Trump and Harris Battle With 22 Days to Go: Live Updates

Reuters reports that Harris may soon appear on Joe Rogan’s podcast:

Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris could sit down with popular podcaster Joe Rogan for an interview in the final stretch of the U.S. presidential campaign, three sources with knowledge of the matter said on Monday. Harris campaign officials met with Rogan’s team this week but an appearance has not been confirmed yet, two of the sources said. Rogan, who runs the most popular podcast in the United States, has a highly coveted and devoted following that leans young, male and numbers in the tens of millions.

The Guardian reports that an app that canvassers depend on has been a pain in the ass:

the Trump campaign and the Elon Musk–backed America Pac, which is now doing an outsized portion of the Trump ground game, use a management app called Campaign Sidekick that struggles in areas with slow internet and means canvassers have to use an offline version.

The Campaign Sidekick app effectively forces canvassers who have less than 40mbps of internet — sufficient to stream 4K video — to use “offline walkbooks” which have no geo-tracking feature and do not always upload after a route is completed, the people said. As a result, the Trump campaign and America Pac then have little way to know whether canvassers are actually knocking on doors or whether they are cheating — for instance, by “speed-running” routes where they literally throw campaign materials at doors as they drive past.

America Pac has tried to deter cheating by sending out teams of auditors to trail canvassers, but there is no way to directly audit every offline walkbook — which is particularly high because of the Trump campaign’s focus on hitting low propensity voters.

And even when canvassers legitimately complete a route offline, that data has sometimes failed to upload afterwards, the people said. Since the canvassers are paid by the door, they have to redo their work, wasting time and potentially annoying voters for harassing them twice.

Omarosa Manigault Newman is the latest former member of the Trump administration to publicly support Harris, though it’s not much of a surprise, considering the fact that she wrote a book going after Trump in 2018. She spoke with Variety about the election:

I hope that Kamala Harris will usher in a new generation of young political leaders. When she wins — if she wins — I hope she’ll usher in fresh energy. Young women should have an opportunity to serve at the highest levels of government. I had a chance to do it twice, which I think is more than enough in anybody’s lifetime. I went into the White House in my 20s — that was when I started with [Al] Gore, and I ended up working in Presidential personnel with Bill Clinton, and then to be able to return back with Donald — I think 20-plus years in Washington is sufficient. …

For me, on a very personal level, it is a significant milestone, and would be a tremendous, seismic movement for little girls and little Black boys. This is important. This is major. I’ll be in Washington on the anchor desk, and prayerfully we’ll see history made. But to get this close is still so significant. I believe the nation will choose the leader they need at this time, and I believe that that leader is Vice-President Kamala Harris.

Tim Walz has appeared on Fox News Sunday two weeks in a row. Now Harris is going to do prime time, per the New York Times:

The interview, with Fox News’s chief political anchor, Bret Baier, will take place near Philadelphia on Wednesday, shortly before it airs at 6 p.m. Eastern on Mr. Baier’s program, “Special Report.” Ms. Harris is expected to sit for 25 to 30 minutes of questions, the network said. This is Ms. Harris’s first formal interview with Fox News …

It’s not just deploying Barack Obama. Notes today’s Politico Playbook:

Today, Harris is launching a set of new policy proposals aimed directly at the constituency, Eugene and Brakkton Booker report this morning:

• Offering 1 million small business loans forgivable up to $20,000;

• Providing training and mentorship programs to prepare Black men for jobs in “high-demand” industries; and 

• Focusing on health issues that disproportionately affect Black men. 

Harris is also sitting down this week with popular Black media personalities. Interviews with journalist ROLAND MARTIN and the Shade Room posted this morning, and tomorrow in Detroit she will tape a town hall with “Breakfast Club” co-host CHARLAMAGNE THA GOD.

Also on tap are organizing events tailored to Black men, a flight of new ads that feature local testimonials and “Black Men Huddle Up” events this week in Charlotte, Detroit, Atlanta and Philly. Harris spent time yesterday at Koinonia Christian Center, a predominantly African American church in Greenville, North Carolina — a key battleground state where Black voters are crucial to Democratic success.

