Former President Donald Trump on Tuesday said he will sit for a “MAJOR INTERVIEW” with billionaire Elon Musk next week as the race for the White House heats up.
“ON MONDAY NIGHT I’LL BE DOING A MAJOR INTERVIEW WITH ELON MUSK — Details to follow!” Trump wrote.
“I am making some donations to America PAC, but at a much lower level and the key values of the PAC are supporting a meritocracy & individual freedom,” he wrote on X, formerly Twitter, in late July. “Republicans are mostly, but not entirely, on the side of merit & freedom.”
Musk was also reportedly one of those who privately pressed Trump to select Senator JD Vance (Republican, Ohio) as his running mate.
Meanwhile, over the weekend, Trump claimed he had an apparent change of heart on electric vehicles because of Musk. Musk is the CEO of Tesla, one of the biggest EV companies in the world.
“I’m for electric cars, I have to be because Elon endorsed me very strongly,” Trump told a rally in Atlanta on Saturday.
JD Vance isn’t backing down from his past criticism of prominent elected Democrats as “childless cat ladies.”
In an interview on SiriusXM’s The Megyn Kelly Show, Kelly talked to Vance in depth about scornful comments he made in 2021 about people who choose not to procreate. At one point, she asked him to respond to the outrage over his use of the term “cat ladies.”
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“Obviously, it was a sarcastic comment. I’ve got nothing against cats. I’ve got nothing against dogs, and I’ve got one dog at home, and I love him,” Vance said.
“People are focusing so much on the sarcasm and not on the substance of what I said, and the substance of what I said, Megyn, I’m sorry, it’s true,” Vance said.
In his interview with Kelly on Friday, Vance acknowledged that Vice President Kamala Harris has stepchildren and that Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg has adopted children. He had named them both as childless cat ladies in 2021.
“I wish her stepchildren, and Kamala Harris, and her whole family, the very best,” Vance said. “The point is not that she’s lesser. The point is that her a party has pursued of set of policies that are profoundly anti-child.”
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But Vance did not take back his 2021 statements that people without children “don’t have a direct stake” in the country’s future. He didn’t recant his claim that people who’ve chosen not to have children are “miserable.”
The Ohio Republican senator and vice presidential candidate went on to explain that Democrats are “anti-family” because, in part, of liberal commentary about the downsides of having children. (Some young people say, for instance, that they don’t have want to have children because of climate change.)
Vance also pointed, repeatedly, to two anti-family policy positions that he claimed Democrats have taken: “Why are they wanting to mask toddlers years into the pandemic? Why are they saying that we should get rid of the child tax credit, which lowers taxes for working families with children?”
The child tax credit reduces household tax bills by as much as $2,000 (£1,555) per child, a policy with bipartisan support; Democrats temporarily expanded the credit to as much as $3,600 (£2,800) per child in 2021 as part of the American Rescue Plan. They wanted to make the expansion permanent but failed to do so in large part because of unanimous opposition from Republicans, including Vance.
Vance also falsely claimed to Kelly Democrats actually don’t support the CTC, as it’s known. An ABC News story published Friday drew attention to a comment Vance once made arguing parents should pay lower taxes than non-parents. In that story, a spokesman for Vance pointed out that the CTC already does give parents a lower tax rate, which he acknowledged Democrats do support.
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As for the idea of a childhood mask mandate, Vance seemed to be referring to past Democratic support for masking in places like schools and daycares.
The campaign of Vice President Kamala Harris, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, highlighted Vance’s interview with Kelly on Friday, and in an email about his support for an abortion ban, called him a “creep” and “weird.”
Mark Zuckerberg has praised former President Donald Trump’s reaction to his attempted assassination at a Pennsylvania rally last weekend.
The Meta CEO ― in a recent interview with Bloomberg’s Emily Chang ― recalled seeing the Republican presidential nominee get up after he was shot before pumping his right fist in the air, moments seen in widely-shared photos from the shooting that killed one rally attendee.
