Trump likely to face questions about racist rally remarks at press briefing; 40,000 expected for Harris speech – US elections live
Trump claims he’s ‘the opposite of a Nazi’ as rally fallout continues
Campaigning is ramping up in the race to the White House as Kamala Harris and Donald Trump continue to exchange barbs on the campaign trail. Only seven days remain until Americans head to the polls on Tuesday, 5 November. On Monday, Harris and Tim Waltz courted young voters in Michigan, while Barack Obama and Bruce Springsteen spoke in Philadelphia.
Meanwhile, in Atlanta, Georgia, Donald Trump railed against being compared to Hitler, telling voters that he was the “opposite of a Nazi” in response to Democratic opponents, who likened him to the Nazi dictator after a slew of racist remarks were made at his rally in Madison Square Garden on Sunday.
On Tuesday, Trump will hold a news conference at Mar-a-Lago at 10am ET – where he is likely to face questions about racist remarks about Puerto Rico at the New York event.
He is then heading to Allentown, Pennsylvania – home to tens of thousands of Puerto Ricans.
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Campaigning for Harris in Wisconsin, Bernie Sanders said: “You have Mike Pence saying I can’t support the guy I worked with for four years” and “We cannot allow someone to be president of the United States who is a pathological liar and who is working night and day to undermine American democracy.”
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Sanders also released a video addressing voter concerns over the Biden-Harris administration’s record on Gaza, saying: “After Kamala wins, we will together do everything that we can to change US policy towards Netanyahu.”
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Before performing at a rally with Obama in Pennsylvania, Bruce Springsteen said: “I’m Bruce Springsteen and I’m here today to support Kamala Harris and Tim Walz and to oppose Donald Trump and JD Vance … I want a president who reveres the constitution, who does not threaten but wants to protect and guide our great democracy, who believes in the rule of law and the peaceful transfer of power, who will fight for women’s rights … [and] create a middle-class economy that works for all our citizens.”
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Anita Hill, a former clerk to the US supreme court justice Clarence Thomas, has said “racist, misogynist and sexistinsults” aimed at Kamala Harris “must sting”. In a New York Times opinion piece published on Monday, the Brandeis University professor – who was famously brought before Thomas’s confirmation hearings only to have her sexual harassment allegations against him picked apart by sitting senators – wrote that she sympathises with the US vice-president.
Key events
JD Vance will sit for an interview with Joe Rogan tomorrow for his podcast.
The interview is expected to drop later this week, and will be taped in Rogan’s studio in Austin, according to CNN.
This comes just several days after the popular podcast host interviewed Donald Trump.
On Tuesday morning, Rogan said on social media Kamala Harris’s campaign has not “passed on doing the podcast” but that they only offered one hour, and he would have to travel to her.
Rogan said that he feels “strongly” that the best way to do the interview is in his studio in Austin, Texas and that his wish was just to “have a nice conversation” with Harris and “get to know her as a human being.”
“I really hope we can make it happen” he added.
Trump set to deliver remarks to press at Mar-a-Lago
Any moment, Donald Trump is set to deliver remarks to the press from his Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Florida.
The event was scheduled for 10am ET but appears to be running 20 or so minutes behind.
The press conference on Tuesday morning comes as Trump and his campaign continue to face backlash for racist and vulgar comments made at Trump’s New York City campaign rally on Sunday.
If Trump opens up the room to questions on Tuesday, it is likely that Trump will face questions about the comments at this press conference.
After being released from prison this morning, Steve Bannon, the longtime Donald Trump ally, is back on air hosting his podcast – War Room.
The live-stream podcast episode “The Return of Steve Bannon” began at 10 am ET this morning, just hours after his release.
Bannon is also reportedly planning to hold a press conference later on Tuesday in Manhattan.
Bannon spent four months behind bars after he was convicted on two counts of contempt of Congress.
