Trump doubles down on ‘enemy within’ comments as Harris campaigns on birthday – US politics live | US elections 2024

Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson accused SpaceX founder Elon Musk of “spreading dangerous disinformation.” The comments come after Musk alleged that “Michigan has more registered voters than eligible citizens.”

“Here are the facts,” Benson wrote in a post on X. “There aren’t more voters than citizens in Michigan. There are 7.2 million active registered voters and 7.9 citizens of voting age in our state.”

“Don’t feed the trolls,” she added.

In an interview with NBC News, a Harris campaign official said that Joe Biden plans to help Kamala Harris by leveraging his longtime political relationships, specifically with labor leaders, and by holding official White House events.

“He’s out there doing the job as president, and she’s out there campaigning,” the official said. “It’s clear voters want something new.”

White House officials told NBC News they believe at this time that “the most important role he can play is doing his job as president.”

Former president Donald Trump was working at a McDonald’s in Pennsylvania, manning the fryer as a way to attack Vice-President Kamala Harris stint working at the fast food chain when she was younger, an experience he calls into question frequently.

Vice-President Kamala Harris spoke at New Birth Missionary Baptist church on Sunday, before a congregation of about 4,000 in south DeKalb, a Black suburb of Atlanta.

Her comments focused on how religious experiences in her youth at a church in Oakland, California, influenced her politics. Drawing on the parable of the Good Samaritan in the Bible’s Book of Luke, Harris argued for policies that embrace compassion.

“When we come across our brothers and sisters in need, let us, as the Good Samaritan, did see in the face of a stranger, a neighbor, and let us recognize that when we shine the light in moments of darkness, it will guide our feet into the path of peace. And let us remember that while weeping may endure for a night, joy cometh in the morning.”

Harris was accompanied by her pastor Amos Brown of San Francisco’s Third Baptist church. Brown, a contemporary of Martin Luther King Jr and other civil rights leaders in the lexicon of Atlanta’s history.

New Birth Missionary Baptist is a megachurch which owns more land than any other Black church in America, said it’s pastor, Jamal Bryant, in opening remarks. The church plays a prominent role in Atlanta politics, counting many of the region’s most powerful Black elected and appointed officials as regular members. Bryant noted that its sanctuary has hosted five different presidents. The funeral service for Coretta Scott King was moved to New Birth to accommodate the demands of space. New Birth gave away $83m in scholarships this year.

The Trump campaign launched a new ad on Saturday, posting a video of Kamala Harris calling young adults aged 18 to 24 “stupid”. The video ends with text on the screen urging voters to “vote Kamala out”.

The ad, which is running on Facebook, Instagram, and Google in several battleground states, has been described as lacking context. In the longer video, Harris is talking about a program aimed at lowering recidivism among young offenders with better reintegration.

The Harris campaign also launched an ad, though it holds back on the aggressiveness. The video, posted on Facebook, features basketball legend Magic Johnson encouraging voters to vote early, saying, “I’m counting on you to vote, and so is America.”

Minnesota Governor Tim Walz delivered his remarks at a church in Saginaw, Michigan, where he took a stab at former president Donald Trump for selling branded Bibles.

Walz told the crowd that he feels “pretty uncomfortable with this idea”.

“We understand in our faith, the Bible is to be read and followed and absorbed. It’s not to be branded and sold for $59,” Walz said.

The Democratic VP pick also allded to the topic of religion and how it came up during the vice-presidential debate against JD Vance, Trump’s running mate.

“A couple weeks ago, I was in a little discussion with somebody who disagreed with where we were at, and I mentioned at that time when they were continuously denigrating newcomers to this country,” Walz said. “I mentioned the one thing of my faith that was very central. … And that was Matthew, Chapter 25, Verse 40; ‘What you do to the least amongst these brothers and sisters, you do unto me.’”

Lloyd Green

In his new book, Bob Woodward, the legendary Watergate reporter, says Donald Trump is far worse than former president Richard Nixon and “most reckless and impulsive president in American history.”