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Zuckerberg described the Trump rally scene, which featured an American flag waving in the sky, as “one of the most badass things” he’s seen in his life.
“On some level as an American, it’s like hard to not get kind of emotional about that spirit and that fight, and I think that that’s why a lot of people like the guy,” Zuckerberg said.
The Meta CEO, who once criticised Trump over his executive order on immigration back in 2017, hasn’t endorsed the Republican nominee or President Joe Biden as they look to win a second White House term in November.
“I’ve done some stuff personally in the past, I’m not planning on doing that this time,” said Zuckerberg, who noted that he’s not looking to back a presidential candidate in the election.
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Zuckerberg’s remarks arrive after fellow multi-billionaire and the richest person in the world Elon Muskendorsed Trump following his assassination attempt.
Musk has reportedly pledged to donate $45 million a month to America PAC, a political action committee working to elect Trump.
Zuckerberg, elsewhere in his interview with Chang, claimed users on Meta’s platforms “actually want” to see less political content and they hope to use the sites to “connect with people.”
Meta’s Instagram announced earlier this year that the platform wouldn’t “proactively recommend” political content from accounts users don’t follow.
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“I think you’re going to see our services play less of a role in this election than they have in the past,” Zuckerberg said.
Trump — whose Facebook and Instagram accounts were suspended in the wake of the Jan. 6, 2021 attack before being reinstated last year — has referred to Facebook as the “enemy of the people” and seemingly warned Zuckerberg he’d send him to prison if he were to return to the Oval Office.
Trump, in comments on TikTok, recently told Bloomberg Businessweek that he’s against banning the Chinese-owned platform as “you need competition” before blasting Facebook and Instagram.
“That’s, you know, that’s Zuckerberg,” the former president said.
Biden, too, claimed he’s “never been a big Zuckerberg fan” back in 2020 and referred to the Meta CEO at the time as “a real problem.”
President Joe Biden sent a message on Friday: He’s not going anywhere.
Beset by poor polls, calls from within his own party to step aside and, as of Wednesday, even Covid-19, Biden said he was eager to return to campaigning.
“I look forward to getting back on the campaign trail next week to continue exposing the threat of Donald Trump’s Project 2025 agenda while making the case for my own record and the vision that I have for America: one where we save our democracy, protect our rights and freedoms, and create opportunity for everyone,” Biden said in a campaign statement.
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“The stakes are high, and the choice is clear. Together, we will win.”
The message appeared to be a rebuke to a growing number of rank-and-file Democrats who have said publicly they would like to see him step aside in favour of Vice President Kamala Harris or another Democrat at the top of the party’s presidential ticket.
Speculation had risen ahead of the weekend that Biden may be reconsidering his decision to stay in the race. Axios reported several unspecified “top Democrats” believed the pressure from within the party to step aside would keep rising and persuade Biden “as soon as this weekend” to quit.
That idea was quickly and publicly rejected by the White House.
“Wrong. Keep the faith,” posted White House spokesperson Andrew Bates on social media early on Friday in response to a story that Biden’s family had discussed an exit strategy for him. Bates had similarly described another account of exit preparations as “fan fiction.”
Still, despite the Biden camp’s public steadfastness, defections continued to grow to around 30 Democrats on Capitol Hill. Friday morning saw one of the most significant yet in Representative Zoe Lofgren (Democrat, California), a 15-term congresswoman who was one of Trump’s impeachment trial managers and the highest-ranking Democrat on the House Space, Science and Technology Committee.
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“As I am aware that you have been provided data indicating that you in all likelihood will lose the race for President, I will not go through it again,” Lofgren said in a public letter to Biden.
“Simply put, your candidacy is on a trajectory to lose the White House and potentially impact crucial House and Senate races down ballot. It is for these reasons that I urge you to step aside from our Party’s nomination to allow another Democratic candidate to compete against and beat Donald Trump in the November election.”
