Election 2024: Harris appears on ‘Saturday Night Live’; Trump speaks in North Carolina

Voters of Tomorrow, which bills itself as the nation's largest Gen Z-led outreach group, has surpassed 20 million direct contacts to youth voters in 2024 through calls and texts.

The organization said it in a release that it plans to make "millions" of additional contacts in the remaining days of the election, focusing on helping young people make a plan to vote. Its push includes a "Gen Z GOTV Marathon" of continual volunteer calls to young voters and three bus trips to Philadelphia with Students for Harris this weekend.

“Young voters undoubtedly have the power to decide this election, so our Gen Z-led team is doing everything we can to mobilize them,” said Samantha Bernstein, organizing director for Voters of Tomorrow, in a statement.

Both presidential campaigns are starting to react to a new poll from the Des Moines Register that indicated that Harris was leading Trump in Iowa 47% to 44% among likely voters, which is within the margin of error.

Still, the poll indicated Harris possibly gaining steam in a traditionally red state.

When asked whether Iowa was in play for Harris, Walz told NBC News that he'd seen the poll, adding, "I want to go down there."

The Trump campaign released a memo from its chief pollster, Tony Fabrizio, who argued that the poll was "a clear outlier," pointing to a poll from Emerson College instead that he said more closely reflected the state's politics.

After Trump said at a rally in North Carolina tonight that Harris never worked at a McDonalds, a person in the audience seemed to shout that the vice president "worked on a corner."

"When you lie about something so simple, so she never worked there —" Trump started.

A person in the audience interjected, “She worked on a corner.”

“...But I did a little bit," Trump said, completing his thought before responding to what the attendee had shouted.

Trump then pointed in the person's general direction, laughed and said, “This place is amazing” as the crowd cheered. 

A clip from Trump’s Milwaukee rally depicting him making gestures with a microphone has gone viral, gaining millions of views on social media.

The moment came after the crowd began chanting, “Fix the mic!” and Trump responded, “I think the mic stinks” at the rally yesterday, removing the mic from its stand. He spoke about the audio issues for several minutes, at one point going on to mimic adjusting a mic and having to speak into one that isn’t working. He used his hands to gesture up and down along the microphone and dipped his head with his mouth open as the crowd laughed.

Some critics online pointed out how the motion seemed to imitate oral sex. 

One of video clips circulated widely on X. 

The Trump campaign has not responded to NBC News’ request for comment.

NBC’s Chuck Todd joins Weekend TODAY to break down the early voting numbers in the 2024 election and what the path to 270 electoral votes looks like for Harris and Trump.

At an early voting location in Green Bay, Wisconsin, this morning, three generations of the Techmeier family came out together to vote for Trump, expressing concern over the economy and immigration policies.

Gavin Techmeier, 19, said it’s his first time voting. “I just wanted somebody that would look out for us — everybody in this country — and close the border," he said. "I don’t like to be considered as trash or garbage by somebody that I’m supposed to be voting for,” referring to President Joe Biden’s comment during a call for Latino supporters Tuesday.

Biden was weighing in on offensive remarks a comedian made at a Trump rally on Sunday about Puerto Rico, calling the U.S. territory “garbage.” In response, Biden used the same term in what he later said was a reference to the comedian, but which the Trump campaign has said was directed broadly at the former president's supporters.

Gavon Techmeier's grandmother, Julie, elaborated, “We all know what’s true. We live this life. We live with these high costs of living. We don’t need people out there yelling at us and telling us, ‘Oh, you’re just a bunch of garbage if you don’t vote for us.’ No, that’s not right. Be decent. Get your get your point across. Say what you’re going to do for us to make us want you in office.”

With just three days until the election, Trump’s campaign remains unsettled about his prospects in North Carolina, a Sun Belt state that he’s claimed in two consecutive presidential elections.

When asked why, a Trump campaign official put it bluntly.

“If there’s one state that could bite you in the a--, it’s North Carolina,” the official said.

Read the full story here.

With Pennsylvania expected to be a close and crucial state in the 2024 race for the presidency, it’s unusual election laws are again under the microscope.

First, there’s the counting. The state doesn’t have early voting — instead offering the time-consuming and paperwork heavy option of on-demand mail balloting. It also doesn’t process its mail ballots ahead of Election Day.

