With the US presidential election simply over three weeks away, the campaigns of Kamala Harris and Donald Trump are going into overdrive, with last-minute appeals to voters.
Want a fast breakdown of the week’s greatest political information? Look no additional.
We’ll get you on top of things with 5 key takeaways from the previous seven days and an outline of the place the candidates stand within the polls.
The election at a look
There are 23 days left earlier than the November 5 election.
- Nationwide polling averages present Harris with slight lead
As of October 11, the polling aggregator FiveThirtyEight reveals Vice President Kamala Harris up by 2.5 factors, with 48.5 p.c help in comparison with former President Donald Trump’s 46 p.c.
One other polling common, from the web site 270toWin, reveals Harris once more with a marginal lead, with 49.3 p.c help. Trump, in the meantime, is at 46.5 p.c.
Harris, the Democrat, could possibly be poised to flip certainly one of Trump’s key demographics: suburban voters.
On October 10, the information company Reuters and the market analysis ballot Ipsos launched a ballot that confirmed Harris led her Republican rival 47 p.c to 41 amongst suburbanites.
However two days later, The New York Occasions and Siena Faculty launched a ballot that indicated Harris could possibly be slipping amongst Black voters. She pulled in 78 p.c help — a drop from the estimated 90 p.c help her fellow Democrat, Joe Biden, earned in 2020.
Hurricane Milton turns into disinformation battleground
Inside three days of forming within the Gulf of Mexico, Hurricane Milton had billowed into a robust Class 5 storm, incomes the very best rating on the Saffir-Simpson scale.
Such fast improvement had hardly ever been seen. The Nationwide Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration dubbed Milton “one of the most intense hurricanes on record in the Atlantic basin”.
And it was heading straight for Florida, the southernmost state within the contiguous United States.
However as Florida braced for impression, politicians had been getting ready not only for lashing wind and storm surges but additionally a flood of disinformation.
Swaths of the US South had been nonetheless recovering from September’s Hurricane Helene, and within the weeks since, Trump had made a sequence of false claims, together with that the Democrat-led federal authorities was “going out of their way to not help people in Republican areas”.
On the night time Milton made landfall, outgoing President Joe Biden slapped again, utilizing his White Home remarks in regards to the storm to blast Trump, his erstwhile political rival.
“Over the last few weeks, there’s been reckless and irresponsible and relentless promotion of disinformation and outright lies about what’s going on,” Biden mentioned, calling the distortions “un-American”.
“Former President Trump has led this onslaught of lies,” he added.
Harris herself blasted Trump in remarks in Las Vegas. “This is not a time for people to play politics,” she mentioned, in reference to the Republican.
Trump and Harris spar with mainstream media
As soon as criticised for failing to seem on the nationwide media circuit, Harris zipped from one interview to the following initially of this week, as a part of a current media blitz.
It was a stark distinction to the beginning of her marketing campaign. After she introduced her candidacy on July 21, Harris failed to seem in any main interview till late August.
And even then, it was a joint interview along with her operating mate, Tim Walz. Her first solo interview got here a few weeks later, on September 13, with a neighborhood TV station in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
However up to now week, Harris has cranked up the frequency of her media appearances. Within the house of two days, she appeared on the podcast Name Her Daddy, on the radio with The Howard Stern Present and on tv with talk-show appearances on The View and The Late Present with Stephen Colbert.
And her prerecorded interview with the vaunted TV newsmagazine 60 Minutes additionally aired on Monday.
That final interview was meant to be a part of a pair: 60 Minutes had invited Donald Trump to take a seat down for a recording as properly.
However host Scott Pelley introduced that the Trump crew had pulled out of the agreed-upon interview, citing “shifting explanations”, together with that the Republican may be fact-checked on air.
The friction between Trump and 60 Minutes didn’t finish there. When a teaser model of the Harris interview confirmed the vp answering a query otherwise than she did within the longer model, Trump accused the newsmagazine of attempting to “make her look better”.