As one of the longest-serving Democrats in the House and an ally of former speaker Representative Nancy Pelosi (Democrat, California), Lofgren has the respect of many members of the House Democratic caucus and could be influential in convincing others to publicly join her call.
There was already a small cavalcade of public defections from Biden on Friday morning. Representatives Jared Huffman (Democrat, California), Chuy García (Democrat, Illinois), Marc Veasey (Democrat, Texas) and Mark Pocan (Democrat, Wisconsin) issued a joint statement for Biden to step aside that said he had “lifted up, empowered, and prepared” younger Democratic leaders like Harris for this moment.
Representatives Greg Landsman (Democrat, Ohio) and Sean Casten (Democrat, Illinois) each issued their own statements on Friday calling for Biden to abandon his reelection bid. “There is too much on the line, and we have to be able to make that case to the American people about the change we need and the country we all deserve,” Landsman wrote.
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And on Thursday, The New York Times reported that Representative Jamie Raskin (Democrat, Maryland), another impeachment manager and the top Democrat on the House Oversight and Accountability Committee, had written a letter to Biden earlier in the month to try to persuade him to drop out, comparing him to an effective but tired pitcher late in a tight baseball game.
“There is no shame in taking a well-deserved bow to the overflowing appreciation of the crowd when your arm is tired out, and there is real danger for the team in ignoring the statistics,” he wrote.
Biden also received more bad news in the form of an estimate from noted polling expert Nate Silver. In his newsletter, Silver said Biden was now polling 4 points behind Trump and had hit a new low in Silver’s election forecast model, with only a 26% chance of winning the Electoral College vote.
But even that estimate may be slightly optimistic, according to Silver.
“However, the model is designed to be cautious around party conventions: it’s shaving a little bit off Trump’s numbers and also hedging toward its pre-convention forecast. If Trump sustains these numbers, the forecast will continue to get worse for Biden,” he wrote.
In his first campaign rally since the presidential debate, Donald Trump went on a bizarre tangent that left critics disgusted and questioning his fitness for office.
Speaking at his Doral golf club in Florida, the former president was discussing his campaign pledge to tipped workers when he began sharing an anecdote about a waitress he said he met in Nevada.
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“A waitress came over, beautiful waitress — and I never liked talking about physical — she’s beautiful inside, because you never talk about a person’s look. Ever,” said Trump, who has called women “fat,” “disgusting” and “unsexy,” among other misogynistic attacks, over the decades.
He then launched into a backhanded attack on former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, a Trump ally turned critic who went up against the former president in the presidential primaries.
“The other day, I got very angry,” Trump continued. “Some man called Chris Christie fat. And I said, ‘Sir.’ And then he said he was a pig. I said, ‘Sir! Chris Christie is not a fat pig!’ Please remember he is not a fat pig. Please take it back.”
Trump in Doral: “A waitress came over, beautiful waitress, and I never like talking about physical. She’s beautiful inside. Because you never talk about a person’s look. Ever. You never mention it. The other day I got very angry. Some man called Chris Christie fat. And I said,… pic.twitter.com/l5TG6PcrBz
At a rally in New Hampshire in August, he said Christie was off “eating right now” before pointing into the crowd and saying, “Sir, please do not call him a fat pig.”
Christie, at the time, invited Trump to “say it to my face.”
The Biden campaign called the appearance “deranged.” President Joe Biden has consumed the spotlight since his fumbling debate performance and has faced calls to step aside.
“Imagine if Joe Biden said whatever tf Trump is saying here,” conservative attorney George Conway said on social media of the “fat pig” sidebar.
Virgin Islands Delegate Stacey Plaskettwrote, “Somebody anybody in the news!!! Are you going to report on this?!?! Does this sound normal? And this is EVERY TIME HE SPEAKS.”
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See those reactions and more below.