Read the full story here.

Two conservative women attending Trump’s rally in Greensboro, North Carolina, told NBC News what they are hoping to hear in Trump’s closing message.

Trudy Delling, a retired county school treasurer who was wearing a neon garbage worker vest, said she hopes the former president's closing message will be one of “positivity.”

“I just want positivity,” Delling said. “I’m always glad to hear from him. He always, we always leave with a good attitude.” 

Former first lady Michelle Obama never mentioned Trump by name but depicted him tonight as a petty “con man” who has been peddling nonsense and disinformation since he emerged as a presidential candidate nearly a decade ago.

Speaking in Montgomery County, a key suburban battleground in Pennsylvania, Obama said that part of the reason Trump is unfit to serve is the example he sets for impressionable children. Young people need role models who espouse good values, she said in her half-hour speech. None should be emulating Trump, she suggested.

“We have to choose leaders who embody the values that we seek to pass on to our children,” she said before an audience of about 3,800 in a high school gym. Thousands more were turned away because of limited space, but before taking the stage, Obama addressed some of them in an overflow room.

Harris will make an appearance on “Saturday Night Live” this weekend, according to three people familiar with the planning.

It will be the last episode before the election. Actor and comedian John Mulaney is hosting, and Chappell Roan is the musical guest.

Read the full story here.

It’s a full house for the Harris-Walz rally that Michelle Obama and Alicia Keys are headlining in Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, with 3,800 people packed inside the rally to hear Obama.

The former first lady recently came under attack from Trump, who called her “nasty.” She has yet to refer to Trump by name in her remarks this evening, instead calling him “Kamala’s opponent.”

Seventeen thousand people RSVP’d to the event — far more than the high school gymnasium where it is being held can fit — and thousands more who did not get in are in an overflow room.

Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro joined Obama and Keys in the overflow room before the event, speaking to the crowd who could not get near the main stage. Their message to attendees: VOTE.

Voters traveled from near and far to see former first lady Michelle Obama stump for Harris in the Philadelphia suburbs tonight, and some are regulars at campaign events in the battleground states.

The event in Montgomery County is Stacey Hanley and John Kupetz’ third in the last two weeks alone, the couple told NBC News.

The two already voted for Harris by mail in the swing state, he said — but not before they attended a Trump rally.

“Last week, we were at a Kamala Harris event in Philadelphia and at the [Donald] Trump rally up in State College,” Kupetz told NBC News.

“We wanted to go see what it was going to be like for ourselves,” said Hanley. “We watch a lot of news, and we wanted to see if what they’re saying is true. You know, Kamala did say, 'Go see a Trump rally.' We did.”

In Wisconsin’s hotly contested U.S. Senate race, Republican Eric Hovde has focused much of his closing messaging on attacking the finance career of Democratic Sen. Tammy Baldwin’s girlfriend, highlighting their same-sex relationship.

In a slew of television ads in the final stretch of the election, Hovde’s campaign has repeatedly mentioned Maria Brisbane, referring to her as Baldwin’s “life partner” or her “girlfriend.” Baldwin publicly refers to Brisbane as her girlfriend.

Read the full story here.

Harris spoke for more than 20 minutes during her rally in Charlotte, North Carolina, sticking to her usual messaging arguing she would work on a "to-do list" for all Americans, while casting Trump as someone focused on personal grievances.

She was briefly interrupted at times by protesters, but her supporters chanted over them.

"One of the reasons we are here is because we are fighting for a democracy and the right of people to speak their mind. But right now, I am speaking," Harris said as her supporters cheered.

Trump invited a team of female athletes on stage at his rally in Salem, Virgnia, promising to “keep men out of women’s sports.”

The former president invited Lily Mullens, a Virginia college swim captain, to speak. Mullens said, “I would like to thank you, President Trump, for standing with women and promising to protect the rights of all of us.”

“Keeping men out of women’s sports” has been a popular tagline in Trump’s rallies on the campaign trail, as he leans into the cultural battle seeking to place restrictions on transgender students’ participation in sports. 

That issue was one Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin leaned on to propel himself to the governorship in 2021. Youngkin’s administration then passed policies rolling back accommodations for transgender students enacted by the state’s previous Democratic administration.

