Throughout the convention, Trump shattered the traditional boundaries between government and politics. (AP Photo) US Elections 2020 LIVE UPDATES: Fresh off accepting the Republican Party’s nomination, President Donald Trump said he was the only thing standing between “democracy and the mob,” as he lashed out at protesters who accosted his supporters as they left the White House the night before.
Sowing fear about the implications of a Joe Biden victory to battleground state voters, Trump held a rally in New Hampshire on Friday evening. Looking to close his Democratic rival’s lead with just over two months until Election Day, Trump was launching an aggressive travel schedule – and continuing to flout coronavirus guidelines.
Later today, Trump also launched an attack on Indian-origin senator Kamala Harris saying she is “not competent” to be president. Addressing his supporters at a Republican campaign rally in New Hampshire on Friday, Trump said he would support seeing a female president in the US but suggested that his daughter and senior White House adviser Ivanka Trump would be a better candidate for such a role.
Harris, 55, was a presidential aspirant until last year before she dropped out of the race because of lack of popular support. Harris returned to political limelight after Joe Biden, the Democratic Party’s presidential candidate, picked her as his running mate in the November 3 election.
The US armed forces will have no role in carrying out the election process or resolving a disputed vote, the top US military officer told Congress in comments released Friday.
The comments from General Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, underscore the extraordinary political environment in America, where the president has declared without evidence that the expected surge in mail-in ballots will make the vote "inaccurate and fraudulent," and has suggested he might not accept the election results if he loses.
Trump's repeated complaints questioning the election's validity have triggered unprecedented worries about the potential for chaos surrounding the election results. Some have speculated that the military might be called upon to get involved, either by Trump trying to use it to help his reelection prospects or as, Democratic challenger Joe Biden has suggested, to remove Trump from the White House if he refuses to accept defeat. The military has adamantly sought to tamp down that speculation and is zealously protective of its historically nonpartisan nature. (AP)
Indian-origin Senator Kamala Harris, the Democratic Party's vice-presidential candidate, has pledged to rejoin the Paris climate agreement and re-enter the Iran nuclear deal to restore "our place in the world" and win back the "trust and support" of the US' Asian and European allies if her party wins the November presidential election.
Harris, 55, is the running mate of Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden. At a virtual fundraiser on Friday, she was asked how a Biden-Harris administration would restore the "trust and support of our European and Asian allies." In response, Harris slammed President Donald Trump and pledged to "rejoin" the Paris agreement on Climate Change and "strengthen and re-enter" the Iran nuclear deal. "Joe Biden and our administration is gonna have a massive job to repair the damage done by Donald Trump and his administration, and to restore our place in the world," she said.
Kamala Harris is "not competent" to be president, US President Donald Trump has said as he launched an attack on the Indian-origin senator's credentials for the top post.
Addressing his supporters at a Republican campaign rally in New Hampshire on Friday, Trump said he would support seeing a female president in the US but suggested that his daughter and senior White House adviser Ivanka Trump would be a better candidate for such a role.
Harris, 55, was a presidential aspirant until last year before she dropped out of the race because of lack of popular support. Harris returned to political limelight after Joe Biden, the Democratic Party's presidential candidate, picked her as his running mate in the November 3 election.
Born to a Jamaican father and an Indian mother, Harris is the first Indian-American and first Black woman to be picked by a major American political party for the top post. "You know I want to see the first woman president also, but I don't want to see a woman president get into that position the way she'd do it, and she's not competent," Trump said.
Pat Newell backed Donald Trump in 2016.
But after Trump's speech at the Republican National Convention this week included no mention of the police shooting of Jacob Blake that spurred demonstrations in her hometown of Kenosha, Wisconsin, the white retired public relations specialist said the president still had work to do before she'll commit to voting for him again in November.
"He simply ignored it," said Newell, 71, a reliable Republican voter who has also been put off by aspects of Trump's handling of the coronavirus pandemic but approves of his stewardship of the economy. "That's so bothersome." The president can ill afford to lose voters like Newell. His convention underscored the campaign's conviction that Trump's path to reelection rests primarily on voters who backed him four years ago. In a no-room-for-error calculus, he produced a week of programming with fervent appeals to core supporters and limited outreach to anyone else.
Republican strategists and Trump backers offered mixed reviews of whether the strategy will right a campaign that has been set back by his handling of the coronavirus pandemic and the resulting economic collapse as well as his response to unrest this summer spurred by high-profile cases of police brutality against Black men and women, including this week's shooting in Wisconsin. (AP)
Fresh off accepting the Republican Party's nomination, President Donald Trump said Friday he was the only thing standing between "democracy and the mob," as he lashed out at protesters who accosted his supporters as they left the White House the night before.