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US Monthly Headline News October 2024
Story by Elizabeth Preza

An investigation by Democrats on the House Oversight Committee reveals Donald Trump “overcharged Secret Service agents protecting him and his family for rooms at his hotel in Washington while he was president,” NBC News reports.

According to NBC News, House Democrats released a two-part investigation “into financial benefits Trump received in office,” alleging Trump “benefited from foreign and domestic officials, including people seeking jobs in his administration or pardons from him, who paid for rooms at what was then the Trump International Hotel in downtown Washington.”

Democrats analyzed records of $300,000 in payments to the Trump Corporation from September 2017 to August 2018, finding the organization “[jacked] up the prices of hotel rooms at the property for the Secret Service, in some instances to the tune of 300% more than the approved government per diem rate and beyond what other guests were being charged for rooms on the same nights,” NBC News reports. In addition, “eight U.S. ambassadors, three people Trump appointed to be federal judges, two state governors, a state legislative delegation and a Trump Cabinet secretary stayed and spent money at the Trump hotel while they were serving as state or federal officials.”
Thom Hartmann

There was, it increasingly appears, a conspiracy involving some in the most senior levels of the Trump administration to end American representative democracy and replace it with a strongman oligarchy along the lines of Putin’s Russia or Orbán’s Hungary.

This would be followed, after the January 20th swearing-in of Trump for a second term, by a complete realignment of US foreign policy away from NATO and the EU and toward oligarchic, autocratic nations like Russia, China, Saudi Arabia, and Hungary.

As the possibility of this traitorous plan becomes increasingly visible, the GOP, after a frantic two weeks of not knowing what to say or do, has finally settled on a response to Trump’s theft of classified information: “Hillary did the same thing, and she didn’t go to jail!” I heard the comparison made at least a half-dozen times this weekend on various political shows.
Story by Zachary Leeman

Journalist Bob Woodward revealed that former Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis seconded his argument that former President Donald Trump is a “dangerous” threat to the country.

Mattis worked briefly in the Trump administration before resigning in 2018 amid a series of foreign policy disagreements with Trump. He’s since occasionally criticized his former boss, including after the Jan. 6 Capitol riot and amid the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests.

Speaking to The Bulwark Podcast this week, Woodward said he recently got an email from Mattis.

Tim Miller writes:

In an interview on The Bulwark Podcast on Thursday, Woodward said he recently received an email from Mattis, who served under Trump before resigning in protest. In the email, Mattis seconded the assessment offered by Gen. Mark Milley, the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, whom Woodward quotes as calling Trump “the most dangerous person ever.”

In his book, Woodward recounts being approached by Milley at a 2023 gathering at the Willard Hotel in Washington, D.C., during which Milley pleaded with him to “stop” Trump. Milley went on to call Trump, under whom he also served, “fascist to the core!”

MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell explains how special prosecutor Jack Smith can use Donald Trump’s words against him in court after Trump directly linked himself to the Jan. 6 insurrectionists in statements at a Univision town hall.

Nicolle Wallace breaks down the latest 24 hours of headlines surrounding Donald Trump which would typically doom a normal Presidential candidate with Trump’s horrible performance on the Univision town hall where the live audience was not interested in Trump’s lies and talking points and the latest reporting about what Mitch McConnell really thinks of the man he has enabled for 8 years and will refuse to endorse.
Story by Andrew Goudsward

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A U.S. judge on Friday made public more evidence collected by prosecutors in the federal criminal case accusing former President Donald Trump of attempting to overturn his defeat in the 2020 election.

The evidence includes material referenced in a sweeping court filing from Special Counsel Jack Smith made public earlier this month that argued that Trump, the Republican presidential candidate in this year's election, is not immune from the remaining allegations in the case.

Smith’s court filing contained few details that had not already been made public, but provided a detailed account of Trump’s efforts to hold onto power following his election loss, including descriptions of Trump’s conversations with family members and aides.
Story by Brandi Buchman

A four-part appendix detailing more about former President Donald Trump’s alleged criminal attempt to overturn the results of the 2020 election hit the public record on Friday.

U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan approved the public release on the federal criminal docket in Washington, D.C., late Thursday, following weeks of Trump requesting to keep the appendix out of the public eye.

Trump told the judge on Oct. 10 he needed more time to weigh his “litigation options” if she decided to admit the source materials publicly, arguing they could be damaging to jurors and the integrity of the case. Chutkan agreed to give him one week to respond and make his arguments at blocking the release. He filed a last-ditch motion early Thursday asking for more time, but was denied.

The appendix is split into four parts with sensitive information redacted.

All four volumes total more than 1,800 pages.
Story by nmusumeci@businessinsider.com (Natalie Musumeci)

A federal judge on Friday released more of prosecutors' evidence in the election interference case against Donald Trump after the former president failed in an 11th hour attempt to delay the unsealing of the files.

The release of the 1,889 pages of documents by United States District Court Judge Tanya Chutkan comes after the judge, earlier this month, released special counsel Jack Smith's 165-page bombshell motion that included a trove of new evidence against Trump in the case.

“The trains of thought have gotten shorter and shorter and shorter. They've gotten more digressive. And he's doing a lot of media, mostly with very friendly outlets—but when you look at the answers, it is just nonsense,” says Chris Hayes. Michelle Goldberg and Faiz Shakir join to discuss that and the state of the race.
Story by Hadas Gold and Liam Reilly, CNN

Former President Donald Trump said Friday that Fox News staffers helped him write his Al Smith charity dinner speech, in which he cracked jokes and insulted his opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris.

Trump made the comment during an interview on “Fox and Friends,” during which he was asked about his monologue at the Thursday night event in Manhattan. Host Steve Doocy said Democrats historically “turn to the guys from ‘Saturday Night Live’ or the ‘Tonight Show;’ they write all their material,” before asking Trump who helped write his speech.

“I had a lot of people, a couple people from Fox actually, I shouldn’t say that. But they wrote some jokes. For the most part I didn’t like any of them,” Trump said to laughter from the co-hosts.

During his speech to the friendly Catholic charity crowd, Trump disparaged Harris’ intelligence, insulted her family, and complained about how badly he was treated during his presidency, drawing occasional cheers and some laughs.
Story by Sophie Clark

Remarks made by Donald Trump in 2011 about politicians who do not want to debate are coming back to haunt him after being unearthed by CNN and Vice President Kamala Harris' campaign.

The CNN clip of the remarks, which Trump originally made on Fox Business' Imus in the Morning on December 9, 2011, shows him telling anchor Don Imus that people who do not debate are cowards and that presidents are supposed to negotiate against China but are "too afraid to go into a debate."

Trump also said in the 2011 clip that those who did not debate lacked "the courage to do it." In 2024, the former president has refused to commit to a second debate against Harris.

On X, formerly Twitter, @KamalaHQ, an account for Harris' presidential campaign, posted the CNN clip, writing, "Unearthed audio: Trump says candidates who refuse to debate don't have 'courage' and are unfit to be commander-in-chief because they're 'afraid.'"
Story by Liam Reilly and Brian Stelter, CNN

“To keep it simple for the State of Florida: it’s the First Amendment, stupid.”

That’s what a federal judge wrote Thursday as he sided with local TV stations in an extraordinary dispute over a pro-abortion rights television ad.

Chief U.S. District Judge Mark E. Walker of the Northern District of Florida granted a temporary restraining order against Florida’s surgeon general after the state health department threatened to bring criminal charges against broadcasters airing the ad.

The controversy stems from a campaign ad by the group Floridians Protecting Freedom, which is behind the “Yes on 4 Campaign,” promoting a ballot measure that seeks to overturn Florida’s six-week abortion ban by enshrining abortion rights in the state constitution.

