Harris says she has been in touch with Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp on hurricane response
In a taped interview with an Atlanta news outlet, Harris said ahead of her tour today of the storm damage in the state that she's has been in touch with Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp and has been receiving regular briefings from FEMA in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene.
“We’ve got boots on the ground in Georgia,” Harris said. “There has been a big effort that we have made to make sure that we get food, water and generators to folks who need that after the hurricane.”
Harris also talked about Iran’s missile launch against Israel, saying she was in the Situation Room for several hours yesterday with Biden and the administration’s national security team getting updates on the attack.
“It is important that we as the United States stand with Israel and its right to defend itself, especially against Iran, which poses a threat to American interests, American people in the region,” she said.
Walz kicks off a more aggressive campaign schedule after VP debate
Walz will take on a more aggressive travel and media schedule following the VP debate, including rallies, events with voters, fundraisers and targeted interviews, a Harris campaign official said.
He begins his cross-country travel blitz with events in key states such as Pennsylvania, Nevada and Arizona and fundraisers in Ohio, California and Washington.
Walz is taking a bus tour through central Pennsylvania today, with stops in Harrisburg, York and Reading. He will be joined by Sen. John Fetterman, D-Pa., in a campaign rally in York in the afternoon. Walz plans to engage with labor leaders, rural communities, Latino stakeholders and voters throughout the bus tour, the campaign official said.
On Saturday, Walz is holding fundraisers in Cleveland and Cincinnati. He will participate in a fundraising swing on the West Coast immediately afterward, including stops in California and Washington.
Walz will then turn to campaigning in the Sun Belt, with a visit to Reno, Nevada, to headline a campaign rally that had been postponed because of the Davis wildfires last month. After that, he heads to Arizona for a series of campaign events to mark the start of early voting in the battleground state.
He will also do more media interviews in an effort to reach key demographics that the campaign is seeking support from, including two national TV interviews, a late-night debut during his visit to the West Coast, creators of sports content, on podcasts, and with Hispanic media in the Sun Belt.
Walz posts ad highlighting Vance's 'damning non-answer' on 2020 election
The Harris campaign released a 30-second ad this morning that includes portions of the debate in which Vance dodges questions about whether Trump lost the 2020 election interspersed with clips from the Jan. 6 attack.
"It's really rich for democratic leaders to say that Donald Trump is a unique threat to democracy when he peacefully gave over power," Vance said. As he's saying that line, the ad shows footage of violence outside the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. The ad was shared on Walz's X and YouTube accounts.
"I would just ask that — did he lose the 2020 election?" Walz asks Vance.
"Tim, I’m focused on the future," Vance says.
"That is a damning non-answer," Walz says.
The ad says, "If we elect Donald Trump, the past will be the future," as additional footage of Jan. 6 violence plays.
After Vance and Walz faced off in the first and only vice presidential debate, "Meet the Press" moderator Kristen Welker and NBC’s Hallie Jackson join "TODAY" to break down the key takeaways and whether the debate will influence the way Americans vote, especially in key swing states.
Vance says the debate was 'fun' in social media post
Commenting on the vice presidential debate, Vance said "last night was fun" in a post on X before criticizing the Biden administration and Harris for its immigration and spending policies.
In a separate post, he also acknowledged he was nervous.
"A friend asked me how nervous I was on a scale of 1 to 10. The answer? 11," Vance wrote, sharing a prayer he said a friend sent him before the debate.
Walz heads to central Pennsylvania while Vance travels to Michigan after the VP debate
Walz and Vance are campaigning in battleground states today after they squared off in the vice presidential debate last night.
Walz is heading to central Pennsylvania for a bus tour through Harrisburg, York and Reading. He will hold a rally with Sen. John Fetterman, D-Pa., at 3 p.m. in York, and also stop in York County at 4:30 p.m. and meet with local Latino leaders in Reading at 6 p.m.
Vance will travel to Michigan to deliver remarks in Auburn Hills at 1:30 p.m. ET and Marne at 5:30 p.m. ET.
Vance says Republicans need ‘to do so much better of a job’ winning back ‘trust’ on abortion
On the vice presidential debate stage last night, Vance conceded that Republicans needed to do a better job of talking to women about the issue of abortion.
Vance recalled growing up in a working-class family in which he knew “a lot of young women who decided to terminate those pregnancies.” He specifically called out a friend of his who he said aborted a pregnancy that was from an abusive relationship and relayed how difficult it was for her.
“I think that what I take from that as a Republican who proudly wants to protect innocent life in this country, who proudly wants to protect the vulnerable, is that my party, we’ve got to do so much better of a job at earning the American people’s trust back on this issue where they, frankly, just don’t trust us,” Vance said. “That’s one of the things that Donald Trump and I are endeavoring to do. I want us as a Republican Party to be pro-family in the fullest sense of the word. I want to support fertility treatments.”
It was a shift from Trump’s comments, in which he has repeatedly tried to hold out the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade as something the public had overwhelmingly wanted.
Vance claims Trump ‘salvaged’ Obamacare. Trump tried, and failed, to kill it.
Vance claimed last night — in contradiction of history — that his running mate, Trump, “salvaged Obamacare,” the health insurance program that the former president tried to kill.
During the vice presidential debate against Walz, Vance, a senator from Ohio, echoed Trump’s own recent revisionism. But the assertion also served to remind voters that Democrats ultimately won the yearslong political fight over expanding access to health insurance: The Republican ticket no longer wants to repeal the 2010 law.
Trump “actually implemented some of these regulations when he was president of the United States,” Vance said last night. “And I think you can make a really good argument that it salvaged Obamacare, which was doing disastrously until Donald Trump came along. I think this is an important point about President Trump.
“When Obamacare was crushing under the weight of its own regulatory burden and health care costs, Donald Trump could have destroyed the program,” Vance added. “Instead, he worked in a bipartisan way to ensure that Americans had access to affordable care.”
But when Trump was president, repeal was a centerpiece of his agenda.
In a dramatic Senate vote in 2017, Democrats and a handful of Republicans rejected his plan to repeal Obamacare. Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., cast the deciding vote by turning his thumb down with a theatrical flourish. A critic of Obamacare, McCain nonetheless concluded that the “skinny repeal” measure would leave people worse off than if Obamacare remained in place.
Walz noted that episode last night.
Trump to attend two fundraisers in Texas this week
Trump is set to participate in two Texas fundraisers during his visit to the Lone Star State this week, with one in Houston and another in Midland, a campaign official said.
The former president made campaign stops in the battleground state of Wisconsin yesterday.
Walz admits misspeaking when he said he was in Hong Kong during Tiananmen Square crackdown
Walz conceded during the vice presidential debate that he “misspoke” in the past when he claimed that he was in Hong Kong during the crackdown in Tiananmen Square in which China’s military attacked and killed pro-democracy demonstrators.
The Minnesota governor said that he had been in Hong Kong during the summer of the Tiananmen Square protests, but not in June 1989, when the crackdown took place in and around the square in Beijing, the Chinese capital.
The admission comes after news accounts contradicted Walz’s past contention that he was in Hong Kong as the deadly protests unfolded.
At the debate Vance, the Republican vice presidential nominee, Walz said the misstatements were born of rhetorical exuberance rather than a deliberate attempt to mislead Americans.