During his second campaign event of the day, Vance implored a crowd in Arizona's Maricopa County to vote early for the Republican ticket ahead of Tuesday’s election. But at the senator’s mention of voting by mail, the Scottsdale crowd heckled and jeered, prompting the vice presidential candidate to correct himself.

“If you know somebody who’s got a ballot, tell them to drop it off or get it in the mail,” Vance began, drawing boos from the crowd. “We’ve got to bank as many — sorry, not the mail, not the mail,” the senator continued. “Okay, drop them off. That’s right. Do not send them in the mail. Drop them off.”

On the campaign trail, Vance often encourages his rally crowds to cast their ballots ahead of Election Day — a request in line with the RNC’s efforts to bank votes for Republicans as early in the voting process as possible to counter Democrats’ advantages in early and mail-in voting in recent elections.

Former President Bill Clinton encouraged undecided voters in Pennsylvania to vote for the Harris-Walz ticket in remarks to NBC News following a rally in Butler County, Pennsylvania.

Clinton said Walz is the governor in a state “not very much different from Pennsylvania” and has done "amazing things," arguing that Harris has a better economic, health care and energy plan than Trump.

“Her plan costs less than half as much as Trump’s does,” Clinton said. “And if you can do twice as much good for half the money, you ought to take the chance. She will be a good president.”

During a campaign event in Pennsylvania, Biden attacked Republicans for seeking to revive Trump's tax plan if the former president's elected again, calling Republicans "the kind of guys you like to smack in the ass."

"There’s one more thing Trump and his Republican friends want to do. They want another giant tax cut for the wealthy," Biden told union workers today.

"I’ll tell you what, man. When I was in Scranton, we used to have a little trouble going down to the plot every once in a while," Biden added, alluding to getting into skirmishes as a boy.

"But I’m serious," he continued. "These are the kind of guys you like to smack in the ass."

The White House and the Harris campaign did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

The West Wing cast has reunited to endorse Harris in a new ad released today in partnership with anti-Trump PAC The Lincoln Project.

The ad says the White House “is more than just a building” as the camera pans to different places in the White House and shows different Republican and Democratic presidents.

“It’s the place where Americans look for leadership when the night is at its darkest and when the dawn breaks brightest,” the ad says.

NBC News asked Eric Trump whether his father would accept the results of the election if he loses.

"I mean, assuming it’s fair? Yes," he said, before casting doubt on election integrity. "I mean, we’re finding voter fraud all over the place."

There is no evidence of widespread voter fraud.

"As long as it’s fair, yes, he would accept the results. If it’s not fair, I think he would probably be pretty upset with the results, as would all of America. So we want free, fair and transparent elections," he added. "That’s all we can ask for free, fair and transparent. If they are, we’re gonna win."

Trump wrapped up his first of two stops in North Carolina, a state he won in 2020 and is trying to defend in a dead heat with Harris in critical swing states, without using violent rhetoric against his political foes.

As he often does, Trump spoke at length again about what he calls “the weave,” referring to his tendency to meander from subject to subject in a way that can be hard to follow.  

That included the topic of illegal immigration, during which Trump worked in a reference to the fictional serial killer and cannibal Hannibal Lecter — one he hasn’t made in weeks. 

“So I’ve done something for you that I haven’t done in 20 speeches. I brought up Dr. Hannibal Lecter, and we’re allowing him,” Trump said. He explained that while he has been criticized for making the reference, he was trying to draw an analogy to the kinds of criminal and insane migrants whom he has repeatedly claimed, without substantiation, are being released by their native countries and are crossing into the U.S.

During a campaign event in Pennsylvania, Eric Trump started his speech by getting sentimental, saying “today is not as much about me asking everybody to go out and vote because everybody knows what is at stake, it’s honestly me saying thank you for an amazing ten year period of time."

"It’s hard to believe it is coming to an end in a 3 day period of time," he added.

Eric Trump went on to say that when his father first embarked on his political journey, "we didn’t know a damn thing about politics."

"We were running against Hillary Clinton, one of the greatest political dynasties in the history of the world, right, we were totally underfunded, we didn’t know what a delegate was, we didn’t know what we were doing when we showed up in Iowa or any of these places, we didn’t understand the game, and we went out there and we fought every single day," Trump said.