In the 30-second ad, a brain cancer survivor named Caroline says the state law would have prevented her from receiving a life-saving abortion.

“The doctors knew that if I did not end my pregnancy, I would lose my baby, I would lose my life, and my daughter would lose her mom,” she says on camera. “Florida has now banned abortions, even in cases like mine.”

“The trains of thought have gotten shorter and shorter and shorter. They've gotten more digressive. And he's doing a lot of media, mostly with very friendly outlets—but when you look at the answers, it is just nonsense,” says Chris Hayes. Michelle Goldberg and Faiz Shakir join to discuss that and the state of the race.
Story by Via AP news wire

The U.S. military trained him in explosives and battlefield tactics. Now the Iraq War veteran and enlisted National Guard member was calling for taking up arms against police and government officials in his own country.

Standing in the North Carolina woods, Chris Arthur warned about a coming civil war. Videos he posted publicly on YouTube bore titles such as “The End of America or the Next Revolutionary War.” In his telling, the U.S. was falling into chaos and there would be only one way to survive: kill or be killed.

Arthur was posting during a surge of far-right extremism in the years leading up to the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol. He wrote warcraft training manuals to help others organise their own militias. And he offered sessions at his farm in Mount Olive, North Carolina, that taught how to kidnap and attack public officials, use snipers and explosives and design a “fatal funnel” booby trap to inflict mass casualties.

While he continued to post publicly, military and law enforcement ignored more than a dozen warnings phoned in by Arthur’s wife’s ex-husband about Arthur’s increasingly violent rhetoric and calls for the murder of police officers. This failure by the Guard, FBI and others to act allowed Arthur to continue to manufacture and store explosives around young children and train another extremist who would attack police officers in New York state and lead them on a wild, two-hour chase and gun battle.

“Bret Baier came at Kamala Harris with every attack in the Trump playbook—including one moment where he got caught using an edited soundbite of Trump,” says Chris Hayes on Kamala Harris calling out Fox News during her interview.
Story by Alex Lang

Donald Trump has said “only stupid people put old” people in positions on the Supreme Court – seemingly forgetting that he’s a 78-year-old man running for the top position in the executive branch.

Trump made the remarks during an interview with Bloomberg while in Chicago on Tuesday.

“It’s amazing, because I got three in four years,” Trump said of his appointments to the Supreme Court. “Most people get none. Because, you know, you put them in, they’re young. You tend to put them in young.”

“Only stupid people put old,” he continued. “You know, you don’t put old in, because they’re there for two years or three years, right?”

Trump is running for another four-year term in the White House and is currently the oldest nominee for president in US history. If elected in November, Trump would be 82 years old when he completes his term in 2029.

His age has frequently been a target for the Democrats who have questioned his mental fitness and his ability to serve.
Story by bgriffiths@insider.com (Brent D. Griffiths)

WASHINGTON – Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell privately described then-President Donald Trump as "stupid as well as being ill-tempered," "despicable" and a "narcissist," after the 2020 election, according to excerpts from a forthcoming biography of the longtime Senate power broker.

The remarks, recorded by McConnell and shared with Associated Press Deputy Washington Bureau Chief Michael Tackett, are McConnell's strongest condemnation yet of the former president, despite years of a famously frosty relationship between the two men. The biography written by Tackett and titled "The Price of Power," is set to be released on Oct. 29, just a week before Election Day.

In the weeks following Election Day in 2020, when Trump and his campaign were working to overturn the election results, McConnell said in his recordings that “it’s not just the Democrats who are counting the days” until Trump left office, according to the AP. He also said that Trump’s behavior “only underscores the good judgment of the American people. They’ve had just enough of the misrepresentations, the outright lies almost on a daily basis, and they fired him.”

McConnell said it's been "really hard to take" the results "for a narcissist like him."

"So his behavior since the election has been even worse, by far, than it was before, because he has no filter now at all," he said.

McConnell also alleged Trump's efforts to overturn the election would hurt Republicans in Georgia runoff races for the Senate at the time, which would determine control of the chamber. Now-Sens. Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff, both Democrats, went on to win both races and take the chamber.

Trump is “stupid as well as being ill-tempered and can’t even figure out where his own best interests lie," he said.
The Senate GOP leader has endorsed Trump. He said Thursday that any remark he made "pales in comparison" to what others, including VP nominee JD Vance, have said.
By Frank Thorp V, Scott Wong and Jesse Rodriguez

WASHINGTON — Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell has endorsed Donald Trump for president this year. But in a new book, the powerful Kentucky Republican is quoted after the 2020 election disparaging Trump as a “despicable human being,” “stupid” and “ill-tempered."

Republicans were counting down the days until he left office, McConnell said at the time. He also called the “narcissistic” Trump unfit for office after he incited the attack on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, and the Senate leader sobbed to his staff that day after their lives were put in danger, according to a copy of the book obtained by NBC News.

Those quotes and scenes are depicted in “The Price of Power,” a new book out this month by veteran journalist Michael Tackett, deputy bureau chief of The Associated Press. His reporting is based on almost three decades of private oral histories McConnell shared with Tackett, as well as more than 50 hours of interviews and thousands of McConnell’s personal and official records.

McConnell did not deny his statements about Trump as quoted in the book, when asked about it Thursday. “Whatever I may have said about President Trump pales in comparison to what JD Vance, Lindsey Graham, and others have said about him,” McConnell said in a statement, “but we are all on the same team now.”
Coup plotters and coup participants are the real enemy within

Story by Brian Karem

He’s vindictive, shallow, delusional and increasingly dangerous – but no one seems to care. Houston, we have a problem. Actually, we have many problems and Apollo 13 was flawless compared to this presidential race.

We are, of course, talking about Donald Trump. He danced like a nonplayer character, or NPC, in a computer game for 39 minutes at a town hall meeting the other night after taking a handful of questions. His dancing makes “Seinfeld”’s Elaine Benes look like she’s Fred Astaire and I only compare him to a fictional character because during his rambling statements, he once again referred to Hannibal Lecter, his favorite fictional friend he finds so quotable.

“Is Hannibal with us now Mr. Trump?” I want to ask at his necessary therapy session held inside prison walls.

The morning after his St. Vitus dance, in what was described as a “testy appearance” at the Economic Club of Chicago, he played off his incoherence as a sophisticated “weave” of multiple ideas that only a political genius would attempt. At this point, we need to check if Trump is wearing blue contact lenses. As my dad used to say, he’s so full of crap his eyes should be brown.

Among the ideas he tried to “weave” in that appearance is that his crowd in Washington on Jan. 6, 2021, was infused with “love and peace.” It was infused with something all right, but peace and love were not among them – not according to what I saw firsthand. This was not John Lennon and Yoko Ono doing a bed-in for peace singing “All we are saying is give peace a chance.” There were plenty, however, who believed that “Happiness is a Warm Gun.”
Story by Roque Planas

At Univision’s town-hall-style event Wednesday, 33-year-old Jesús González asked Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump: “Could you explain your gun control policy to the parents of the victims of school shootings?”

Trump’s response to those parents: They’re better off in a country with more guns.

“We have a Second Amendment and right to bear arms, essentially,” Trump said. “And I’m very strongly an advocate of that — I think you need that. I think that if you ever tried to get rid of it, you wouldn’t be able to do it. You wouldn’t be able to take away the guns, because people need that for security. They need it for entertainment, and for sport and other things — but they also, in many cases, need it for protection.”

Trump echoed former National Rifle Association chief Wayne LaPierre’s famous argument that if more “good people” have guns, it helps keep crime down.