Deranged. Utterly unfit for office
— Republicans against Trump (@RpsAgainstTrump) July 10, 2024
Word salads all around. 🙄
Is this the part where The NY Times calls on Donald Trump to resign?
Ah the sharp, coherent statesman, Donald Trump! Who could possibly challenge his mental fitness for office? https://t.co/mOZzSSDgcw
— Amanda is Standing with Joe (@AmandaAnnKlein) July 10, 2024
In what kind of brain does a story about a waitress switch abruptly into some guy calling Chris Christie fat? And on what planet does any of this have anything to do with being President of the United States? https://t.co/60DL9x7HGK
CNN fact-checker Daniel Dale offered a breathless breakdown of the misleading claims and false statements that former President Donald Trump made during his first 2024 presidential debate with President Joe Biden, which the network hosted in Atlanta on Thursday.
The presumptive Republican presidential nominee’s list of false claims is “way, way longer” than the president’s, Dale noted before reeling off and then debunking the many, many falsehoods uttered by Trump.
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Dale, during his near-3-minute segment, described Trump’s claim that Biden wants to quadruple people’s taxes as “pure fiction” and said his line about Biden only creating jobs for “illegal immigrants” was “total nonsense.”
CNN’s Jake Tapper and Dana Bash, who moderated the debate, were criticised for not fact-checking Trump’s false claims in real time for the audience’s benefit.
WASHINGTON — Donald Trump’s last vice president was called upon to defend the Constitution and American democracy by refusing to overturn the results of an election. Then his boss turned against him, whipping up an angry mob of supporters so intensely that they constructed a gallows and chanted for him to be hanged.
But Florida Sen. Marco Rubio still wants the job. So do Sens. J.D. Vance of Ohio and Tim Scott of South Carolina. South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem (yes, even after the story about shooting a dog) and North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum are also still in the mix to become Trump’s running mate.
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Why? Because if you’re an ambitious Republican with an eye on higher office, becoming Donald Trump’s vice presidential running mate could be the quickest path to the Oval Office. Whoever Trump picks to join his ticket will become the immediate favorite to become the next GOP presidential standard-bearer, whether the 77-year-old ex-president wins in November or not.
That’s why so many Republicans are not-so-secretly vying for the position with appearances at Trump’s campaign events and on cable news programs in recent weeks, seemingly hoping to out-do each other on who can be the most obsequious MAGA messenger.
But winning Trump’s affection often requires unquestionable loyalty, and that means defending even his most shocking actions — including his unprecedented effort to overturn an election he lost, his vow to pardon rioters who stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, his 88 felony charges and his personal conduct, such as his alleged extramarital affair with an adult film star.
Besides — it’s not like they’ll end up in the same position as former Vice President Mike Pence, right? After all, Republicans who want the job say the Constitution limits presidents to serving two terms.
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An attempt by the incumbent to stay in power past 2028 is “not going to be an issue for the next vice president, right?” Rubio told HuffPost. “No matter who’s elected president now, they can’t run again.”
Vance, meanwhile, said that what happened between Trump and Pence was a result of “the political consequences of what happened at the time.”
“I think Mike Pence [and] Donald Trump had a very strong disagreement,” he added. “And Mike Pence, you know, he’s fundamentally just was never really on board with the underlying agenda.”
Vance has also said he doubts that Pence’s life “was ever in danger” on Jan. 6.
Rubio and Vance’s decision to downplay the threats to Pence, who said in March he could not support his former boss for president in 2024, are just the latest example of the efforts running mate contenders will go to prove their loyalty.
Scott, for example, last week refused to commit to accepting the outcome of the 2024 election, echoing Trump’s own refusal during an earlier interview with a Wisconsin news outlet. Pressed several times for a direct yes or no, Scott dodged, maintaining there won’t be any issues, since Trump will be the inevitable victor.