He additionally known as on the Federal Communications Fee to “TAKE AWAY THE CBS LICENSE”. The remarks earned a rebuke from the fee’s chair, who warned that such an motion would threaten free speech.
Harris touts well being as benefit over Trump
By means of a lot of the 2024 election, questions of well being and competency have loomed giant — even dooming one candidate’s run.
After a dismal debate efficiency in June, the 81-year-old Biden was pressured out of the presidential race amid questions on his age and skill to steer. It was the fruits of months of hypothesis and assaults, as Trump dug into Biden as a “weak” and “sleepy” previous man.
However at 78 years previous, Trump himself has confronted questions on his age and psychological competency.
These questions got here again into the highlight this week. Final Sunday, The New York Occasions ran a narrative analysing Trump’s “rambling” and more and more longwinded speeches, questioning whether or not his speech patterns mirrored the toll of age.
After which, on Saturday, the White Home launched a memo touting his Democratic rival’s well being.
The 59-year-old Harris, it learn, “possesses the physical and mental resiliency required to successfully execute the duties of the Presidency”.
Trump has lengthy touted his efficiency on cognitive exams as proof of his talents. On Saturday, his marketing campaign spokesperson Steven Cheung responded to the media scrutiny with an announcement, arguing that Harris “does not have the stamina” of Trump.
“All have concluded he is in perfect and excellent health to be Commander in Chief,” Cheung wrote of Trump.
Trump lays out blueprint for anti-immigrant agenda
On the marketing campaign path this week, Trump ratcheted up his assaults on migrants within the US, persevering with a streak of false and incendiary claims.
Immigration has been one of many defining problems with Trump’s political profession, and he has gone to nice lengths to mission a hardline picture.
However critics warn his nativist rhetoric has grown more and more excessive, echoing the feelings of white supremacists and different controversial figures.
On Monday, Trump recorded an audio interview with the Hugh Hewitt Present, the place he repeated false claims that murderers had been crossing the border into the US en masse.
“Many of them murdered far more than one person, and they’re now happily living in the United States,” Trump mentioned. “Now a murderer, I believe this: It’s in their genes. And we’ve got a lot of bad genes in our country right now.”
The Republican continued to play up the spectre of immigrants as criminals in appearances all through the week, most notably on Friday.
Talking in Aurora, Colorado, Trump pledged that, if re-elected, he would use his first days in workplace to “expedite the removal” of “savage gangs” from overseas, in addition to invoke the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, a wartime legislation, as a instrument for mass deportation.
He additionally known as for the loss of life penalty for migrants who killed US residents.
Regardless of Trump’s portrayals of lawlessness, research have proven that undocumented immigrants commit crimes at far decrease charges than US-born residents.
Bob Woodward’s e-book paints unflattering portrait
Reporter Bob Woodward holds near-mythic standing within the US journalism sphere.
In 1972, he and his Washington Put up colleague Carl Bernstein helped reveal President Richard Nixon’s position within the Watergate scandal, thereby precipitating the politician’s eventual resignation.
Since then, Woodward has printed dozens of books, purporting to indicate the interior machinations of US politics. His newest, touchdown proper within the midst of the heated presidential race, provided an unflattering glimpse of Trump’s alleged relationship with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Entitled Conflict, the e-book was launched to information shops on Tuesday upfront of touchdown on bookstore cabinets.
In its pages, an unnamed aide alleged Trump known as Putin no less than seven occasions since leaving workplace. The e-book additionally claimed that, on the top of the COVID-19 pandemic, Trump despatched virus-testing machines that had been in brief provide to Putin.
Information shops have since struggled to independently confirm a number of the e-book’s most headline-grabbing claims. And Trump’s crew refuted them fully, calling Woodward an “angry, little man”.
“None of these made up stories by Bob Woodward are true and are the work of a truly demented and deranged man,” Cheung, Trump’s spokesperson, wrote in an announcement.
However the e-book does comprise some high-profile named sources, together with the previous head of the Joint Chiefs of Employees, Mark Milley — as soon as the highest-ranking navy officer within the US.
He tells Woodward within the e-book that Trump is “fascist to the core”.