“You want to have a lot of good people have [guns],” the former president said. “But if we didn’t have that, you would see a crime rate that’s crazy.”

Southern and Mountain West states with more permissive gun laws tend to have higher death rates from gun violence than those of the Northeast or California, where gun restrictions are tighter, according to research from the Center for Gun Violence Solutions at Johns Hopkins University.
Story by Maya Mehrara

Vice President Kamala Harris's campaign has released the full version of a clip of former President Donald Trump talking about political rhetoric in a new post on X (formerly known as Twitter) on Thursday after accusing Fox News of editing the clip shown during her interview.

Harris, who was interviewed by Fox News' Bret Baier on Wednesday night, was shown the clip of Trump at the Faulkner Focus town hall on the network. The former president claimed that Democrats are "weaponizing the government" and conducting "phony investigations."

Harris responded to the clip on air and said, "Bret, I'm sorry, and with all due respect, that clip was not what he has been saying about the 'enemy within' that he has repeated when he's speaking about the American people. That's not what you just showed."

The vice president said, "Here's the bottom line—he has repeated it many times and you and I both know that. You and I both know that he has talked about turning the American military on the American people. He has talked about going after people who are engaged in peaceful protest. He has talked about locking people up because they disagree with him."
Story by Griffin Eckstein

Former President Donald Trump abruptly cancelled an appearance at an NRA event in Savannah, Georgia, fueling public concerns about his mental state.

Trump was slated to headline the “Defend the 2nd” rally on Oct. 22. The Trump campaign cited a scheduling conflict in pulling out of that event, per the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. The gun advocacy group later scrapped the entire event.

The cancellation follows an appearance at the Economic Club of Chicago on Tuesday, in which interviewer John Micklethwait repeatedly pressed Trump on his rambling non-answers and topic changes. A day before that appearance, Trump similarly confused an audience at a Pennsylvania town hall when he paused questions for over half an hour to sway along to his playlist on stage.

Trump has been on a cancellation tear, pulling out of several planned interviews in recent days.

Per CNN’s Brian Stelter, Trump reportedly “suddenly scrapped” a planned interview with NBC News senior business correspondent Christine Romans penciled in for Monday morning in Philadelphia. He had previously cancelled a stop by CNBC’s “Squawk Box,” citing another purported scheduling conflict.

The cancellations follow a “60 Minutes” interview which Trump unexpectedly pulled out of two weeks ago. That move followed another appearance where Trump seemed somewhat lost.
Story by Carl Gibson

Vice President Kamala Harris' recent interview with Fox News host Bret Baier was likely her toughest to date, but one exchange has emerged that could be what helps her break through to the network's stalwart conservative audience.

In his latest column, the New Republic's Greg Sargent wrote that one moment in the interview stood out for him in particular that may be something the Harris campaign can exploit up until Election Day. That moment came after Baier played a clip of Trump speaking at a friendly Fox News town hall event (which Fox did not disclose was packed full of Trump supporters) in which he downplayed his "enemy within" remarks from earlier this week.

"They were saying I was like, threatening, I wasn't threatening anybody. They're the ones doing the threatening," Trump said. He then complained about "phony investigations" and "weaponization of government" to prosecute him.

Harris sternly responded to the clip by telling Baier: "That clip was not what he has been saying about the 'enemy within' that he has repeated when he's speaking about the American people. That's not what you just showed." Harris later tweeted proof of selective editing that omitted Trump doubling down on his "enemy within" comments, including his belief that Rep. Adam Schiff (D-California) was deserving of the label.
For 10 years, Fox has built a fictional informational cocoon around Donald Trump. Kamala Harris just burst it open.
New Republic

Judging by the video that Kamala Harris’s campaign is circulating, her aides are pleased with one particular exchange during her interview with Fox News’s Bret Baier. In it, Harris dressed down Baier for playing video of Donald Trump that sanitized away his threat to unleash the military on “the enemy within.”

Many observers immediately surmised that this moment—which showed Harris digging in hard against Baier—could wreck Trump’s most cherished spin about Harris. As Andrew Egger noted at The Bulwark, Harris punctured the “right-wing caricature” of her as “an insipid airhead with no ability to think on her feet.”

But this is a seminal moment for another reason as well. It starkly revealed the degree to which Fox News—and by extension Trump’s other right-wing media propagandists—has constructed an informational universe around Trump that, at the most fundamental level, is comprehensively fictional.

MAGA’s biggest deception of all may be its portrayal of Trump as enjoying public support that is not just authentically, broadly, deeply majoritarian but also is only constrained from realizing its full explosive potential by interference from corrupt institutions like the media and the Deep State. The reality is the opposite: Without the massive propaganda support system he benefits from—and the gravitational pull it exerts on mainstream news outlets—Trump, who has never enjoyed majority support in this country, probably could not long politically survive.

Harris’s confrontation with Baier illustrates the point. After Harris pointed out that Trump has threatened to target an “enemy within,” Baier said that Fox News had asked Trump to address those comments at its town hall on Wednesday. Baier then played Trump’s response at that town hall, but he left out the footage of Trump recommitting to targeting the “enemy within,” only airing Trump’s insistence that he is the one treated as the enemy.
By Kathryn Watson

Washington — Former President Donald Trump insisted that the Jan. 6 attack, when his supporters stormed the Capitol and assaulted scores of law enforcement officers, was not a day of violence, but a "day of love" when "nothing" was "done wrong."

The Republican presidential nominee was asked about the assault on the Capitol at a Univision town hall on Wednesday, where a voter who said he used to be a registered Republican but was troubled by Trump's behavior during the riot said the former president could still win his vote.

"I want to give you the opportunity to try to win back my vote. OK?" said the voter. "Your — I'm going to say — action and maybe inaction during your presidency, and the last few years, sort of, was a little disturbing to me. What happened Jan. 6 and the fact that, you know, you waited so long to take action while your supporters were attacking the Capitol. ... I'm curious how people so close to you and your administration no longer want to support you, so why would I want to support you? If you would answer these questions for me I would really appreciate it, and give you the opportunity. You know, your own vice president doesn't want to support you now."

Trump responded by blasting former Vice President Mike Pence, saying he "totally disagreed with him on what he did," an apparent reference to Pence's refusal to reject the Electoral College votes after the 2020 presidential election. Pence has repeatedly — and accurately — said he had no constitutional authority to do anything but accept the results, withstanding repeated attacks from Trump and Trump's supporters.
Story by gkay@businessinsider.com (Grace Kay,Jacob Shamsian,Natalie Musumeci,Tom Carter,Erin Snodgrass)

It's not unusual for a high-profile business figure to attract a lot of lawsuits. But by any standard, Elon Musk is spending a lot of time and money on lawsuits.

Musk and his companies — especially Tesla, SpaceX, and X (formerly known as Twitter) — keep running into controversies, whether it's over whether the products actually work as well as they're supposed to, the billionaire's pay structure, his hiring practices, and even his firing practices.

He has also become a magnet for personal lawsuits. Musk is involved in messy litigation with Claire Boucher, aka Grimes, the mother of three of Musk's children. He has also launched lawsuits of his own through his companies, wading into arguments about free speech on the internet. Musk often relies on Alex Spiro, his longtime personal lawyer, to fight and coordinate the cases.

Business Insider has combed through court records and created a list of the most significant legal challenges on Musk's docket.

The lawsuits and government investigations into Musk and his companies range from discriminatory hiring practices to allegations that some of Tesla's features don't work as advertised.
Story by Maya Boddie

Environmental Protection Agency employees worry "they might soon get fired" under a second Donald Trump administration, according to a Tuesday, October 15 Politico report.

