(WASHINGTON) — The House unanimously on Friday approved a bill that would require the Secret Service to apply equal standards of protection to major presidential candidates and sitting presidents, a move that comes in the wake of two assassination attempts on former President Trump.
The final tally was 405-0 in favor of the bill. Only two-thirds majority was required for the measure to pass.
The bill was first introduced following the first assassination attempt in July by Reps. Mike Lawler, R-N.Y., and Ritchie Torres, D-N.Y.
It now heads to the Senate where its fate is uncertain. The Senate would likely not be able to take it up until after the 2024 election.
The House also officially expanded the jurisdiction of the Task Force investigating the Butler, PA assassination attempt against former President Trump to also include the second assassination attempt at Trump’s golf course in Florida.
Speaker Johnson said earlier this week the House would take this step and it was just approved by unanimous consent.
On Wednesday, the Secret Service told the House task force investigating the assassination attempts against Trump that the former president has an increased level of security.
“President Biden ordered the Secret Service to provide the same level of security to both Vice President Harris and to former President Trump, that would be a presidential level security commensurate with what the president would receive, and that that security is being provided, that’s our understanding,” Ranking Member Jason Crow, D-CO, said following a USSS virtual briefing.
The USSS insists that Donald Trump is now receiving protection at what one official calls “the highest levels the Secret Service provides.”
In addition to counter assault, counter surveillance, counter sniper, protective intelligence and drone teams for Trump, an agency official says the security plan at Mar-a-Lago now includes emergency tactical response functions and a protective platoon from Palm Beach County.
The protective package around a candidate – even one who’s now repeatedly come under physical threat – could never be the same as that of a sitting president or vice president, the official said.
Acting Director of the Secret Service said Monday that Congress’ commitment to providing the resources the agency needs has been “fantastic.”
He also praised DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas “ whose support in making sure that we’re getting what we need has been phenomenal.”
Rowe said that right now they need to hire more people because they are currently “redlining” agents.
House Majority Leader Steve Scalise touted the bill during the GOP weekly leadership press conference earlier this week.
“Every year since 2017, Congress has added more money to the Secret Service’s budget than they even requested in their budget,” Scalise said Wednesday. “And so, it is not an issue of money. What they are doing with the money we’ve had a lot of serious questions about before the first assassination attempt.”
ABC News’ Luke Barr and Steven Portnoy contributed to this report.
(WASHINGTON) — Postmaster General Louis DeJoy on Thursday said former President Donald Trump and others are “wrong” to question the Postal Service’s ability to deliver ballots ahead of the presidential election.
Asked by a reporter, at a virtual preview of the 2024 election, to respond specifically to Trump’s claim that the Postal Service might deliberately misplace mail-in ballots, DeJoy responded tersely: “My response is like my response to everyone who says that we’re not prepared for the election — it’s that they’re wrong,” he said. “I don’t know that I need to comment any more than that. They’re wrong.”
At the top of his prepared remarks, DeJoy pushed back on those engaging in rhetoric that undermines the public confidence in the Postal Service, which, DeJoy reminded reporters, had been delivering ballots since 1864.
“We recognize that election officials are under an extreme amount of pressure, and will remain so for at least the next two months,” he said. “We also recognize that the American public will become increasingly alarmed if there is ongoing dialogue that continues to question the reliability of the Postal Service for the upcoming elections.”
“Let me be clear,” DeJoy continued. “The Postal Service is ready to deliver the nation’s mail in ballots.”
DeJoy said the Postal Service delivered 99.89% of ballots from voters to election officials in the 2020 election, which he called a “highly sensitive, sensationalized environment.”
In an interview with right-wing outlet Real America’s Voice from Las Vegas last week, former President Donald Trump escalated false and baseless claims about mail-in voting, even suggesting a possible lawsuit.
“I read the post office is saying how bad it is. The post office is critiquing themselves, saying we’re really in bad shape. We can’t deliver the mail. And they’re not even talking about mail in ballots, right? We’re going to dump millions and millions of dollars,” Trump said, repeating false claims that the last election was “rigged” and that the U.S. voting system is “bad.”
