point, while Biden prevailed by just over 80,000 votes in 2020, a 1.2-point margin.

Both campaigns have made the state a top priority, blanketing the airwaves with advertisements. Of the more than $110 million spent on advertising in seven battleground states since Biden dropped out in late July, roughly $42 million was in Pennsylvania, more than twice any other state, the Wall Street Journal reported on Friday, citing data from the tracking site AdImpact.

Democratic and Republican groups have already reserved $114 million in ad time in Pennsylvania from late August through the election, more than twice as much as the $55 million reserved in Arizona, the next highest total, according to AdImpact.

The Harris campaign said on Saturday it planned to spend at least $370 million on digital and television ads nationwide between the Labor Day holiday on Sept. 2 and Election Day.

The battleground states – seen as critical for winning the election – also include Arizona, North Carolina, Nevada and Georgia.

New polls published on Saturday by the New York Times found Harris leading Trump among likely voters in Arizona, 50% to 45%, and in North Carolina, 49% to 47%, and narrowing the former president’s leads in Nevada, 47% to 49%, and in Georgia, 46% to 50%. A pollster from the Trump campaign said the poll results underestimated the Republican candidate’s support.

Trump will give remarks on the economy at a campaign event in York, Pennsylvania, on Monday. His running mate, U.S. Senator JD Vance, will hold an event in Philadelphia that day as well.

Trump’s trip to Wilkes-Barre in Luzerne County was aimed at solidifying support among the white, non-college-educated voters who lifted him to victory in 2016. The blue-collar county voted Democratic for decades before swinging heavily toward Trump in 2016, mirroring other similar regions around the country.

Harris and her running mate, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, will make multiple stops across Allegheny and Beaver counties on Sunday, the campaign said. The tour is the first time Harris, Walz and their spouses have campaigned together since their first rally as a presidential ticket in Philadelphia earlier this month.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

Washington:

Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris’s campaign said Tuesday it had been targeted by foreign hackers, days after rival Donald Trump’s campaign suggested that it had been hacked by Iran.

“In July, the campaign legal and security teams were notified by the FBI that we were targeted by a foreign actor influence operation,” a Harris campaign official told AFP.

“We have robust cybersecurity measures in place, and are not aware of any security breaches of our systems resulting from those efforts.” 

The campaign did not give any indication of which foreign power was believed to be behind the attempt but said it remained in contact with law enforcement agencies.

The US State Department warned Iran on Monday of consequences over election interference following the Trump campaign’s announcement that it had been hacked.

The Trump campaign suggested on Saturday that Iran was behind the breach in which documents including research they used to vet running mate J.D. Vance were sent to reporters.

It warned media outlets against reprinting the documents, saying that such action would be “doing the bidding of America’s enemies.”

The tone was different to 2016, when Trump said at a news conference that he hoped Russia would “find” Hillary Clinton’s emails, remarks widely viewed as encouraging further hacks of his election opponent.

US intelligence concluded that Russia intervened in the 2016 election to support Trump, who has rejected the findings.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris
| Photo Credit: AP

Kamala Harris, the presumptive presidential nominee of the Democratic party, has called herself the underdog in the race to the White House but expressed confidence that she would win in November due to her people-powered campaign.

In her first fundraiser since becoming her party’s candidate for president, Ms. Harris told supporters that this year’s election was a choice between two visions for the country — one looking toward the future and one that wants to undo the country’s progress.

“We are the underdogs in this race. Level set, ok. We are the underdogs in this race, but this is a people-powered campaign,” Vice President Harris said, addressing a group of 800 fundraisers in Pittsfield, Massachusetts.

“This is a people-powered campaign and we have momentum,” Ms. Harris, 59 said.

During the fundraiser on July 27, she raised USD 1.4 million as against the original goal of USD 400,000.

Amidst loud applause from the audience, she said that her campaign has “earned the support of enough delegates to secure the Democratic nomination.”

“What kind of country do we want to live in? Do we want to live in a country of freedom, compassion and rule of law or do we want to live in a country of chaos, fear and hate?” she asked as she continued to attack her Republican rival Donald Trump, 78. She hoped that former president Trump would agree to do a debate with her.

“You may have seen he just pulled out of our debate. I hope he reconsiders because we have a lot to talk about,” Harris, who has Indian roots, said.