Per Politico, the 2024 GOP nominee "and his allies have singled out certain agencies — including those that issue environmental rules — as prime targets," in the case he defeats Vice President Kamala Harris next month.

Furthermore, the news outlet notes that "Trump has pledged to 'demolish the deep state," while 2024 vice presidential nominee JD Vance "has said Trump ought to fire “every civil servant in the administrative state.”
Story by Ed Kilgore

It’s been clear for some time that Donald Trump is laying the groundwork to attempt to deny and challenge an election defeat. But Team Trump is also working to ensure that he won’t have to deny the results — and not just by convincing more voters that his policies are better for America. To put it very simply, the Trump campaign, the Republican Party, and its super-PAC allies are devoting a lot of resources to suppressing the Democratic vote in key states. These strategies include:

In addition to reducing the Harris vote (via a combination of ballot-eligibility challenges or heavy-handed intimidation of voters), all these MAGA boots on the ground can help build the post-election case that a Harris win was tainted with fraud. This time, Team Trump’s legal team will be much more organized than Rudy Giuliani’s Keystone Cops ensemble, which tried to capitalize on scattered election-fraud rumors and social-media claims in 2020. With so many campaign operatives working as election administrators or observers, there will be plenty of election-fraud allegations to fuel Trump lawsuits, with or without merit.
Story by Charles R. Davis

Speaking at the Economic Club of Chicago on Tuesday, an unfocused and irritable Donald Trump botched answers to basic questions about how his agenda would impact American businesses and consumers while not denying that he has been having phone calls with Russian President Vladimir Putin. Trump’s meandering replies consisted of the usual grab-bag of tangential anecdotes and endless grievances, his interviewer repeatedly forced to keep him on track by reminding him of the topic he was supposed to be discussing.

The performance, coming a day after a Trump “town hall” devolved into the Republican nominee meandering on stage for 39 awkward and alarming minutes as his fans listened to his favorite songs, did not reassure critics who say the former president’s recent behavior is a sign of cognitive decline. The Republican nominee was never one for specifics, or staying on message, but his claimed “weave” — rambling about something else before returning to the topic at hand — appears less intentional and more like a man experiencing the inevitable effects of aging.

“Should Google be broken up?” interviewer John Micklethwait, editor in chief of Bloomberg News, asked Trump on Tuesday.

Trump’s immediate response, in full:

"I just haven’t gotten over something the Justice Department did yesterday, where Virginia cleaned up its voter rolls and got rid of thousands and thousands of bad votes. And the Justice Department sued them, that they should be allowed to put those bad votes and illegal votes back in and let the people vote. So I haven’t — I haven’t gotten, I haven’t gotten over that. A lot of people have seen that and they can’t even believe it."
Story by Analysis by Zachary B. Wolf, CNN

Former President Donald Trump’s recent campaign appearances have generated an odd mix of headlines.

These include his worrisome promise to use the US military against his political opponents, whom he called “the enemy from within.”

There’s also the transformation of a staged town hall into a strange 39-minute music listening session that some supporters have said was inspiring but looked very awkward to those paying attention on TV.

While Trump has pulled out of interviews with CBS’ “60 Minutes” and with CNBC, he has taken some questions elsewhere. It’s worth looking a little more broadly at what exactly Trump is saying as the endgame of the presidential election approaches. It shows a man who veers from thought to thought, has an exceptionally high opinion of his abilities, does not think there are any experts who know more than him and would use the power of the presidency in unprecedented ways.

The below quotes will feel long, but Trump has a tendency to make points in a meandering stream of consciousness he calls “the weave.”
At a campaign event last night, Trump got bored—and weirdness ensued.
By David A. Graham

Is Donald Trump well enough to serve as president?

The question is not temperamental or philosophical fitness—he made clear long ago that the answer to both is no—but something more fundamental.

The election is in three weeks, and Pennsylvania is a must-win state for both Trump and Kamala Harris, but during a rally last night in Montgomery County, northwest of Philadelphia, Trump got bored with the event, billed as a “town hall,” and just played music for almost 40 minutes, scowling, smirking, and swaying onstage. Trump is no stranger to surreal moments, yet this was one of the oddest of his political career.

“You’re the one who fights for them,” gushed Kristi Noem, the South Dakota governor and animal-abuse enthusiast, who was supposed to be moderating the event. But it soon became evident that Trump wasn’t in a fighting mode. The event began normally enough, at least by Trump standards, but, after two interruptions for apparent medical emergencies in the audience, Trump lost interest. “Let’s just listen to music. Who the hell wants to hear questions?” he said.
Hurricane Helene federal emergency workers told to evacuate Rutherford county, Washington Post reports
Edward Helmore

Government emergency workers in the US responding to the devastation caused by Hurricane Helene in North Carolina were relocated over the weekend amid concerns that “armed militia” could pose a threat to their safety.

According to an email obtained by the Washington Post, a US Forest Service official sent out a message warning that the Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema) “has advised all federal responders Rutherford County, NC, to stand down and evacuate the county immediately”.

The message said that soldiers with the national guard “had come across x2 trucks of armed militia saying there were out hunting FEMA”.

The Appalachian county of Rutherford incorporates the mountain towns of Rutherfordton, Forest City and Chimney Rock, which were badly hit by Helene floodwaters that tore away homes, washed out roads and killed dozens.
Story by Kate Plummer

Vem Miller, the armed man who was arrested outside a Donald Trump rally on Saturday, claimed he has links to members of the former president's family.

Speaking in a video posted to the social media site Rumble, Miller, a 49-year-old Las Vegas resident, outlined the experience of his arrest and said he knows "a lot of people" closely associated with Trump, the Republican presidential candidate.

On Saturday, Miller was arrested after authorities found firearms in his car outside a Trump rally in Coachella Valley, California. He was booked and taken into custody at the John J. Benoit Detention Center in Indio on charges of possessing a loaded firearm and a high-capacity magazine.

Miller, who was also driving an unregistered vehicle with a homemade license plate and had multiple passports and driver's licenses with different names, according to authorities, was released Saturday on $5,000 bail. He is scheduled to appear at the Indio Larson Justice Center on January 2, 2025, according to the Riverside County Sheriff's Department inmate database.
Siladitya Ray |Forbes Staff

A man carrying loaded firearms and fake passports was arrested outside the security checkpoint near former president Donald Trump’s weekend rally in Coachella, California, which law enforcement described as a likely “third assassination attempt” against the former president, a claim the suspect, who identifies as a Trump supporter, said was false.

In a press conference Sunday, the Riverside County Sheriff's office said 49-year-old Vem Miller from Nevada was taken into custody after deputies stopped his black SUV at a security checkpoint and found multiple unregistered firearms in his possession—including a shotgun and a loaded handgun—and a high capacity magazine.

While searching his car, deputies also discovered multiple passports and driver’s licenses with different names and found the vehicle’s license plate was “home-made” and unregistered.

Miller was stopped after presenting a fake VIP pass for the Trump rally to the deputies at the checkpoint and, upon being questioned, later informed them he was a member of the far-right group known as the “Sovereign Citizens.”

Miller was hit with two firearms-related charges and released on a $5,000 bail.
Story by Jesus Mesa

Former President Donald Trump sought to return to power months after his defeat in the 2020 election by urging Republican Alabama Rep. Mo Brooks to call for a special election that would reinstall him as president.

The attempt, part of a broader effort to overturn the election results, is detailed in famed Watergate journalist Bob Woodward's upcoming book War, which offers new insights into Trump's relentless pursuit to invalidate Joe Biden's victory four years ago.