Gabriel Debenedetti spoke with the former Obama campaign leader (and current Harris campaign adviser) on Sunday about the state of the race and the anxieties of Democrats over how tight the vote is going to be. Explained Plouffe:

This question about why we are tied, I understand. I’m one of these people, I wish Donald Trump couldn’t get more than 44 percent of the vote because he’s Donald Trump. A Republican candidate for president, when you think about a two-way vote, is going to get 48 percent of the vote. Look at our “landslide” in ’08. John McCain still got into the 46 percent range, and in some states better than that. We don’t live in a country where someone’s going to win a presidential landslide anytime soon. So why is it close? Because we’re a closely divided country, Trump’s got an active base, and there’s no doubt that there are headwinds that both candidates are dealing with here.

So I think folks should focus less on why is it close? It’s going to be close. The question is, how do we eke out a very narrow win in enough places? And I think we have the operation to do that, I think we have the candidate who’s going to close really strong here. I think Donald Trump is showing every day that he is unstable. He is attacking Americans, he just said his political enemies should be not just arrested but dealt with by the National Guard and by the military. Maybe his hardcore base supports that, but that’s not enough to win a presidential election. You’re fighting over a small number of voters in a small number of states, and you’re fighting to win the turnout battle.

Again: If this were an Aaron Sorkin screenplay, Donald Trump would be punished by the American people and by many, many Republicans, and he would get 42 percent of the vote. That is not reality.

Read the rest of the interview here.

CNN reports:

With less than a month to go in a tight race, Trump’s campaign is urging people to vote early and by mail, while also working to expand voting access in North Carolina after Hurricane Helene.

In a series of recent virtual town halls and robocalls reviewed by CNN, Trump and his daughter-in-law Lara Trump, the co-chair of the Republican National Committee, have actively encouraged voters to take advantage of early voting options, including mail-in ballots. … At least 286,000 estimated robocalls with this recording were sent to voters, including in the key swing states of Pennsylvania, Georgia, Wisconsin, Arizona, Nevada and Michigan, according to data from Nomorobo, an app that blocks and tracks robocalls. The calls began as early as October 2.

Trump has, at times, promoted mail-in and early voting — as his advisers have undoubtedly encouraged him to. But he also continues to suggest it’s tantamount to election fraud — as recently as this weekend:

In a Fox News interview that aired Sunday, Trump referred to his political opponents in the U.S. as “the enemy from within,” suggested they were worse than foreign adversaries, and said the National Guard — and the military — should be used against them. Per the Associated Press:

In an interview aired Sunday on Fox News Channel, Trump was asked about the potential of “outside agitators” disrupting Election Day and he then pivoted to what he called “the enemy from within.”

“I think the bigger problem is the enemy from within,” Trump said. He added: “We have some very bad people. We have some sick people, radical left lunatics. And I think they’re the big — and it should be very easily handled by, if necessary, by National Guard, or if really necessary, by the military, because they can’t let that happen.”

Here’s the segment:

Trump had also repeated his attack on California Democrat Adam Schiff as one of those enemies:

The Harris campaign quickly highlighted and responded to the comments. “Taken with his vow to be a dictator on ‘day one,’ calls for the ‘termination’ of the Constitution, and plans to surround himself with sycophants who will give him unchecked, unprecedented power if he returns to office, this should alarm every American who cares about their freedom and security,” campaign spokesperson Ian Sams said in a statement.

As the AP adds, the interview was just the latest instance of Trump indicating he would use the military as a domestic force:

He has pledged to recall thousands of American troops from overseas and station them at the U.S. border with Mexico. He has explored using troops for domestic policy priorities such as deportations and confronting civil unrest. He has talked of weeding out military officers who are ideologically opposed to him. …

The former president and his advisers are developing plans to shift the military’s priorities and resources, even at a time when wars are raging in Europe and the Middle East. Trump’s top priority in his platform, known as Agenda 47, is to implement hardline measures at the U.S.-Mexico border by “moving thousands of troops currently stationed overseas” to that border. He is also pledging to “declare war” on cartels and deploy the Navy in a blockade that would board and inspect ships for fentanyl. Trump also has said he will use the National Guard and possibly the military as part of the operation to deport millions of immigrants who do not have permanent legal status.