In her speech, she described her background as a prosecutor.

“In those roles, I took on perpetrators of all kinds. 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 said.

She alleged that Trump was spreading lies against her.

“You may have noticed, Donald Trump has been resorting to some wild lies about my record. And some of what he and his running mate are saying, well, it’s just plain weird. I mean that’s the box you put that in,” she said.

Vice President Kamala Harris, left, and President Joe Biden. File.
| Photo Credit: AP

The Trump campaign has filed a complaint with the Federal Election Commission arguing that money raised for U.S. President Joe Biden’s 2024 reelection bid could not be transferred to Vice President Kamala Harris’ presidential campaign.

The complaint was filed on Tuesday by the Trump campaign’s general counsel David Warrington and argues that transferring the funds to Harris’s presidential campaign would amount to “flagrantly violating” the Federal Election Campaign Act of 1971.

Also read | ​Democratic departure: On Joe Biden bowing out of the presidential race

On Sunday, President Biden announced that he was withdrawing from the race for the White House on November 5 and endorsed Ms. Harris amid mounting pressure from top Democrats and donors following his disastrous presidential debate against Trump in late June.

“Kamala Harris is seeking to perpetrate a USD 91.5 million dollar heist of Joe Biden’s leftover campaign cash — a brazen money grab that would constitute the single largest excessive contribution and biggest violation in the history of the Federal Election Campaign Act of 1971, as amended,” Mr. Warrington said.

The Harris campaign dismissed it as baseless. In his complaint that was first reported by The New York Times, Warrington accused Biden and Harris of “flagrantly violating the Act by making and receiving an excessive contribution of nearly one hundred million dollars, and for filing fraudulent forms with the Commission purporting to repurpose one candidate’s principal campaign committee for the use of another candidate.” “Kamala Harris is in the process of committing the largest campaign finance violation in American history and she is using the Commission’s own forms to do it,” Warrington said in his filing.

“The Commission must not and cannot sit idly by while one candidate takes nearly one hundred million dollars from the authorised committee of another, in violation of the Act and the will of the donors who gave the money in the first place,” he wrote.

Mr. Warrington alleged that if “Kamala Harris were a candidate for something in 2024, federal law requires her to have filed a Statement of Candidacy and for her name to have appeared in the name of her authorised committee. But Kamala Harris’s name does not appear in the name of her purported authorised committee, ‘Biden for President,’ and, until Sunday, no Statement of Candidacy existed for her.

Harris campaign spokesperson Charles Kretchmer Lutvak responded to the FEC complaint in a statement on Tuesday, saying, “Republicans may be jealous that Democrats are energised to defeat Donald Trump and his Make America Great Again allies, but baseless legal claims – like the ones they’ve made for years to try to suppress votes and steal elections – will only distract them while we sign up volunteers, talk to voters, and win this election.” The statement also cited the campaign’s fundraising efforts so far, “raising USD 100 million in our first 36 hours and signing up 58,000 volunteers.” It’s unlikely that the commission would take any action until well after Election Day, given its slow pace of resolving enforcement questions, CNN reported.

An FEC spokesperson declined to comment, citing the agency’s policy on not discussing enforcement matters, the report said.

Washington:

Hollywood star George Clooney — one of the first high-profile Democratic activists to urge Joe Biden not to seek reelection — on Tuesday announced his backing for Kamala Harris, while hailing Biden’s exit.

“President Biden has shown what true leadership is. He’s saving democracy once again. We’re all so excited to do whatever we can to support Vice President Harris in her historic quest,” Clooney said in a statement to CNN.

A major fundraiser for Democratic candidates and longtime Biden booster, Clooney broke ranks two weeks ago by openly calling on the 81-year-old president to give way to a younger candidate so that the party would have a better chance of beating Donald Trump in November.

“I love Joe Biden,” Clooney wrote in The New York Times, shocking many. “I consider him a friend, and I believe in him… But the one battle he cannot win is the fight against time.”

With Biden at the top of the ticket, the Oscar-winner said, Democrats “are not going to win in November,” will lose control of the Senate, and won’t gain a majority in the House of Representatives.

After days of mounting pressure, Biden on Sunday abruptly announced he was leaving the race and endorsed his vice president. Harris has rapidly garnered overwhelming support from party leaders and raked in a huge quantity of donations from voters.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)