By June 2021, six months after Biden's inauguration, Trump continued to privately push claims of a "stolen election," according to Woodward's book. Trump reportedly told his aides that he expected to return to the White House by August 2021, a date that coincided with false predictions circulated by QAnon conspiracy theorists.

"He had an army. An army for Trump. He wants that back," Trump's former campaign manager Brad Parscale is quoted as saying. "I don't think he sees it as a comeback. He sees it as vengeance."
Story by David Edwards

Olivia Troye, a former national security adviser to Mike Pence, spoke out about threats against the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) by armed militias.

In a social media post on Monday, Troye pointed to reports that FEMA agents were forced to relocate due to threats while providing hurricane relief in North Carolina.

"This is an alarming moment for [the] country," the former Pence adviser wrote. "FEMA's life-saving disaster recovery efforts in North Carolina were disrupted due to threats against federal workers by militias, forcing aid to be paused in hard-hit areas."

"As communities struggle in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene, disinformation & intimidation only deepen the crisis, putting both survivors & responders at greater risk," she continued. "We must reject this dangerous behavior, stand by those in need & ensure truth & safety prevail in disaster relief efforts. America is better than this."
Jordan Green, Investigative Reporter

The man arrested with guns outside Donald Trump’s rally in Coachella, Calif. on Oct. 12 had spoken about assassination attempts against the former president less than two weeks earlier with a retired Army lieutenant colonel who calls himself Trump’s “secretary of retribution.”

Vem Miller, a 49-year-old former music video director who now produces conspiracy-driven documentary films, interviewed retired Lt. Col. Ivan Raiklin, known for circulating a “Deep State target list” against Trump’s political enemies. The interview was produced for the America Happens Network, a company co-founded by Miller that describes itself as “the anti-thesis of what the mockingbird media has to offer.”

“You know, you inspire me,” Miller told Raiklin during the interview, which was posted on the video platform Rumble on Oct. 1. “This episode’s actually going to be called, ‘What are we going to do once they steal the election,’ because that’s certain, 100 percent certainty that they’re going to steal this. And we need to be prepared.”
By Paradise Afshar and Ella Nilsen, CNN

Authorities have made an arrest in connection with threats made toward FEMA responders, according to the Rutherford County Sheriff’s Office.

Aid to several communities impacted by Hurricane Helene was temporarily paused in parts of North Carolina over the weekend due to reports of threats against Federal Emergency Management Agency responders, amid a backdrop of misinformation about responses to recent storms.

Some FEMA teams helping disaster survivors apply for assistance in rural North Carolina are currently working at secure disaster recovery centers in counties where federal workers are receiving threats, a FEMA spokesperson told CNN on Monday.

“For the safety of our dedicated staff and the disaster survivors we are helping, FEMA has made some operational adjustments,” the spokesperson said in a statement. “Disaster Recovery Centers will continue to be open as scheduled, survivors continue to register for assistance, and we continue to help the people of North Carolina with their recovery.”

Hundreds of Donald Trump followers were left stranded in the California desert after a rally in the Coachella Valley over the weekend.
Story by Mandy Taheri

Former President Donald Trump suggested that an "enemy from within" could threaten Election Day security, saying in an interview with Fox News host Maria Bartiromo on Sunday that "if necessary" the National Guard or military may have to intervene, sparking alarm online.

On Fox News' Sunday Morning Futures, Bartiromo asked Trump, the Republican presidential nominee, "What are you expecting? Joe Biden said he doesn't think it's going to be a peaceful Election Day."

During a White House press briefing, Biden said last week that he is confident that the upcoming election will be "free and fair," but said he was concerned about the transfer of power being peaceful on account of Trump's words and actions following his loss in 2020.

Trump responded, "I think the bigger problem is the enemy from within...We have some very bad people, some sick people, radical left lunatics. And it should be very easily handled by, if necessary, by National Guard, or if really necessary, by the military."

At another point during the interview, he said, "We have two enemies. We have the outside enemy. And, and then we have the enemy from within. And the enemy from within, in my opinion, is more dangerous than China, Russia, and all these countries."

Steven Cheung, Trump's campaign spokesperson, told Newsweek in an email Sunday night: "President Trump is 100% correct—those who seek to undermine democracy by sowing chaos in our elections are a direct threat, just like the terrorist from Afghanistan that was arrested for plotting multiple attacks on Election Day within the United States."
Opinion by Robert Reich

We’ve learned from a forthcoming book by journalist Bob Woodward that in 2020, while he was president, Trump secretly shipped Covid-19 testing equipment to Russian president Vladimir Putin for his own personal use at a time when Americans could not get it.

The author of The Art of the Deal did not demand in return that Putin forego attacking Ukraine or release Paul Whelan and Trevor Reed, two Americans being held by Russia at the time and later released under the Biden administration.

The Trump campaign denies this story, but on Wednesday the Kremlin confirmed it.

Woodward also reported that Trump and Putin have had “as many as seven” personal conversations since Trump left office in 2021.

Let’s be clear about the implications of all this: If Trump wins the election, he’ll likely do whatever Putin wants, including allowing Putin to take much, if not all, of Ukraine.

Trump has repeatedly avoided criticizing Putin, even going so far as to praise him as a “genius” and “very savvy” for his unprovoked invasion. At the same time, Trump has been critical of the Biden administration’s aid to Ukraine in the wake of Russia’s invasion.

During the presidential debate against Vice President Kamala Harris last month, Trump refused to say he wanted to see Ukraine win the war against Russia.

Earlier this year, Trump suggested he’d encourage Russia to do “whatever the hell they want” if a NATO ally wasn’t paying their fair share to the alliance.
Story by Matt Laslo, Raw Story

WASHINGTON — Some Republican-led states are being sued over last ditch efforts to “purge” their state’s voter rolls, but it may be too little, way too late.

On Monday, a new lawsuit was dropped on Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin from the League of Women Voters in Virginia and immigrant-rights groups who accuse him and his attorney general, Jason Miyares, of running an illegal “Purge Program” ahead of November's elections.

“Defendants’ Purge Program is far from ... a well-designed, well-intended list maintenance effort,” the lawsuit reads. “It is an illegal, discriminatory, and error-ridden program that has directed the cancelation of voter registrations of naturalized U.S. citizens and jeopardizes the rights of countless others.”

That new Virginia lawsuit comes just a couple of weeks after the Department of Justice sued Alabama and its Republican secretary of state, Wes Allen after more than 3,250 people were booted from the state’s voter rolls within the 90-day quiet period mandated by the National Voter Registration Act, claiming they weren’t American citizens.

These last-minute efforts to kick people off state voter lists aren’t accidental. They’re part of former President Donald Trump’s strategy to recapture the White House. And it’s working, at least in some regions.
Story by Ja'han Jones

A report by The New York Times on Elon Musk’s fervent support for Donald Trump’s presidential campaign includes a bombshell detail that undermines right-wingers’ conspiratorial claims about Hunter Biden and anti-conservative bias on social media.

Conservatives have been kvetching for years about so-called collusion by the federal government with Big Tech, which they baselessly claim was a factor in Trump’s loss in 2020. In Republicans’ telling, the internal choices of some social media companies to moderate conspiratorial content about data — some of it pornographic — dubiously retrieved from an old Hunter Biden laptop amounts to a full-blown conspiracy.

Never mind that this purported government collusion would have occurred under the Trump administration — right-wingers have gone all in on the bogus claim, which has been promoted by Elon Musk.

But according to the Times, the Trump campaign and Musk’s social platform, X, recently engaged in conduct remarkably similar to what conservatives have been crying about for years. Per the report:
Opinion by David A. Graham

Donald Trump’s affection for oppressive and bloodthirsty dictators is by now so familiar that it might go unremarked, and yet also so bizarre that it goes unappreciated or even disbelieved.