While Trump’s campaign declined to discuss the details of those plans, including how many troops he would shift from overseas assignments to the border, his allies are not shy about casting the operation as a sweeping mission that would use the most powerful tools of the federal government in new and dramatic ways.

In the same Fox News interview, Trump said that in response to Iran’s alleged efforts to assassinate him, Biden “should tell Iran, where I do have an open death threat, ‘If you touch this guy … we’re going to blow your whole damn country up.’ And then it would stop immediately.”

He waved off the idea that his threatened tariffs would increase consumer prices by insisting he was just making threats:

A well-armed man was arrested by local police a half-mile from the rally in Southern California on Saturday. Riverside County sheriff Chad Bianco is calling it a thwarted assassination attempt, per the Press-Enterprise:

Deputies assigned to Trump’s rally said the driver, Vem Miller, rolled up in a black SUV to a checkpoint at the intersection of Avenue 52 and Celebration Drive around 5 p.m. He was found to be in illegal possession of a shotgun, loaded handgun, and a high-capacity magazine, the Riverside County Sheriff’s Department said in a news release.

Bianco told the Southern California News Group on Sunday that he believes Miller — who he said is a member of a right–leaning anti-government group — planned to kill Trump and that deputies thwarted the plan when Miller presented fake VIP and press passes at a checkpoint.

“They were different enough to cause the deputies alarm,” Bianco said. “We probably stopped another assassination attempt.”

Miller is a registered Republican who holds a master’s degree from UCLA, and who ran for state assembly in Nevada in 2022. He lost in the primary.

But the New York Post reports that according to its law-enforcement sources, the FBI doesn’t agree that the man, who was booked on gun-possession charges and later released on bail after posting a $5,000 bond, was a would-be assassin.

The New York Times reports:

In a coordinated effort with the campaign, the Democratic National Committee is spending six figures on flyover advertisements knocking former President Donald J. Trump and promoting Vice President Kamala Harris at four N.F.L. games that are taking place on Sunday in swing states, with teams in those matchups collectively accounting for six of the seven main presidential battlegrounds.

The four games are in Wisconsin, where the Green Bay Packers will host the Arizona Cardinals; Nevada, where the Las Vegas Raiders will host the Pittsburgh Steelers; North Carolina, where the Carolina Panthers will host the Atlanta Falcons; and Pennsylvania, where the Philadelphia Eagles will host the Cleveland Browns. (Michigan is the only swing state left out, with its Detroit Lions playing in Dallas on Sunday.)

In Las Vegas, fans will see skytyping planes fly over the stadium to draw a simple message in white: “Vote Kamala.” In the other venues, a plane with a banner will deliver a slightly longer plea: “Sack Trump’s Project 2025! Vote Kamala!” In Philadelphia, that message will include a nod to the home team: “Go Birds!”

Just in case you were planning on not being stressed out for the next three weeks:

The new national NBC poll numbers released Sunday indicates that for many Americans, yes, he really is, as Steve Kornacki captions:

Biden job approval: 43%

Trump retrospective job approval: 48%

===> Trump retrospective approval is higher than in any NBC poll when he was president

Biden policies: Impact on your family…

Helping 25%

Hurting 45%

Trump policies: Impact on your family (retrospective)

Helped 44%

Hurt 31%

Politico analyzed his last 20 campaign rallies:

Trump’s message in Aurora, a city that has become a central part of his campaign speeches in the final stretch to Election Day, marks another example of how the former president has escalated his xenophobic and racist rhetoric against migrants and minority groups he says are genetically predisposed to commit crimes. The supposed threat migrants pose is the core part of the former president’s closing argument, as he promises his base that he’s the one who can save the country from a group of people he calls “animals,” “stone cold killers,” the “worst people,” and the “enemy from within.”

He is no longer just talking about keeping immigrants out of the country, building a wall and banning Muslims from entering the United States. Trump now warns that migrants have already invaded, destroying the country from inside its borders, which he uses as a means to justify a second-term policy agenda that includes building massive detention camps and conducting mass deportations. …

His rhetoric has veered more than ever into conspiracy theories and rumors, like when he amplified false claims about Haitian immigrants in Ohio eating pets. And Trump has demonized minority groups and used increasingly dark, graphic imagery to talk about migrants in every one of his speeches since the Sept. 10 presidential debate, according to a POLITICO review of more than 20 campaign events. It’s a stark escalation over the last month of what some experts in political rhetoric, fascism, and immigration say is a strong echo of authoritarians and Nazi ideology.