(NEW YORK) — Second gentleman Doug Emhoff has slammed Donald Trump over antisemitic comments made by the former president.
In a new interview with GMA anchor Michael Strahan, the second gentleman, who is Jewish, accused Trump of having a “record” of saying “vile, antisemitic things.”
Strahan asked Emhoff what he thought of Trump’s July interview with WABC in which he claimed Vice President Kamala Harris, Emhoff’s wife and Democratic candidate for president, “doesn’t like Jewish people.”
“It’s typical Donald Trump gaslighting,” Emhoff told Strahan. He “is a guy who has had a record of saying incredibly vile, antisemitic things. So, for him to say that — I just almost laugh at — at how– the chutzpah, as we would say.”
Emhoff has repeatedly attacked Trump over his rhetoric towards Jewish Americans, calling him an antisemite in May after Trump claimed Jewish people who voted for President Joe Biden needed to “have to have their head examined.”
On Wednesday, Emhoff headlined two separate fundraisers for the Harris-Walz campaign, where he defended his wife against comments made by Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders, who said at a Trump town hall on Tuesday in Michigan that Harris “doesn’t have anything to keep her humble” because she does not have biological children.
“We know that all parents, no matter how you become one, make the same sacrifices and revel in the same joys of raising children as any parent anywhere,” Emhoff said, adding, “Women in this country will never humble themselves before Donald Trump.”
(WASHINGTON) — The 2024 voting season officially kicked off Friday, as voters in three states can now line up at early voting polling sites or election offices to cast their ballot.
Early in-person voting sites opened throughout Virginia, on Friday, marking the first state to offer their voters that option. The state’s early voting sites will remain open until Nov. 2.
Over 1,796,000 votes were cast early in person in Virginia in the last presidential election, roughly 40% of the total vote, according to data from the Virginia Department of Elections. An additional 962,877 Virginia voters cast their 2020 ballot through the mail, with roughly 574,000 submitting their mail-in ballot before Election Day, according to the election data.
While the voters will be lining up at the polls in Virginia, voters in two other states will have the opportunity, starting Friday, to cast their ballot in person through a different method.
Minnesota and South Dakota are among 23 states that allow voters to hand in their absentee ballots in person to an election office or other designated location instead of mailing them.
In the last presidential election, over 1.9 million Minnesota voters voted via absentee, with 1.7 million of those ballots being returned before election day, according to the state’s Office of the Secretary of State.
Roughly 57% of the total Minnesota 2020 election ballots were cast before Election Day, according to the state data.
The office does not have data on the number of 2020 voters who opted to hand in their absentee ballot to an office.
Roughly 83,000 South Dakota voters cast their ballot through in-person absentee drop-off before Election Day in 2020, according to South Dakota’s secretary of state office.
Voters in a handful of other states who requested an absentee ballot can soon start checking their mailboxes, as this weekend also marks the deadline for some election offices to begin sending out their absentee ballots.
Idaho, Maryland, New York and West Virginia are all required to send out their absentee ballots Friday to all voters who requested one, according to the respective states’ election offices.
North Carolina must send out absentee ballots to military and overseas voters on Friday, according to the state’s election office.
Delaware, Indiana, New Jersey and Tennessee are required to send absentee ballots to their voters by Saturday, according to the states’ respective election offices. Some counties in Oklahoma may start sending their paper ballots to voters on that day, too, according to the state’s election office.
Experts predict there will be a large number of early voters this election season as the voting method has risen in popularity.
During the 2020 election, more than 69% of votes cast in the election were done through either mail-in ballots or early in-person voting, according to election data compiled by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s election data science lab.
By comparison, only 40% voted early in the 2016 election and 33% in the 2012 election, the data showed.