Sometimes, though, a vivid reminder surfaces. That was the case this week, when stories from Bob Woodward’s forthcoming book, War, became public. In the book, the legendary reporter writes that in 2020, in the depths of the pandemic, Trump prioritized the health of Vladimir Putin over that of Americans, sending the Russian president Abbott COVID-testing machines for his personal use, at a time when the machines were hard to come by and desperately needed. (The Kremlin confirmed the story; Trump’s campaign vaguely denied it.) Meanwhile, Trump told people in the United States they should just test less. So much for “America First.”

“Please don’t tell anybody you sent these to me,” Putin told Trump, according to Woodward.

“I don’t care,” Trump said. “Fine.”

“No, no,” Putin said. “I don’t want you to tell anybody because people will get mad at you, not me. They don’t care about me.”

U.S. relations with Russia have deteriorated since Trump left office, especially since Russia launched a brutal, grinding invasion of Ukraine in 2022. But the former president has stayed in touch with Putin, according to Woodward, who says an aide told him that “there have been multiple phone calls between Trump and Putin, maybe as many as seven in the period since Trump left the White House in 2021.”
Story by Mandy Taheri

Special counsel Jack Smith's brief in the federal election subversion case "clearly contains damning allegations" against former President Donald Trump, according to Fox News legal analyst and law professor Jonathan Turley.

Turley, a professor at George Washington University Law School who often defends Trump, wrote on his personal blog in response to U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan's Thursday order to release additional evidence ahead of the election.

Chutkan's order follows a request from Trump's team to block the release of Smith's exhibits related to the lengthy brief unsealed last week that laid out prosecutors' arguments that Trump acted as a private citizen when attempting to overturn his 2020 loss to President Joe Biden.

Trump's team argued that "no further disclosures" of Smith's "so-called 'evidence' that the Special Counsel's Office has unlawfully cherry-picked and mischaracterized" should be unsealed. The defense repeated its argument that Smith's brief was politically motivated, given that it was filed just weeks before voters will cast a ballot in the 2024 presidential election, for which Trump is the Republican candidate against Vice President Kamala Harris.
Story by Andrew Feinberg

Mark Milley, the US Army general who Donald Trump appointed as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, now says the current Republican presidential nominee is a “fascist to the core” and says no person has ever posed more of a danger to the United States than the man who served as the 45th President of the United States.

Milley, a decorated military officer who became a target for right-wing scorn after it became known that he expressed concerns over Trump’s mental stability in the wake of his 2020 election loss to Joe Biden, is described by journalist Bob Woodward in his new book, War, as incredibly alarmed at the prospect of a second Trump term in the White House. The Independent obtained a copy ahead of the book’s October 15 release date.

In the wake of the January 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol by a riotous mob of the then-president’s supporters, Woodward writes that Milley insisted on securing a meeting with the then-newly-minted attorney general, Merrick Garland, to urge him to investigate domestic violent extremism and far-right militia movements.

According to Woodward, a senior Department of Justice lawyer said at the time that Milley’s sit-down with Garland might have been the first-ever meeting between a chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the country’s top civilian law enforcement official. He writes that the general asked for the meeting because he was “deeply convinced” that Trump remained “a danger to the country” even though he had been forced from office after Biden’s election win.
Story by Isaac Stanley-Becker, Josh Dawsey

When clients tell Mercury Public Affairs, a consulting and lobbying shop with 18 offices worldwide, that they’re concerned about Donald Trump’s possible return to office, the firm has just the person to ease their nerves: Bryan Lanza.

Lanza, a Mercury partner and longtime Republican strategist, is well-suited to the task. In between client breakfasts in far-flung parts of the world, he serves as a senior adviser to Trump’s presidential campaign. So he’s a natural person to help clients understand how Trump’s positions on tariffs and other hot-button issues might play out in a second term, according to two Mercury colleagues who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal business dealings.

“He gives them assurances that there will be life after Nov. 5,” said one of the colleagues, referring to Election Day.

Lanza declined to comment through a Mercury spokesman. A Trump spokesman did not respond to questions.

Eight years after Trump entered politics promising to reduce the influence of Washington lobbyists — to “drain the swamp,” as he put it — advocates for corporate interests, including companies based in China and other foreign countries denounced by Trump, now sit at virtually every level of his campaign. Lobbyists are represented among high-level staff, informal advisers and party faithful who planned the summer convention in Milwaukee, as people with access to Trump or insight into his at-times erratic decision-making turn that knowledge into moneymaking opportunities.

Trump’s de facto campaign manager, Susie Wiles, is a Mercury partner alongside Lanza — and one of at least five people advising Trump who have advocated for tobacco, vaping or cannabis interests in recent years, according to lobbying disclosures and interviews.
Story by Megan Lebowitz and Corky Siemaszko

Former President Donald Trump held a third rally last month in Erie, Pennsylvania, which sits in the northwest corner of a swing state that could decide who wins the White House.

Like the two other times Trump has been to Erie to rev up his supporters, he left without paying the bill.

City officials haven't yet tallied up what the Trump campaign owes Erie for public safety costs for his most recent rally in September.

But according to a city official, Trump owes the city more than $40,000 for the rallies he held there in 2018 and 2023.

Erie, whose bills were previously reported by the Erie Times-News, isn't the only city that has hosted Trump rallies and not been paid by the campaign.

Including Erie, four cities and a county confirmed to NBC News that they're still waiting for the Trump campaign to pay bills often associated with reimbursements for the costs of local law enforcement and other first responder personnel.

The final price tag is more than $750,000 for those five jurisdictions, with some bills dating back eight years.
Story by Alia Shoaib

Former CIA director Leon Panetta said that Russian President Vladimir Putin views former President Donald Trump as a "source" that he can use to his benefit.

Appearing on the One Decision podcast, Panetta discussed allegations in journalist Bob Woodward's new book War that Trump and Putin had as many as seven private phone calls since early 2021, after Trump left office.

Panetta said that it would be "very unusual" for the Russian president to be engaged in communication with a former head of the United States.

He added that Putin "knows how to work a source, and he's got a source that is very near the top in this country, he, himself is going to engage that source."

"That really is what the bottom line is — is that Trump has turned into a source for Putin, and somebody who can help him manipulate what he wants to get done," Panetta said.

Panetta, who was the director of the CIA between 2009 and 2011, said that it would be concerning if the pair remained in private communication.

"The mere fact that a former president of the United States is having regular conversation with our primary adversary raises real questions about where is his basic loyalty. Is it really to the United States of America? Or is it to Donald Trump?" he said.
Opinion by Jeffrey A. Engel

Words matter. Especially when uttered by a president, and especially overseas. “Speak softly, and carry a big stick,” Theodore Roosevelt advised, though he never envisioned a successor would prove capable of obliterating cities half a world away in under half an hour. That nuclear stick is pretty big indeed, capable since 1945 of keeping our most virulent adversaries, including Moscow, Beijing, Tehran and Pyongyang, from their most reckless ambitions. It also keeps allies in line. What do Japan, Saudi Arabia, Germany and South Korea have in common? Each is but a day away from joining the nuclear club. That day is when their leaders stop believing the president of the United States will come to their aid.

This is why I fear a second Trump term. A world increasingly riven by renewed great power rivalries and historic animosities is further weakened by Oval Office instability, exemplified by ill-advised remarks, ill-timed threats and outright lies. Calm captains of the ship of state struggle to navigate the world system’s waves and shoals. An erratic one won’t help. Especially one whose obsessions, personal grievances and loose relationship with the truth make others question not only America’s policy but more fundamentally our reliability.