Here’s what he has said about Saturday’s non-swing-state rally in Southern California, via CNN:

“If they had an honest election in California, I think I’d win it in a landslide. I really do,” the former president said on “The John Kobylt Show,” a Southern California talk radio show, while complaining about the state’s mail-in voting procedures.

But Trump’s allies argue the blue-state stops are more than undisciplined sideshows designed to satisfy the Republican nominee’s whims.

Though Democrats dominate California and New York, the states’ overall size means they’re home to huge numbers of Republican voters and donors, creating fundraising opportunities and helping down-ballot candidates, particularly in competitive House races.

“We have a lot of support in California, and I felt I owed it to them,” Trump told Kobylt, adding that the Coachella Valley rally venue is “a great piece of land.”

It’s also a strategic flex, one “person close to Trump” insisted to CNN, both for his ego and as denial fuel should he lose the election:

The former president believes large-scale rallies in blue states like the one he’ll hold Saturday show how deep his support runs across the nation. They also set the groundwork for Trump to question the election results should Harris win. One of the former president’s go-to lines is “too big to rig” — the idea that he must win in such a landslide that no one will question his victory.

“He thinks those crowds show, and will show, there’s no way she can win,” a person close to Trump said.

Trump in many ways views these large-scale rallies as a barometer for how he is performing. In his mind, the bigger the crowd, the better he expects to do in November.

The New York Times reports that in late September, he had dinner at his Trump Tower penthouse with GOP donors including billionaires Paul Singer, Warren Stephens, Betsy DeVos, and Joe Ricketts, as well as members of the American Opportunity Alliance:

Over steak and baked potatoes, the former president tore through a bitter list of grievances. He made it clear that people, including donors, needed to do more, appreciate him more and help him more. He disparaged Vice President Kamala Harris as “retarded.” He complained about the number of Jews still backing Ms. Harris, saying they needed their heads examined for not supporting him despite everything he had done for the state of Israel.

At one point, Mr. Trump seemed to suggest that these donors had plenty to be grateful to him for. He boasted about how great he had been for their taxes, something that some privately noted wasn’t true for everyone in the room.

The rant, described by seven people with knowledge of the meal who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss private conversations, underscored a reality three weeks before Election Day: Mr. Trump’s often cantankerous mood in the final stretch. And one of the reasons for his frustration is money. He’s trailing his Democratic rival in the race for cash and has had to hustle to keep raising it.

Per the Washington Post’s latest look in on the two campaign’s inner workings, both sides understand how tight the polls are and are presuming victory based on their internal polling. The Trump team “has embraced bravado as it tries to keep its candidate on message and encourage him to avoid the sort of high-profile national audiences that might motivate Harris’s supporters,” while the Harris team is leaning into angst:

In the face of Trump’s cockiness, the Democratic mood has dipped to a mix of desperation and determination. Several people close to Harris conceded they had lost some momentum — and needed something to stir the race up. Harris advisers say they need more ad spending, more paid canvassing, more volunteer energy, more media placements, more surrogates and more activity from their candidates on bigger platforms. Even as they dominate most advertising mediums, they have begun to fret about Trump’s advantage in direct mail, shifting funds to deal with what the tracking firm Mintt says is a 4-to-1 Republican advantage. …

At the core of the calculations of both campaigns are separate research finding that many of the targeted voters in key states still do not have fully formed views of Harris, who only became a candidate for president in July. Views of Trump, by contrast, are nearly universally set. That has made it more important for Harris to make a splash in the final weeks. …

The lack of definition around Harris has also shaped the advertising wars. Ads for the vice president mostly seek to provide contrast, mixing positive introductory messages about her and her plans with negative depictions of Trump. The Trump campaign instead has focused its recent advertising on trying to define Harris as an extreme ideologue who is not on the side of regular Americans.

