Trump bemoans lack of support from Jewish voters amid claims of ally’s antisemitism
Good morning and welcome to our blog covering US politics in the run-up to the presidential election following another tumultuous evening where Donald Trump bemoaned a lack of support from Jewish voters just hours after allegations emerged that a Republican ally had referred to himself as a “black Nazi” on a pornography website.
Trump failed to mention the claims in a CNN report against Mark Robinson, North Carolina’s Republican gubernatorial nominee, during a speech on Thursday at the Israeli-American Council national summit in Washington.
In his speech, the former president lamented that he was trailing Kamala Harris among American Jews. Israel would likely cease to exist within two years should Harris win the election, and Jews would be partly to blame for that outcome because they tend to vote for Democrats, Trump argued.
If I don’t win this election – and the Jewish people would really have a lot to do with that if that happens because if 40%, I mean, 60% of the people are voting for the enemy – Israel, in my opinion, will cease to exist within two years.
Trump was citing a poll that he said showed Harris polling at 60% among American Jews. You can read our report on his speech here.
Meanwhile, according to CNN’s reporting, Robinson referred to himself as a “perv” in archived messages because he “enjoyed watching transgender pornography”. The messages were made between 2008 and 2012 on “Nude Africa”, a pornographic website that includes a message board.
He also allegedly expressed support for reinstating slavery. “Slavery is not bad. Some people need to be slaves. I wish they would bring it [slavery] back. I would certainly buy a few,” he wrote in October 2010. In March 2012, during the Obama administration, it was claimed he wrote: “I’d take Hitler over any of the shit that’s in Washington right now!”
CNN reported that Robinson, who would be North Carolina’s first Black governor, also attacked civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr in searing terms and once referred to himself as a “black Nazi”.
Robinson has denied the report: “Let me reassure you the things that you will see in that story – those are not the words of Mark Robinson” he said on a video posted to X. And said he is staying in the race.
The North Carolina Republican party is standing by him. “Mark Robinson has categorically denied the allegations made by CNN but that won’t stop the Left from trying to demonize him via personal attacks,” the party said in a statement.
After allegations against Robinson became public, the Harris campaign posted video clips of Trump praising the candidate.
More on this story later. In other news:
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Harris sat down with Oprah Winfrey on Thursday for a “virtual rally” that included a wide-ranging sit-down interview, during which Harris attacked Trump’s stance on reproductive rights and pledged to sign a border security bill thwarted by Senate Republicans.
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On Friday, the vice-president will be attending campaign events in the swing states of Georgia and Wisconsin.
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In the evening, Trump will be in another swing state – Arizona –at a town hall event. He will appear alongside Monica Crowley, a commentator and former assistant secretary for public affairs, and Chad Wolf, who was an acting secretary for public affairs in his administration.
Key events
Sam Levine
The Georgia state election board meeting has only been under way for a few minutes and you can already see the two factions on the board at work.
Janice Johnston, the state GOP’s representative on the board, went back and forth with John Fervier, the board chair, over two last-minute additions to the agenda. One was to add a petition for rulemaking to the agenda, which Fervier objected to because he said the board hadn’t had proper time to consider it.
Johnston and two other members of the conservative bloc overruled Fervier’s attempt to block the petition from the agenda.
Johnston has seen a meteoric rise from being a citizen activist to essentially being in control of the three-member majority on the board.
Georgia election board considers last-minute changes that could spark voting chaos in swing state
George Chidi
As the Georgia state board of elections convened, Janice Johnston asked the board to amend the agenda to allow a petition for a rule change proposed by Salleigh Grubbs, chairman of the Cobb county GOP, regarding the storage of ballots after the November election.
“We are talking about debating a rule that no member of the public has seen,” said member Sara Tindall Ghazal. The proposed rule was submitted to the board a few weeks ago, board member Janice Johnston said
“Adding the petition at the last minute is not the responsible thing to do,” said chairman John Fervier, noting that the board members could have asked for alterations ahead of the meeting.
Three board members overruled the chairman’s objection. The three – Johnston, Janelle King and Rick Jeffares – were praised by name by Donald Trump at a rally a few months ago.
Here’s more on what the board is considering today, and why it could matter to the outcome of the presidential vote in the state:
George Chidi
Members of Georgia’s state election board held a short press conference ahead of their 9am meeting this morning.
Board member Janelle King asserted that “county board members have always had the right to certify or not to certify”, a statement at odds with legal holdings that the act of certification is “ministerial” and obligatory. “It is not ministerial. It is an option. It is an option because of the legal document each must sign,” King said.
The question of delayed certification is at the heart of objections raised by Democratic lawmakers, the American Civil Liberties Union and others, which are suing the state board of elections to prevent rules they believe will delay certification and potentially create a controversy that denies Georgia voters their delegates in the electoral vote after the November election.
Board member Janice Johnston encouraged Georgians to vote early and in person, instead of mailing absentee ballots this election, citing delays in mail delivery reported in the Atlanta area. She noted that – with the exception of military ballots – absentee ballots must be at the local election office by 7pm on election day.
Those who “desire to use absentee voting, please return the voting ballot directly to the election office”, she said. “If you must rely on the surface mail, please send your voting ballot as early as possible.”
Harris tells Oprah: ‘If somebody breaks into my house they’re getting shot’
Kamala Harris, who recently reminded the public that she owns a gun, told Oprah during their interview yesterday that “if somebody breaks into my house, they’re getting shot”.
Here’s the moment:
Harris acknowledged owning a weapon as early as 2019, and mentioned it again during her debate with Donald Trump last week. Her comment to Oprah appeared to be a somewhat rare instance of the relentlessly on-message vice-president slipping: “Probably should not have said that,” Harris said afterwards.