How trite. The professor in the ivory tower reminds us that words retain meaning. How very 20th century. Does he not realize that legions of bots and ChatGPT enable today’s policymakers to forge the algorithmic reality they desire?

Presidents must be held to higher standards. Their quips move markets. Their words invite or ward off aggression. Save or end lives. Examples abound of even experienced leaders forgetting their rhetorical reach.
Opinion by Robert Reich

Mark Robinson, the GOP gubernatorial candidate in North Carolina and current lieutenant governor, is in trouble again.

Not just because Robinson has referred to himself as a “black NAZI” and a “perv,” expressed support for reinstating slavery, said he watched transgender pornography, called homosexuality “filth” and the Holocaust “hogwash,” and has asserted that “some folks need killing.”

emergency powers ahead of Hurricane Helene’s landfall. Robinson was the only member on the Council of State — a board of nine — who didn’t vote in favor of the declaration. Cooper got the power he needed, but Robinson is now criticizing him for not doing more in the wake of the storm.

Yet Robinson still commands the support of 63 percent of Republicans in North Carolina, according to an East Carolina University poll released Wednesday.

The trend started in the 1980s with Rush Limbaugh’s radio program, which attracted a wide audience with a toxic mixture of lies, conspiracy theories, fear-mongering, and thinly veiled racism.

It accelerated in 1996 when Rupert Murdoch hired Roger Ailes to emulate Limbaugh with a new TV channel, Fox News. Additional media imitators followed.

The growing supply of this poison offered the (predominantly) white working-class an easy explanation for why the wages and status of many blue-collar men had hit the skids: They could blame immigrants, Black people, Latinos, “coastal elites,” government bureaucrats, pedophiles, women, secularists, Muslims, liberals, Democrats, and Satan.

In the 1990s, Newt Gingrich saw an opportunity to build the Republican Party around similar lies and conspiracy theories. Gingrich’s efforts attracted the first group of modern crackpot candidates into the GOP.

Starting in 2016, Trump attracted another group, even wackier than the previous one.
Story by Philip Bump

There are two theories that allies of Donald Trump promote to assert that the 2020 presidential election was illegitimate.

The first is that rampant fraud — maybe with mail-in ballots, maybe from voting machines, maybe both, maybe something else — resulted in Joe Biden earning more votes nationally and in the states he flipped from 2016. This theory suffers from the minor flaw that there is no evidence in favor of it and lots of evidence against it. It also suffers from the secondary flaw that the lack of evidence means that those who most loudly adhere to it are often those with whom reputable people are the least interested in associating.

So the second theory gained traction. It holds that the election was illegitimate because a number of ancillary things shifted the results: late changes to election rules, including some that let more people vote early (meaning, the argument goes, more Democrats); big donors helping fund election administration; social media companies putting their thumb on the scales, including by (briefly) limiting the sharing of a New York Post story about Joe Biden’s son Hunter. In short, the election was “rigged” for Biden not by direct cheating but by indirect influence, and that made all the difference.
With the passage of time, the 78-year-old former president’s speeches have grown darker, harsher, longer, angrier, less focused, more profane and increasingly fixated on the past, according to a review of his public appearances over the years.
By Peter Baker and Dylan Freedman

Former President Donald J. Trump vividly recounted how the audience at his climactic debate with Vice President Kamala Harris was on his side. Except that there was no audience. The debate was held in an empty hall. No one “went crazy,” as Mr. Trump put it, because no one was there.

Anyone can misremember, of course. But the debate had been just a week earlier and a fairly memorable moment. And it was hardly the only time Mr. Trump has seemed confused, forgetful, incoherent or disconnected from reality lately. In fact, it happens so often these days that it no longer even generates much attention.

He rambles, he repeats himself, he roams from thought to thought — some of them hard to understand, some of them unfinished, some of them factually fantastical. He voices outlandish claims that seem to be made up out of whole cloth. He digresses into bizarre tangents about golf, about sharks, about his own “beautiful” body. He relishes “a great day in Louisiana” after spending the day in Georgia. He expresses fear that North Korea is “trying to kill me” when he presumably means Iran. As late as last month, Mr. Trump was still speaking as if he were running against President Biden, five weeks after his withdrawal from the race.

Former President Donald Trump had more than a dozen seasons of "The Apprentice" to cast himself as a businessman and a dealmaker, but a new book is claiming that is all a lie. Russ Buettner, New York Times investigative reporter and author of "Lucky Loser," joins "America Decides" to discuss.
Story by Khaleda Rahman

Former President Donald Trump's pledge to restore the Confederate title of a military base that was renamed has sparked criticism on social media.

During a town hall in Fayetteville, North Carolina, on Friday night, Trump, the Republican nominee, said he would restore Fort Liberty's name to Fort Bragg if he wins November's election against Vice President Kamala Harris.

The base was originally named after Confederate General Braxton Bragg, but was officially renamed Fort Liberty last year as part of a broad Department of Defense initiative to rename military installations with titles of Confederate soldiers.

Trump had opposed the move as president, but Congress overrode his veto to approve defense legislation that included the provision. The calls to remove Confederate symbols grew during the racial justice protests that erupted in the summer of 2020 following the killing of George Floyd, a Black man, at the hands of Minneapolis police.

"I walked in, the first question that I asked, 'Should we change the name from Fort Liberty back to Fort Bragg?'" Trump said during his opening remarks at the town hall, to raucous applause. "So here's what we do. We get elected. I'm doing it, I'm doing it, I'm doing it."
Story by Carl Gibson

All across the country, Republican candidates who openly doubt the outcome of the 2020 election are running in statewide elections. This includes Republican nominees for both U.S. Senate races as well as gubernatorial elections, and even candidates seeking to oversee their respective state's elections.

CNN found that of the 51 Republican statewide hopefuls on the 2024 ballot, 23 of them — a full 45% of all Republican statewide candidates – are election deniers. And many election deniers are seeking office in some of the most hotly contested battleground states in presidential elections.

34 states are holding U.S. Senate elections in November. And 14 Republican Senate candidates have gone on the record supporting election-denying narratives. This includes incumbents like Sens. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tennessee), Ted Cruz (R-Texas), Josh Hawley (R-Missouri) and Rick Scott (R-Florida) as well as candidates seeking to oust Democrats like Sam Brown in Nevada, Kari Lake in Arizona, Bernie Moreno in Ohio and Royce White in Minnesota.
Story by Lee Moran

Jimmy Kimmel exposed Republican hypocrisy over GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump with a blistering montage on Thursday.

Kimmel noted how conservatives were “very worked up” about Joe Biden’s age and energy level before he abandoned his reelection campaign and endorsed his vice president, Kamala Harris.
Story by Erin Alberty

Advocates of school book bans have shifted their sights toward Utah's little free libraries after a Democratic lawmaker planned to add banned books to the volunteer-run curbside collections in her district.

Driving the news: State Rep. Sahara Hayes (D-Salt Lake City) recently announced on Instagram that she planned to celebrate national Banned Books Week by placing titles that are banned in a Utah school inside little free libraries.

That led to accusations that she was distributing "explicit content" to children in violation of Utah laws.

Some of the activists have previously filed police reports accusing schools of distributing pornography because they carried books by acclaimed authors like Toni Morrison, Margaret Atwood and Sherman Alexie.

Zoom out: Brooke Stephens — a leader with Utah Parents United who called for Hayes' prosecution and has previously mobilized parents to report librarians to police — argued last week that owners of Little Free Libraries should face prosecution if they make "obscene" material available.