Nate Cohn was surprised by the results:

[I]t seemed possible that another New York Times/Philadelphia Inquirer/Siena College poll would yield a significantly different result. With that in mind, we decided to take an additional measure of Arizona and Pennsylvania before our final polls at the end of the month. The result? Essentially the same as our prior polls. Ms. Harris leads by four points in Pennsylvania, just as she did immediately after the final debate. Mr. Trump leads by six points in Arizona, about the same as the five-point lead he held three weeks ago.

He goes onto to explain that he “can’t really make complete sense” of the results — other than as a indication of how close the race is.

Cohn also notes:

Zak Cheney-Rice wasn’t impressed with the former president’s “tiresome” lecture to Black men this week:

One need not equivocate to recognize that there are substantive reasons for Black voters to reject Democrats like Obama and Harris on the same basis as they do Republicans. The framework Obama uses leaves little room for misgivings about the fact that Harris is going to great lengths to collapse the distance between herself and the GOP. When she learned that former vice-president Dick Cheney, a chief architect of the United States’ atrocities during the War on Terror, was planning to vote for her, Harris unironically thanked him for “what he has done to serve our country.” She has become more hawkish on immigration in response to Trump’s naked xenophobia, and she has recommitted to unconditionally sending arms to Israel amid its slaughter of Gazan and Lebanese civilians — a dogmatic position held by Democratic and Republican administrations alike, including Biden’s and Trump’s. During a recent appearance on ABC’s The View, Harris seemed to flub an easy opportunity to distance herself from the unpopular incumbent when she struggled to explain how she would govern differently. But she recovered later that day by reiterating an earlier promise that, unlike Biden, she would appoint a Republican to her Cabinet.

Obama’s remarks are being hailed as a much-needed reality check — few besides him, reads an op-ed at the Root, would dare to “call BS on some Black men refusing to back Vice-President Kamala Harris for reasons that aren’t rooted in sexism.” But just as his condescension is unlikely to move actual votes, it leaves unanswered the question of how destructive Democratic policies have to be before they merit the same moral opposition as Republican ones. By focusing on the sliver of Black male voters who refuse to support Harris because she’s a woman, Obama and those who subscribe to his analysis neglect the myriad reasons why they might be skeptical of her because she’s a Democrat.

Read the rest of Zak’s post here.

The health summary letter is of course in part an effort to draw contrast with the much older Trump, who isn’t known for transparency about his own health:

Trump held a rally on Friday in Aurora, Colorado — intentionally drawing more negative attention to the city he has falsely claimed is being overrun by migrant criminals. And that’s what he did from Aurora, too, the Colorado Sun reports:

“I will rescue Aurora and rescue every town that’s been invaded and conquered,” said Trump, who was flanked by large mugshots of Venezuelan gang members arrested in Aurora as he spoke to a sold-out crowd at the Gaylord Rockies Resort and Conference Center. “These towns have been conquered.”

Aurora has not been conquered.

There have been a handful of members of the Venezuelan Tren de Aragua gang arrested in Aurora, but claims that they have taken control have either been grossly hyperbolic or totally debunked. “Based on our initial investigative work, we believe reports of TdA influence in Aurora are isolated,” Aurora police said in a statement.

Those facts didn’t stop Trump from painting a bleak picture of Colorado’s third most populous city, using the handful of examples of issues involving Venezuelan migrants in Aurora to suggest it has been overrun. His visit reignited the national, negative spotlight on Aurora that had mostly faded since he first invoked the city in his September debate with Harris.

In addition to promising to appoint a Republican to her Cabinet, Harris vowed at a campaign event on Friday to form a bipartisan council to advise her on policy in the White House. She was light on the details, but Bloomberg found out some more via an aide:

The President’s Council on Bipartisan Solutions would include public officials as well as business and community leaders from both parties to recommend ideas to help improve Americans’ lives, according to a campaign aide who provided more details on the plan on condition of anonymity.

The council would focus on issues like expanding small businesses, building more affordable housing, ensuring online safety and improving mental health care and care for veterans, according to the aide. Harris would task the council with meeting within the first 30 days of her administration.