Harris praised former Rep. Liz Cheney for crossing party lines to support her campaign and defended her campaign for embracing anti-Trump Republicans like the former representative during an interview with CNN before her rally in Atlanta.

“I think Liz Cheney has shown extraordinary courage to be so open about the stakes of this election and to put country and the Constitution of the United States before party,” Harris said. "I applaud at the highest level the courage that she has shown to stand on principle."

“The coalition that I’ve been building over the course of this campaign and in my career, is about bringing people together, knowing the vast majority of us have so much more in common than what separates us, and I invite disagreement,” she added. "We need good debate. We need disagreement where we challenge the principles and the ideas. My table will include people who will disagree with me, so that we can arrive at the best decisions."

Erie County, Pennsylvania, will hand deliver late ballots locally and overnight others after they were sued over thousands of missing and problematic mail ballots.

The state Democrats sued the Erie County Board of Elections on Wednesday, alleging that as many as 20,000 voters did not receive their mail ballots and that more than 300 voters had received incorrect or duplicate ballots.

On Friday afternoon, a judge ordered the missing ballots and list of affected voters to be delivered to election officials within hours. The county contracted to overnight the ballots to out-of-state voters, and planned to hand-deliver local ballots to residents.

Vance and Walz had a near-run in on the tarmac in Las Vegas today but did not interact as they, their staffs, the Secret Service and the traveling press boarded their respective campaign planes positioned side-by-side at the airport.

Walz arrived just moments before Vance, whose motorcade was held at the entrance to the tarmac as the Minnesota governor boarded his plane. Vance only offered a quick look over his shoulder at the Democrat's jet, parked just yards away, as he emerged from his own motorcade. 

Donald Trump Jr., who has been traveling with Vance since yesterday afternoon, stopped at the top of the towable stairs as he boarded to take a picture and then a selfie-style video with the Harris-Walz plane in the background.

Vance and Walz recently had another close run-in at the airport in Phoenix as the two candidates rallied separately in Maricopa County last month. And back in early August, Vance and Harris had a near encounter at the airport in Eau Claire, Wisconsin. Vance, followed by a gaggle of staff and reporters, crossed the tarmac and tried to greet Harris, who had just arrived ahead of an afternoon rally. Ultimately unsuccessful, he returned across the tarmac toward his plane with a shrug.

“I just wanted to check out my future plane,” he said.

Trump won more than 74 million votes in 2020 — more than any Republican presidential candidate in history, but not enough to win the popular vote or the Electoral College.

The loss remains an obsession for the former president and many of his supporters, whose refusal to accept defeat led to a riot at the Capitol and drove political discourse for four years.

Only recently has Trump acknowledged that he lost to President Joe Biden “by a whisker,” though he quickly returned to repeating claims of voter fraud that have been debunked at every turn.

Swifties for Kamala has sent more than 250,000 targeted mailers encouraging young Pennsylvania women with a low propensity to vote to enter their voting era for Harris.

"Every vote in this election matters, especially in Pennsylvania, which could be the state that makes the planets and the fates and all the stars align for VP Harris," the mailer reads. "We think you belong in the voting booth because we are never going back, like ever."

The Taylor Swift fan-driven organization, which is not affiliated with the pop star or the Harris campaign, linked voter files to data based on concertgoer purchases among women aged 18-34. The mailer campaign has so far resulted in 4,600 pledges to vote.

Roughly one fifth of recipients received a custom Swifties for Kamala friendship bracelet — 20,000 in Philadelphia, 10,000 in Pittsburgh, and 20,000 across several key Pennsylvania counties.

Early in-person voting in North Carolina, has broken the previous record set four years ago, with nearly 3.8 million ballots cast as of Friday afternoon. More than 3.6 million voters cast ballots during early voting in 2020.

In addition, total turnout in the general election exceeds 4 million voters, with more than half of registered voters turning out so far.

In Michigan, nearly 2.8 million people have cast ballots, or almost 40% of the total expected turnout so far, with more than two-thirds of those submitting absentee ballots as opposed to voting early in person, Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson said. More than 13% of voters are casting ballots for the first time and 55% of those voting are women, it said.