The Middle East and Ukraine are ablaze, the US mired in turmoil. An octogenarian president recedes from view. The threat of a second Trump term hangs like the sword of Damocles. Fifty years ago, with Carl Bernstein, Bob Woodward captured Watergate and the downfall of Richard Nixon. Now, the US sits at an inflection point once again. Woodward’s fourth book at least in part about Donald Trump is a sober but alarming must-read.

War depicts an administration under Joe Biden that is often behind the curve, at times captive to its own wishful thinking. The withdrawal from Afghanistan haunts. Trump mesmerizes. Yet as Woodward tells it, Biden and his team did clearly see the menace Russia posed. Unlike George W Bush, Biden did not need to gaze into Vladimir Putin’s blighted soul. Unlike Trump, he did not feel compelled to fluff his ego like a besotted fanboy.

True to form, Woodward gets his sources to talk. “All interviews were conducted under the journalist ground rule of ‘deep background’,” he notes. Unless the source agreed to be named. “It’s still a mystery to me how he deals with Putin and what he says to Putin,” Dan Coats, director of national intelligence under Trump, says of his former boss. “Is it blackmail?” There’s something there, Coats is sure.

In the fall of 2021, the Biden administration concluded that Russia would soon invade Ukraine. They had the intelligence to prove it. They mounted a full-court press. On the front pages of the Washington Post, they laid out what was coming. They warned and later armed the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, despite his initial skepticism, and they rallied the west.

Read Lloyd Green’s full analysis here:

Ed Pilkington

North Carolina grapples with holding election in hurricane disaster zone.

In a normal life Jon Council would be holding his last campaign fundraiser of the 2024 cycle, exhorting local small business owners in Watauga county to back his bid to become a county commissioner over a plate of spaghetti and garlic bread.

But in the wake of the devastation wrought by Hurricane Helene, which left western North Carolina reeling from massive floods that swept away buildings, downed power lines, and left thousands of people stranded in their homes, life is anything but normal in this part of the Appalachians. Instead of wooing donors, the candidate is seeking winter feed for sheep.

“We’re talking hay bales, so we really need a truck,” he pleads down the phone.

With just over two weeks to go to election day, Council is wrestling with a problem that is common to anyone running for office in this rugged mountainous stretch of western North Carolina, from local candidates like him all the way up to Kamala Harris and Donald Trump. How do you hold an election in a disaster zone?

Can you meaningfully talk to people about their electoral choices at a time when they are fighting for daily survival? How do you reach them, let alone engage them, when the internet is down, there is scant cellphone coverage, the roads are broken, power is still out, and mail boxes swept away?

“The voting landscape has totally changed,” Council said. “Polling places have been destroyed, people have been unable to leave their homes, absentee ballots and IDs are lost – given all that, talking to folk about why they should vote for me just feels wrong.”

Council, who is unaffiliated with any political party, was gearing up his campaign for the final stretch when Helene struck on 26 September. The flooding and landslides killed at least 115 people in North Carolina, with almost 100 still missing.

Here’s more on the hurricane’s effects on the elections:

Later today, Vice President Kamala Harris will attend another ‘Souls to the Polls’ event at Divine Faith Ministries International in Jonesboro, Georgia, where she will be joined by Stevie Wonder.

Meanwhile, Governor Tim Walz is attending services in Saginaw, Michigan, and Minnesota. His wife Gwen Walz is attending services in Las Vegas, Nevada.

The visits comes as the Harris-Walz campaign centers on reaching Black voters through churches and religious communities.

“They protested an election,” Trump said on Sunday. “They had a right to.”

The former president previously said the thousands of people who traveled to Washington DC that day did so because “they thought the election was a rigged election”.

“And when I say we, these are people that walked down, this was a tiny percentage of the overall which nobody sees and nobody, nobody shows. But that was a day of love,” he said in a town hall held in Miami recently.