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 summary 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 % help in comparison with former President Donald Trump’s 46 %.
One other polling common, from the web site 270toWin, reveals Harris once more with a marginal lead, with 49.3 % help. Trump, in the meantime, is at 46.5 %.
Harris, the Democrat, could possibly be poised to flip one in all 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 % 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 % help — a drop from the estimated 90 % 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 not often been seen. The Nationwide Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration dubbed Milton “probably the most intense hurricanes on file within the Atlantic basin”.
And it was heading straight for Florida, the southernmost state within the contiguous United States.
However as Florida braced for affect, politicians have been getting ready not only for lashing wind and storm surges but in addition a flood of disinformation.
Swaths of the US South have 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 technique to not assist folks in Republican areas”.
On the evening Milton made landfall, outgoing President Joe Biden slapped again, utilizing his White Home remarks concerning the storm to blast Trump, his erstwhile political rival.
“Over the previous few weeks, there’s been reckless and irresponsible and relentless promotion of disinformation and outright lies about what’s happening,” 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 isn’t a time for folks 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 subsequent in the beginning 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 together with her working mate, Tim Walz. Her first solo interview got here a few weeks later, on September 13, with an area TV station in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
However previously week, Harris has cranked up the frequency of her media appearances. Within the area 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 sit down down for a recording as effectively.
However host Scott Pelley introduced that the Trump staff had pulled out of the agreed-upon interview, citing “shifting explanations”, together with that the Republican is perhaps 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 in another way than she did within the longer model, Trump accused the newsmagazine of making an attempt to “make her look higher”.
He additionally referred to 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 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 guide. It was the end result of months of hypothesis and assaults, as Trump dug into Biden as a “weak” and “sleepy” outdated man.
However at 78 years outdated, 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 bodily and psychological resiliency required to efficiently execute the duties of the Presidency”.
Trump has lengthy touted his efficiency on cognitive assessments as proof of his skills. On Saturday, his marketing campaign spokesperson Steven Cheung responded to the media scrutiny with a assertion, arguing that Harris “doesn’t have the stamina” of Trump.
“All have concluded he’s in excellent and glorious well being 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 have been crossing the border into the US en masse.
“A lot of them murdered far a couple of particular person, and so they’re now fortunately residing in the US,” Trump mentioned. “Now a assassin, I imagine this: It’s of their genes. And we’ve bought a variety of unhealthy genes in our nation proper 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 removing” of “savage gangs” from overseas, in addition to invoke the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, a wartime regulation, as a instrument for mass deportation.
He additionally referred to 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 Submit colleague Carl Bernstein helped reveal President Richard Nixon’s function within the Watergate scandal, thereby precipitating the politician’s eventual resignation.
Since then, Woodward has printed dozens of books, purporting to point out the interior machinations of US politics. His newest, touchdown proper within the midst of the heated presidential race, supplied an unflattering glimpse of Trump’s alleged relationship with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Entitled Warfare, the e book was launched to information retailers on Tuesday upfront of touchdown on bookstore cabinets.
In its pages, an unnamed aide alleged Trump referred to as Putin no less than seven instances since leaving workplace. The e book additionally claimed that, on the top of the COVID-19 pandemic, Trump despatched virus-testing machines that have been in brief provide to Putin.
Information retailers have since struggled to independently confirm a number of the e book’s most headline-grabbing claims. And Trump’s staff refuted them fully, calling Woodward an “offended, little man”.
“None of those made up tales by Bob Woodward are true and are the work of a very 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 Workers, 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”.