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“At the end of the day, I said what I said,” said Scott, who made a failed run against Trump in the 2024 primaries, on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” “I know that the American people, their voices will be heard, and I believe that President Trump will be our next president. It’s that simple.”
Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.) this week refused to commit to accepting the outcome of the 2024 election. (AP Photo/Chris Carlson)
via Associated Press
Prior to dropping out of the presidential race, the South Carolina Republican had previously defended Pence for certifying the 2020 election. When asked at a GOP primary debate last year whether Pence did the right thing on Jan. 6, Scott said he “absolutely” did.
Vance also defended Trump’s claim to “absolute immunity” from prosecution during a combative interview on CNN — an argument that would essentially put the ex-president above the law.
Rubio, who Trump once derided as “Little Marco,” faces a key hurdle to getting the job: The Constitution states that electors in the Electoral College may not cast votes for both a president and vice president from their own state. Since Trump is also a resident of Florida, and since Republicans don’t want to cede a crucial swing state to Joe Biden in the 2024 election, either Rubio or Trump would have to change their residency before the election. And it almost certainly won’t be Trump.
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Noem, meanwhile, continued to make the rounds promoting her book on cable news programs this week, drawing fire from all sides for dodging questions about both her dog and her telling of a meeting with North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un that never happened.
Trump allies scratched their heads at Noem’s decision to write a tell-all memoir that volunteered so much damaging information — but they maintained getting on TV to fight with the press and defend Trump was a good way to stand out.
“I think it’s important he sees you in action and how well you do in front of the public,” Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) told HuffPost, when asked what criteria would help prospective VP candidates.
“He’s finding out that having multiple people vying for the job means that he’s got a lot of proxies out there promoting his message,” Sen. Mike Rounds (R-S.D.) added of Trump.
Democrats lamented the GOP’s subservience to the ex-president, calling the jockeying to be his vice presidential pick another embarrassing display of sycophancy.
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“It’s a cult,” Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) said. “Logic doesn’t prevail in a cult. You just want to get as close to the leaders as you can. That’s what every day is about. How many invites do I get to Mar-a-Lago? How many phone calls do I get from him? Does he look at me kindly? That’s all that matters.”
Whoever Trump picks for vice president this time around will likely be more aligned with than Pence on talking points about the 2020 presidential election and his false claims of fraud. Trump has made glorifying the Jan. 6 attack on Congress a cornerstone of his campaign, embracing rioters as heroes and saluting them at his campaign events. Another contested election could play out similarly, given Trump could face prison time if he is not elected president.
“Most of the people who he would seriously consider to be VP will do whatever he asks, so they won’t have that conflict this time,” Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) said when asked why anyone would want to be Trump’s running mate, given what happened with Pence.
“Would they volunteer to put their heads into a loop?” a reporter asked.
“Absolutely,” he responded.
Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) warned against joining the ticket, pointing to former Trump backers, including some former top Trump administration officials, who have since offered strong criticism of the former president.
“History has a very profound lesson about the people who become associated with Donald Trump, which is it ends badly,” Blumenthal said. “There is virtually no one that has escaped the Trump gravity for malign impact on their lives. Even when they sought to disassociate themselves from [him], they’ve still been tarred in some way. There’s some good people who found out the hard way that Donald Trump is toxic.”
Former US President Barack Obama said fellow former President Donald Trump is “not considered a serious guy” in his hometown of New York.
Obama’s analysis of his four-times-indicted successor in the White House came during the latest episode of the Smartless podcast that is hosted by actors Jason Bateman, Will Arnett and Sean Hayes and was released on Monday. Obama appeared alongside President Joe Biden and former President Bill Clinton. They recorded the show in March.
Bateman asked Obama if he’d been surprised with how fast the “protection and passion for democracy was diluted” during Trump’s administration.
Obama admitted he was surprised at the lack of guardrails within the Republican Party that allowed Trump to take over the party.