The final votes of the presidential election have yet to be cast, but concern is already swirling among state election officials that a close outcome could fuel chaos during the routine events that follow a campaign.

In the weeks following Election Day, results will be certified by state officials, recounts may occur and electors will meet in each state to formally cast their Electoral College votes. Those votes later get sent to Washington, D.C., where lawmakers are scheduled to formally count those results during a joint session of Congress on Jan. 6, 2025. 

These meetings in states, outlined by federal statute and specified by state laws, statutes or constitutions, will occur on Dec. 17. The violence of Jan. 6, 2021 — as well as the growing expectation that former President Donald Trump may not accept the election results if he loses to Vice President Kamala Harris — has prompted federal officials to beef up security in the nation’s capital for the same occasion this time around. Specifically, concerns abound that the possible submission of alternate slates of electors could manifest as unrest ahead of and during these meetings.

Officials in battleground states — whose Capitols will, in most cases, host the December meetings of electors — are beginning to plan for such contingencies as well, in preparation that these events could be disrupted.

Read the full story here.

Harris tore into Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., on Saturday for his comment that Republicans might seek to repeal the CHIPS and Science Act if they take control of Congress in the upcoming election.

“I also want to speak to the comments that have been recently made by the speaker of the House,” Harris told reporters in Milwaukee. “It is just further evidence of everything that I’ve actually been talking about for months now, about [former President Donald] Trump’s intention to implement Project 2025.”

“We have talked repeatedly — and the American people know what’s in it — we’ve talked repeatedly about their intention to get rid of the Affordable Care Act. Now to get rid of the CHIPS Act,” Harris added.

Her remarks came a day after Johnson made the controversial comment at an event in New York with politically vulnerable Rep. Brandon Williams, R-N.Y. When asked whether Republicans will seek to repeal the CHIPS Act if they win the election, Johnson replied, “I expect that we probably will,” according to a video posted by a local journalist.

Former Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi blasted Mark Cuban, who has been campaigning for Harris, about comments he made about the women who work for Trump.

"I think we have a message for Mark Cuban: underestimate us," Bondi told attendees at a Trump campaign rally in North Carolina, adding: "This will be fun."

Cuban has been attacked by Republicans in recent days for a comment he made, saying that strong women are "intimidating" to Trump.

The Trump campaign is calling new reporting by The Atlantic that the former president wanted to call President Joe Biden "a retard” during campaign rallies "materially false," saying it "was never discussed."

"Joe Biden’s mental decline was clear for the world to see," Trump campaign spokesman Steven Cheung said in a statement to NBC News. "All we had to do was play highlights of his cringe-worthy speeches and botched interviews."

The Atlantic reported this morning, citing three people who had heard his remarks, that in June, Trump wanted to start calling the president, who was then still a candidate, “Retarded Joe Biden.” Trump's campaign pushed back hard against the idea, however, out of fear it might alienate moderate voters and generate sympathy for the president, the magazine reported.

NBC News has not independently verified The Atlantic's reporting.

It’s the final weekend for Harris and Trump to make their case to voters with Election Day just three days away. NBC’s Aaron Gilchrist reports for TODAY.

In a statement, the FBI said that they're "aware of two videos falsely claiming to be from the FBI relating to election security."

One video is "stating the FBI has apprehended three linked groups committing ballot fraud" while the second video is one "relating to the Second Gentleman," the statement said.

A spokesperson for the Harris campaign did not immediately respond to questions about the video relating to second gentleman Doug Emhoff, Harris' husband.

"These videos are not authentic, are not from the FBI, and the content they depict is false," the statement added.

The FBI told NBC News they had no additional details to provide on the videos beyond their written statement.

Ahead of a rally in North Carolina on Saturday, Trump slammed Harris on TruthSocial, writing that she "is slumping to the finish line, yawning, shrieking, and cackling, while I am working 24/7 to win this Election, so we can save our Country and, Make America Great Again!"

He also called the vice president "a Low IQ individual, not equipped to be President," an attack that he's launched against Harris several times on the campaign trail.

More than 4 million Georgians voted during the state's early and mail-in voting period, which ended yesterday, the Georgia secretary of state's office said in a release Saturday morning.