The Democrats have moved to capitalize on CNN’s story yesterday finding that Mark Robinson, the Republican candidate for governor in North Carolina, has a history of posting lewd and offensive statements online, including referring to himself as a “black Nazi”.
The Democratic National Committee bought billboards in Charlotte, Raleigh and Greensboro that show Donald Trump with Robinson, and include quotes from the former president about him, including “we have to cherish Mark”. North Carolina is a swing state Democrats are hoping to pick up this year, and Trump will campaign in the city of Wilmington on Saturday.
“Make no mistake: Trump has embraced and tied himself to Robinson at every turn. Donald Trump and Mark Robinson are too extreme for North Carolina,” Democratic national committee chair Jaime Harrison said.
Joe Biden, in the final months of his term, will meet with his cabinet to “discuss a range of administration priorities” today, the White House said.
Democrats controlled Congress for the first two years of Biden’s presidency, working with him to pass several significant pieces of legislation addressing climate change, prescription drug prices and the nation’s infrastructure needs, although he did not get everything he wanted passed.
That all ended when the GOP took control of the House of Representatives in 2023, and it remains to be seen what more Biden can accomplish before he departs the White House in January of 2025. Perhaps we’ll find out after the meeting at 11.30am ET, where first lady Jill Biden will also provide an update on her initiative to improve women’s health research.
Biden will then fly to Wilmington, Delaware, where he will meet with Australian prime minister Anthony Albanese in what the White House says is a “personal meeting”.
Nick Robins-Early
Labelling tweets featuring false claims about election fraud as “disputed” does little to nothing to change Trump voters’ pre-existing beliefs, and it may make them more likely to believe the lies, according to a new study.
The study, authored by John Blanchard, an assistant professor from the University of Minnesota, Duluth, and Catherine Norris, an associate professor from Swarthmore College, looked at data from a sampling of 1,072 Americans surveyed in December of 2020. The researchers published a peer-reviewed paper on their findings this month in the Harvard Kennedy School’s Misinformation Review.
“These ‘disputed’ tags are meant to alert a reader to false/misinformation, so it’s shocking to find that they may have the opposite effect,” Norris said.
Participants were shown four tweets from Donald Trump that made false claims about election fraud and told to rank them from one to seven based on their truthfulness. A control group saw the tweets without “disputed” tags; the experimental group viewed them with the label. Before and after seeing the tweets, the subjects were also asked to rank their views on election fraud overall.
The study found that Trump voters who were initially skeptical about claims of widespread fraud were more likely to rate lies as true when a “disputed” label appeared next to Trump’s tweets. The findings meanwhile showed Biden voters’ beliefs were largely unaffected by the “disputed” tags.
You can read the full story here:
Zelenskyy: ‘I hope Biden supports Ukraine peace plan’
Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelenskyy has said he hopes Joe Biden will support his plan to end the war with Russia, ahead of a trip to Washington.
Zelenskyy has promised to present his so-called “victory plan” to end the fighting, which has killed thousands, to Biden in the coming days, Agence France-Presse reports.
“I really hope that he will support this plan,” Zelenskyy said during a press conference with EU chief Ursula von der Leyen in Kyiv.
“The plan is designed for decisions that will have to happen from October to December … We would like that very much. Then we believe that the plan will work,” he added.
Zelenskyy will present the plan to the US after a summer of intense fighting, with Moscow advancing in eastern Ukraine and Kyiv holding on to parts of Russia’s Kursk region.
The Ukrainian leader is due to meet Biden and Kamala Harris – while Kyiv also says he plans to meet Donald Trump.
Trump has not confirmed their meeting but says it will “probably” take place. Reuters reports that while Trump and Zelenskyy talked over the phone in July, they have not talked in person since Trump was president.
The Republican nominee has consistently described US aid to its eastern European ally as a waste of money and has declined to say he wants Ukraine to win.
Trump’s threats to ‘go after’ opponents will subvert rule of law, experts warn
Peter Stone
Donald Trump’s sweeping threats if he wins the presidency again to name a special prosecutor to “go after” Joe Biden and take legal action against other foes would subvert the rule of law in America and take the country towards authoritarianism, former justice department officials and scholars have warned.
Trump’s escalating legal threats have targeted “corrupt election officials”, lawyers, donors and others he falsely deems out to steal November’s presidential election, and have popped up variously on his Truth Social platform, at campaign events and at an elite police group he addressed this month in North Carolina.
Trump’s menacing pledges to essentially weaponize the justice department against opponents would mark a sharp break with the Department of Justice’s mission statement, which cites as core values “independence and impartiality”.
Ex-justice officials warn that Trump’s barrage of intimidating verbal assaults are unprecedented, and suggest he would undermine longstanding traditions of justice department independence if he wins the presidency, thus badly undermining the rule of law.
You can read the full story here
During the event with Kamala Harris and Oprah Winfrey last night, the family of Amber Nicole Thurman, a Georgia woman who died as a result of the state’s abortion ban, blamed Donald Trump and his supreme court picks for her death.
“They just let her die because of some stupid abortion ban. They treated her like she was just another number,” Thurman’s older sister said of the medical professionals she had turned to for help.
Associated Press have more on the abortion issue ahead of Kamala Harris’ speech in Georgia.
About half of voters say abortion is one of the most important issues as they consider their vote – but it’s more important to women who are registered voters than to male voters, according to a new AP-NORC poll. About six in 10 women voters say abortion policy is one of the most important issues to their vote in the upcoming election, compared to about four in 10 male voters.
The gender gap doesn’t stop there.
About six in 10 women voters trust Harris more than Trump to handle abortion, while about two in 10 women have more trust in Trump. Half of male voters, by contrast, trust Harris more than Trump on abortion, while about one-third trust Trump more than Harris.