But “Trump didn’t surprise me,” he said. “You watch Trump’s campaign, you watch his career, he’s never changed.”
“I mean, he comes from New York. There’s nobody in New York who does business with him or lend him money. He is not considered a serious guy here,” Obama added.
“So, I was surprised he was elected, but I wasn’t surprised in terms of his behavior,” said Obama. “I did expect […] there would be some folks in the Republican Party who would say, ‘No you can’t go that far, you can’t start praising [Russian President Vladimir] Putin and saying that his intelligence is better than the US intelligence agencies.’”
In February, Judge Arthur Engoron ordered Trump to pay $355 million (£283 million) in penalties after he was found guilty in a civil fraud trial in New York of overvaluing his company’s assets for years to secure loans and cut deals. Trump is currently attending his hush money trial in the city too.
Eric Trump’s latest defence of his dad Donald Trump — who is currently on trial in his hush money case — went awry as he made one major mistake.
The Trump scion on Monday told Fox News’ Sean Hannity that, “Every time I watch my father walk into that courtroom it breaks my heart because they [the Democrats] will stop at nothing […] to take the man down and no one believes this nonsense, right?”
Eric Trump complained about his four-times-indicted dad being brought to trial so close to the 2024 election and suggested, without evidence, that it was only because he was “winning in the polls” as presumptive Republican nominee.
Then he claimed, “My father was focused on running the United States of America, not bookkeeping, not there was anything done wrong in the bookkeeping.”
But Trump is charged with 34 felony counts over the alleged falsification of business records to cover up $130,000 (£105,000) paid to porn actor Stormy Daniels — before the 2016 election – so that she wouldn’t reveal an alleged affair.
In other words, the allegations stem from when Trump was not, as his son put it, yet “running the United States of America.”
Senator John Fetterman said a rematch between President Joe Biden and Donald Trump in the 2024 election in Pennsylvania would be “closer” than some might expect, though he still believes Biden holds an edge in the hypothetical contest.
The freshman Democratic senator addressed the race for the GOP nomination, Trump, and life in the Senate since his bout with depression in a rare sit-down with reporters in his congressional office on Monday.
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“Donald Trump can’t beat President Biden in Pennsylvania but, assuming it will be President Trump, it’s going to be closer,” Fetterman said of the current Republican presidential front-runner.
“Trump has to perform above his ceiling,” he explained, adding that the former president is still very popular in the state. “You still see Trump signs everywhere in Pennsylvania, and you have to respect Trump’s strength.”
Trump won Pennsylvania’s 20 electoral votes in 2016 by a narrow margin but lost the state resoundingly to Biden in 2020. Democrats are looking to repeat that kind of performance next year, especially with blue-collar voters in deep-red counties.
Fetterman said no other Republican presidential candidate stands a better chance against Biden than Trump, including Florida Governor Ron DeSantis. He cast DeSantis as extreme, citing his staunch anti-abortion stance and his focus on waging culture wars, including over transgender rights.
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“There’s no way Ron DeSantis could win Pennsylvania,” the senator said. “Watching DeSantis turn into [former Wisconsin Governor and 2016 Republican presidential candidate] Scott Walker and get liquidated by Trump’s machine, I respect Trump in terms of how formidable he would be in Pennsylvania.”
Fetterman spoke with the help of an iPad that transcribed the conversation with Capitol Hill reporters in real time, helping compensate for auditory processing difficulties caused by his stroke over a year ago.
The Pennsylvania Democrat seems to be taking his own approach to life in the Senate after being hospitalized for depression. He often eschews suits in favor of shorts and a hoodie on his way to Senate votes, though, given the warm summer months, he has traded in the hoodie for a short-sleeve, button-down shirt.
Monday’s sit-down seemed to mark a shift in Fetterman’s media strategy. Embracing conversations with reporters, both in formal settings and in more informal interactions in the Senate hallways, is something he hasn’t done much before.
