Biden continues to fall behind Trump in polls as he admits he ‘screwed up’ debate: Live

Kevin McCarthy, the former Republican House speaker – ousted by his own side, lest we forget – was busy telling Fox News yesterday he found it “depressing” whenever the president of the United States offered him cookies in the White House, a weird remark that attracted a number of withering responses of which the following was unquestionably the most devastating.

Alex Woodward surveys a resurgent “KHive”, the irony-poisoned jokers and exhausted voters who are only semi-ironically calling for a President Harris to take the stage before it’s too late.

Confused? Just remember you exist in the context of all in which you live and what came before you.

A GoFundMe campaign for Stormy Daniels has raised more than $800,000 in the eight days since it launched in order to help the adult film star deal with the fallout of speaking out against Donald Trump.

Daniels – real name Stephanie Clifford – was the star witness at the Republican presidential candidate’s hush money trial this spring, which ended with Trump being convicted on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records in order to hide a $130,000 payment to silence her in the days before the 2016 election about an alleged sexual encounter in 2006.

Trump is set to be sentenced by Judge Juan Merchan on September 18, after he was granted a delay as he seeks to overturn his conviction in in light of the Supreme Court’s recent immunity ruling.

In a new interview on MSNBC this week, Daniels revealed she has received numerous threats from Trump supporters since testifying against him in the Manhattan trial, including on Facebook “from people in my own community” and from strangers warning “they were going to rape everybody in my family, including my young daughter, before they killed them”.

“Trump is trying to make, I believe, trying to make an example out of me,” she told Rachel Maddow.

The 73-year-old Dr Jill has publicly painted a rosy picture of her husband’s performance in the debate, at odds with almost everyone else’s version of events.

“Joe you did such a great job,” she proclaimed in its immediate aftermath last Thursday, before adding: “You answered every question!”

In the days since, she has remained steadfast – both in public and in private – in her belief that he should remain in the race.

“[We] will not let those 90 minutes define the four years he’s been president,” Dr Biden told Vogue earlier this week.

Here’s James Liddell again with a look at the first lady’s role in this whole mess.

Here’s a little more on a line I mentioned earlier from the president’s call with governors – his revelation that he had a medical exam in the aftermath of last week’s events in Georgia and was given the all-clear.

James Liddell has this report.

Who’s up for some pandemic nostalgia? No, me neither.

Although perhaps the above is preferable to what he posted earlier, a nasty video of a robbery on a train (in which two of the assailants are wearing red baseball caps) accompanied by a declaration that: “Biden Migrant Crime gets bloodier by the day.”

You can see that one here if you must.

Conservatives seem to absolutely despise “cackling” Kamala Harris but if there’s one person who should probably keep quiet about being “relatable”, it’s South Dakota governor Kristi Noem, who assumed that telling the world she had murdered her dog would be a guaranteed vote-winner.

Although the president’s campaign insists he is “absolutely not dropping out”, here is Eric Garcia with a look at the mechanics of replacing him at the top of the Democratic presidential ticket, just in case.

James Zogby, a former adviser to Jesse Jackson and Bernie Sanders, has proposed a plan to have an open contest for the Democratic presidential nomination after the incumbent’s disastrous appearance in the first debate last week, writes Eric Garcia.

Campaign staffers are preparing to shift their focus to elevating, then electing, vice president Kamala Harris, sources have told The Independent, even as Biden vehemently denies any intention to stand aside.

Here’s the latest from Andrew Feinberg.