40,000 people expected for Harris speech in Washington, DC
The National Park Service has said that it is expecting about 40,000 people in attendance for Kamala Harris’s speech this evening on the Ellipse in Washington DC, according to the New York Times.
Lauren Gambino
Kamala Harris will lay out her vision for the presidency in a speech this evening near the White House to underscore the “gravity” of the choice before Americans this November, her campaign chair Jen O’Malley Dillon told reporters in a call previewing the speech.
A former prosecutor, Harris will lay out the speech as she would a closing argument, with the American people as the jury, campaign co-Chair Cedric Richmond. She has been laying out the evidence for the last 100 days, and now she is prepared to rest her case.
Richmond said Harris will use the speech, from a site where Trump spoke to his supporters before they stormed the Capitol on January 6, to remind Americans that the former president is “so all-consumed by his grievances and his power and his endless desire for revenge that he is not focused on the needs of the American people.”
Harris is also expected to lay out her personal story and her vision for building up the economy and working across party lines to serve “all Americans” – including, in contrast to Trump, she will argue, those who did not support her.
O’Malley Dillon said the speech is dedicated to reaching voters who have yet to make up their minds- or aren’t sure they will vote – young people, those who haven’t tuned in and suburban women, and independents. O’Malley Dillon said Trump’s rhetoric in the final weeks and especially his Madison Square Garden rally appears to have created even more openings for the campaign to reach these voters. Support among their targeted Puerto Rican voters is growing.
“We know that there are still a lot of voters out there that are still trying to decide who to support or whether to vote at all,” O’Malley Dillon said. The campaign, she said, considers the contes a “margin-of-error race.”
USA Today has joined the Washington Post and LA Times in not endorsing a candidate for this election — report
USA Today has reportedly joined the Washington Post and the LA Times in deciding not to endorse a presidential candidate in the 2024 election.
USA Today, which has over 200 US news outlets under it, including the Arizona Republic, The Des Moines Register, and the Detroit Free Press, is one of the largest daily newspapers by circulation in the country.
On Monday, the company said it would not be backing candidates “in presidential or national races” this year, a spokesperson told the Hill.
Last election, USA Today endorsed Joe Bien for president.
The spokesperson said on Monday that while the company will not endorse for president, “local editors at publications across the USA TODAY Network have the discretion to endorse at a state or local level.”
Trump claims that he didn’t hear comedian’s Puerto Rico comment — report
Former president Donald Trump has reportedly told ABC News that he didn’t hear any of the comments made by comedian Tony Hinchcliffe at Trump’s rally in New York on Sunday, including when the comedian called Puerto Rico an “island of floating garbage.”
When asked about the comments, Trump allgedly did not denounce them but rather repeated that he didn’t hear them.
Trump also said that he didn’t know Hinchcliffe, saying: “I don’t know him; someone put him up there. I don’t know who he is.”
Podcast host Joe Rogan, who interviewed Donald Trump on Friday, said on social media today that Kamala Harris’s campaign has not “passed on doing the podcast” but that they only offered one hour, and he would have to travel to her.
In a post on X early Tuesday morning, Rogan said that he feels “strongly” that the best way to do the interview is in his studio in Austin, Texas.
“My sincere wish is to just have a nice conversation and get to know her as a human being,” he said. “I really hope we can make it happen.”
Vice-president Kamala Harris will do five interviews today ahead of her Closing Argument speech in Washington DC this evening, according to her campaign.
The interviews will include four battleground state television interviews to reach voters in Detroit, Milwaukee, Philadelphia, and Pittsburgh, as well as a Spanish radio interview with Rumba in Pennsylvania.
Donald Trump is set to deliver remarks from Mar-a-Lago at 10am ET today.
Later in the day, he is scheduled to travel to Drexel Hill, Pennsylvania, to attend a roundtable with senior citizens there where he will be joined by former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee.
This evening, Trump is scheduled to speak at a campaign rally in Allentown, Pennsylvania, at 7 pm.