That contrasts with 1.9 million ballots cast during the same period in 2018, nearly 2.7 million ballots cast in 2020, and almost 2.3 million cast in 2022, the office said. Further, turnout was high, with more than 90 of Georgia’s 159 counties exceeding 50% turnout in early voting, the office said, calling the numbers "unprecedented in Georgia history."

“This was the most successful Early Voting period in Georgia history because voters trust the process,” Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger said in a statement, adding that elections officials have become "battle-tested and ready" over the last four years.

"And we’re going to hold those who interfere in our elections accountable,” he said.

Author Marianne Williamson, who ran for the Democratic nomination earlier this cycle, said she voted for Harris in a post on Instagram.

"To me, this is not a happy election," she added. "I have seen too much for that. But it is a critically important election nonetheless. Each of us needs to do our best, particularly in light of what state we’re in and what difference our vote can realistically make there."

In her caption, Williamson addressed several reasons that she'd heard for why some people were choosing not to vote for Harris.

One reason, she wrote, was that Harris was not chosen in a Democratic primary.

Once the last voter casts their ballot in a state and the polls close, the process of revealing the winner begins. That’s when Election Day turns into election night, and each state starts reporting its vote totals.

Some states — like Florida, Georgia and North Carolina — report their vote quickly, while others like Arizona, Nevada and California typically take longer, upward of a week or two to tabulate most of their ballots. Within many states, the patterns of how votes are reported can make it difficult to tell in the middle of election night who the winner is going to be in the end.

For example, vote returns can skew toward one party early in a night because only a certain type of vote is reported first — like when mail ballots are counted before any in-person Election Day votes. These patterns can create what are sometimes referred to as “vote mirages.”

A vote mirage is when the current vote count shows a candidate getting a higher percentage of the vote than they will ultimately end up with in the final count. Mirages can be “red” or “blue” depending on which party appears to be benefiting — but “appears” is the really important thing here, because like any other mirage, a vote mirage is fleeting and doesn’t reflect the final reality.

Read the full story here.

Trump called into Fox News' "Fox & Friends" this morning before his day of campaigning in North Carolina and again defended his violent comments about Republican former Rep. Liz Cheney earlier this week.  

“All I said is, let’s see how she does," Trump said. "I said, put a gun in her hand and let her go out and let her face the enemy with a gun in her hand.” Trump also called Cheney a “female bully.” 

The former president suggested in an interview with former Fox News host Tucker Carlson in Arizona on Thursday night that Cheney would not be such "a radical war hawk" if she were sent to fight "with a rifle standing there with nine barrels shooting at her."

"Let’s see how she feels about it, you know, when the guns are trained on her face," Trump continued. "You know, they’re all war hawks when they’re sitting in Washington in a nice building.” 

After Trump claimed victory in the early-morning hours after election night in 2020, his campaign and supporters turned to the courts to make that claim a reality. The Trump campaign and surrogates began filing lawsuits the very same day, challenging the results on a variety of grounds well before the final votes were counted.

The legal process and tactics may provide insight into how Trump or his allies could launch similar efforts should he lose again this time.

Over the remainder of November and into December, Trump and his Republican allies filed dozens of lawsuits in key swing states that, if successful, would have given Trump the Electoral College votes needed to remain in the White House. Their efforts stretched from local county courts all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court and were supported by solo practitioners and state attorneys general alike.

Of the more than 60 lawsuits filed in the post-election period, Trump obtained a favorable ruling in only one case — the remainder were eventually either dismissed, settled or voluntarily withdrawn. 

Read the full story here.

Harris will hit the trail today with campaign rallies in Atlanta and Charlotte, North Carolina. The Biden-Harris ticket won Georgia narrowly in 2020, and Trump narrowly won North Carolina the same year.

Harris will also get help from high-profile surrogate Michelle Obama, who will campaign in Pennsylvania tonight.

Trump will start off at a rally in Gastonia, North Carolina, a battleground state that he narrowly won in 2020.

Later, he will head to a rally in Virginia, even though the state is not considered a swing state. In 2020, Biden won the state with about 54.1% of the vote.

Trump will close with his final campaign rally of the day, in Greensboro, North Carolina.