The other side: Book ban opponents say threats to prosecute people for simply having or putting books in reach of children likely will have a chilling effect on authors, parents and owners of little free libraries.
Story by Rhian Lubin

Rudy Giuliani allegedly sent a text message begging Michigan lawmakers to overturn the 2020 election result – but got the wrong number.

The embattled former New York City mayor, who is also facing trial accused of conspiring to subvert Arizona’s 2020 presidential election results, has a long history of technological gaffes and humiliating mishaps.

The latest embarrassing example was detailed in special counsel Jack Smith’s legal briefing, filed in federal court in Washington DC on Wednesday, which outlines the federal election interference case against Donald Trump in the most thorough detail to date.

include the fullest account and evidence of what happened in the lead-up to the election and Trump’s alleged attempt to subvert the result as if it were an opening statement to a jury.

Giuliani is not named in the filing but is presumed to be “co-conspirator 1”, accused of launching state-by-state efforts to convince Republican lawmakers to support Trump’s mandate of overturning the 2020 election result.

According to the 165-page document, Trump turned to Giuliani when others were “telling the defendant what he did not want to hear – that he had lost” the 2020 election. Trump enlisted Giuliani as his personal attorney because he “was willing to falsely claim victory and spread knowingly false claims of election fraud,” according to the document.
By Melissa Quinn, Robert Legare

Washington — U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan has made public a key filing from special counsel Jack Smith that includes evidence compiled in his investigation into former President Donald Trump's alleged efforts to subvert the transfer of presidential power after the 2020 election.

The highly anticipated 165-page filing provides the most comprehensive look at the evidence federal prosecutors have amassed in their case, which was upended by the Supreme Court's July decision finding Trump is entitled to some level of immunity from federal charges.

In the new brief, prosecutors argued that Trump's conduct was private in nature and therefore not covered by immunity. They reiterated the allegations against Trump and revealed new insights into the mountains of evidence they have collected over the course of the case.

The filing described how Trump and his aides allegedly planned to challenge the election results far in advance of Election Day and pressured Vice President Mike Pence to reject Electoral College votes on Jan. 6, 2021. In one striking passage, prosecutors said Trump replied, "So what?" when he was told that Pence could be in danger at the Capitol.

"When the defendant lost the 2020 presidential election, he resorted to crimes to try to stay in office," Smith and his team wrote.
Story by James Bickerton

Authorities in Erie, Pennsylvania, are still seeking $40,330 from Donald Trump's presidential campaign to pay for assistance they provided for his 2018 and 2023 campaign visits, bringing the total debt five cities say he owes them to over $740,000.

The Erie claim was made by a spokesman for the city's Democratic Mayor Joe Schember during a conversation with the Erie Times-News newspaper.

It is in addition to more than $700,000 of unpaid debts that four cities—El Paso, Texas; Spokane, Washington; Mesa, Arizona; and Green Bay, Wisconsin—were still seeking last month for rallies that took place between 2016 and 2019, a Newsweek investigation found.

Erie is also calculating a currently undisclosed figure related to the rally Trump held at the city's Bayfront Convention Center on Sunday, which could push the total unpaid debt figure beyond $740,330.

A 2019 report from the Center for Public Integrity found 10 city authorities, including Erie and the four outlined above, were demanding a total of $841,219 as back payments for historic Trump rallies they helped stage.
Sophia Cai

Former President Trump on Monday tried to take political advantage of the devastation from Hurricane Helene — and drew a scolding from President Biden, who called Trump a liar.

Driving the news: Trump began the day on Truth Social, posting unsubstantiated claims that Biden's administration and North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper (D) were "going out of their way to not help people in Republican areas" affected by Helene.

   "He's lying ... and the governor told him he was lying," Biden said of Trump at the White House on Monday.
   "I don't know why he does this," Biden added. "I don't care what he says about me. I care about what he communicates to people that are in need. He implies that we're not doing everything possible. We are."

During a visit to Valdosta, Georgia, on Monday, Trump also claimed that Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp, a Republican, hadn't been able to reach Biden to discuss the damage to Kemp's state.

   But Kemp said earlier in the day that he'd spoken with Biden at 5 p.m. Sunday — and praised the administration's response to the storm.

Zoom in: Trump's false accusations reflected the risks of injecting loose, campaign-style rhetoric into the ongoing recovery from a disaster that left a triple-digit death toll and millions without water or electricity in six southern states.
Story by Kevin Scott

Eligible to vote
©YouTube
Voter suppression in U.S. has remained a highly scrutinized issue. Republicans are often accused of undertaking efforts to prevent eligible citizens from voting. Historically, the problem has targeted racial, economic, gender, age, and disability groups. Since 2021, there have been over 350 bills to restrict voting access across 47 states.

Knewz.com is reporting that Alabama's Secretary of State, Wes Allen, recently initiated the removal of more than 3,000 voters whom he identified as non-citizens. Allen has come under fire for doing so, particularly after acknowledging that some may have become naturalized citizens eligible to vote.

Against Alabama
©YouTube
The Justice Department has since filed a lawsuit against Alabama for its effort, alleging that the action breaches federal regulations that bar such removals in the lead-up to an election.

The Program
©YouTube
“While more than 700 individuals impacted by the Program have since re-registered and returned to active status in the State’s voter registration records, potentially several hundred or even thousands more registered, eligible voters from the list – U.S. citizens – remain in inactive status, stand to be harmed, and risk disenfranchisement just weeks before the upcoming federal election,” DOJ attorneys wrote.
The first former president to reach the milestone, he has said he wants to hang on until Oct. 15, when he can vote for fellow Democrat Kamala Harris.
By Corky Siemaszko

Jimmy Carter has accomplished something no other former U.S. president has — he notched a 100th birthday.

Carter, who served one term in the White House, hit the milestone Tuesday at his home in Plains, Georgia, where he has been receiving hospice care for the last 19 months.

The proud Democrat, who has grown increasingly weaker in recent months, has told relatives he wants to hang on until Oct. 15, when early voting begins in Georgia, so he can cast his ballot in the 2024 presidential election.

“I’m only trying to make it to vote for Kamala Harris,” Carter said, his grandson Jason Carter told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

A former peanut farmer and Navy veteran, Carter has lived nearly six years longer than another age-defying former president, George H.W. Bush, a Republican who was 94 and 171-days old when he died Nov. 30, 2018.
By Rachel Ramirez, Sharif Paget, Aaron Fisher and Curt Merrill, CNN

CNN — Hurricane Helene laid waste to the southeastern United States. Its sheer wind force and deadly floods left behind a path of destruction stretching over 500 miles from Florida to the Southern Appalachians.

In just 48 hours, vast swaths of the region became unrecognizable. The storm has caused at least 130 deaths, and officials fear the toll could rise as many people remain unaccounted for.

Communities were cut off and stranded as floodwaters washed away hundreds of roads, buildings, homes and vehicles. Communication infrastructure is in shreds. Millions of people have also lost power and access to water across at least six states.
A new poll conducted by a bipartisan team for AARP was shared first with POLITICO.
By Holly Otterbein

Vice President Kamala Harris is neck-and-neck with former President Donald Trump in the all-important battleground state of Pennsylvania, according to a new survey shared first with POLITICO.

Harris is winning 49 percent of likely voters, compared with 47 percent for Trump and 2 percent for other candidates, the poll done by a bipartisan team for AARP found. Three percent are undecided.

The survey, completed from Sept. 17 to 24 by landline, cell phone and text-to-web, is the first conducted by AARP in the state since President Joe Biden dropped out of the race, and the extent to which it shows Harris has improved Democrats’ chances is staggering.
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