The Harris-Walz campaign has been engaged in a media blitz, with both candidates doing a spate of interviews and appearances on high-profile news programs, podcasts, and late-night talk shows.

But Tim Walz is set to return to less friendly territory: Fox News. The Minnesota governor will be making an appearance on Fox News Sunday this weekend for the second week in a row, an unusual move for a Democratic candidate. In recent weeks, the campaign has been making a play for moderate and disaffected voters who might be opposed to Donald Trump.

Having Walz, who currently has the highest favorability rates of anyone on the major-party tickets, on the most prominent conservative network appears to be part of that strategy.

Also, it might just make Trump himself angry:

Walz is also set to take part in a series of events aimed at male voters including attending a football game at the high school where he used to coach and going pheasant-hunting with a group of influencers.

On Thursday, Trump took a swipe at the city of Detroit while talking — to the Detroit Economic Club — about a future Harris presidency. “It will be like Detroit. Our whole country will end up being like Detroit if she’s your president,” he told the club’s members. “You’re going to have a mess on your hands.”

In less than 24 hours, the Harris campaign had turned the controversial comments into an ad that will air in the region this weekend during the Detroit Tigers’ playoff game and the Detroit Lions game, per the Detroit News.

In the ad, actor Courtney B. Vance, a Detroit native, says of Trump’s comments lamenting that the country would turn into Detroit under a Harris administration that “he should be so goddamned lucky.”

According to NBC News, Trump has been told that his safety can’t be guaranteed, so he’s temporarily choosing life over one of his favorite pastimes:

Trump has not played golf since an apparent assassination attempt near one of his courses on Sept. 15, and he will not do so until after the election, according to a person close to the campaign and another person familiar with the situation. A third person familiar with the conversations said Trump was told that federal agents could not ensure his safety to a degree that they were comfortable with if he were to play. The concerns were conveyed in two conversations with Trump since the September incident: one with Ronald Rowe, the acting director of the Secret Service, and the other with officials from the national intelligence director’s office. 

He and his campaign aren’t just worried about golf courses. Per the Washington Post, the Trump campaign has asked for a number of additional protective measures while he’s on the trail — apparently including the Air Force:

Trump’s campaign requested military aircraft for Trump to fly in during the final weeks of the campaign, expanded flight restrictions over his residences and rallies, ballistic glass pre-positioned in seven battleground states for the campaign’s use and an array of military vehicles to transport Trump, according to emails reviewed by The Washington Post and people familiar with the matter.

The requests are extraordinary and unprecedented — no nominee in recent history has been ferried around in military planes ahead of an election. But the requests came after Trump’s campaign advisers received briefings in which the government said Iran is still actively plotting to kill him, according to the emails reviewed by The Post and the people familiar with the matter, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe sensitive discussions. Trump advisers have grown concerned about drones and missiles, according to the people.

On the heels of his highly discussed appearance in Pittsburgh, former president Barack Obama will continue to hit the trail on behalf of the Harris-Walz campaign in other crucial battleground states. On October 18, Obama will be campaigning in Tucson, Arizona, and then will travel to Las Vegas, Nevada, on October 19, the first day of early voting in that state, per The Hill.

The New York Times reported Friday morning that the rally-jumping X owner is borderline obsessed with helping Trump win the election:

He has effectively moved his base of operations to Pennsylvania, the place that he has recently told confidants he believes is the linchpin to Mr. Trump’s re-election … Above all, he is personally steering the actions of a super-PAC that he has funded with tens of millions of dollars to turn out the vote for Mr. Trump, not just in Pennsylvania but across the country. He has even proposed taking a campaign bus tour across Pennsylvania and knocking on doors himself, in part to see how his money is being used …

A clear picture has emerged of Mr. Musk’s battle plan as he directs his efforts to elect Mr. Trump with the same frenetic energy and exacting demands that he has honed at his companies SpaceX, Tesla and X …

These days, in private conversations, Mr. Musk is obsessive, almost manic, about the stakes of the election and the need for Mr. Trump to win. He praises Mr. Trump’s courage under fire — he endorsed him on the night of the assassination attempt in Butler — and talks about how funny he is. One person who spoke recently to Mr. Musk recalled him saying, without any hint of irony, “I love Trump.”