(WASHINGTON) — Republicans are stepping up their efforts to change Nebraska’s electoral vote process to winner-take-all — a move that would benefit former President Donald Trump in an expected close November election in which a single vote could make a key difference in the Electoral College.
The winner-take-all electoral change could be pivotal if the Republican-leaning state allocates all of its five electoral votes solely to Trump instead of dividing them with Kamala Harris.
Nebraska split its electoral votes in 2020, with President Joe Biden flipping the 2nd District, which includes the Democratic stronghold of Omaha.
Trump endorsed the winner-take-all system in April.
Pressure continues to grow on state lawmakers to as the state’s full federal delegation, all Republicans, and other national GOP figures continue to push for the change.
But amending Nebraska’s electoral college process is not simple.
Gov. Jim Pillen, a Republican, would have to convene a special legislative session. Pillen released a statement on Friday saying he would not call a session unless GOP legislators show they have 33 votes needed to break an expected Democratic filibuster.
Yet, state senators are not confident they have the votes; State Sen. Tom Berwer told the Nebraska Examiner he anticipates the group to come shy with 30 or 31 votes. That is a reason why Trump-ally Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina have been brought in to make the case. Graham flew to Nebraska Wednesday to meet with key stakeholders.
“I went and talked to some senators as the Governor. Senator [Pete] Ricketts and the Governor asked me to come out and to the caucus. I guess that’s what you call it, about the state of the play in the world and the consequences of the next election on a foreign policy front,” Graham told ABC News on Thursday.
“I hope they will allow winner-take-all. [Splitting electoral votes] was created in ’92 to help Clinton. Trump’s going to win the state by 20 points. You know, I told the conference, I’ve never seen so many challenges and threats to our country as I do now. I think she would make things worse,” he said, referring to Harris. “I was glad to go out and talk about the world as I see it, and I hope the people in Nebraska that this may come down to a single electoral vote,” he added.
Ricketts told reporters at the U.S. Capitol later on Thursday that he encouraged Graham to go to Nebraska to push for winner-take-all. “I think Senator Graham is a great spokesperson for it, he is very savvy about why we need to make sure that all of our voters have an opportunity to have their voices heard on what the other states are doing,” he said.
All five members of Nebraska’s federal delegation — all Republicans — joined together on Wednesday night, penning a letter to vouch for the change. The letter — signed by GOP Reps. Mike Flood, Don Bacon, Adrian Smith and Republican Sens. Deb Fischer and Ricketts — said the state should “speak with a united voice in presidential elections.”
“We need a President that will represent all of us, from Omaha to Scottsbluff and everywhere in-between. Senators and Governors are elected by the state as a whole because they represent all of the people of Nebraska equally, and the state should speak with a united voice in presidential elections as well. After all, we are Nebraskans first, not members of Nebraska’s three congressional districts,” the letter reads.
Kate Heltzel, a spokesperson for the Nebraska legislature outlined the legislative process that would need to unfold in order to implement the change.
“A senator would introduce a bill once the special session convenes, which likely would be referenced to the Government, Military and Veterans Affairs Committee, which would then hold a public hearing. If the bill is advanced by the committee, it would move to the floor of the Legislature and would need to advance through three rounds of debate before final passage. There is no set time frame for how long a special session lasts — that is up to the senators after it begins — except that the process requires a minimum of seven days for a bill to move from introduction to final passage, based on constitutionally required layover days between rounds of debate, etc.”
Some members mentioned to the Examiner that Trump himself may begin to make calls on the matter. ABC News is awaiting a response from Trump campaign.
However, if Pillen does call a special session, and members are able to break a filibuster, changes can be enacted quickly. According to Nebraska’s deputy secretary of state, Cindi Allen, “If winner-take-all is passed by the legislature before the election, barring any challenges, winner-take-all would go into effect.” This applies to any time in the election cycle. Even after early voting starts on Oct. 7. The secretary’s office confirmed that if there are no legal challenges, the Nebraska legislature could push the change through at the very last minute, on Nov. 2 or 3, for example.
Kate Heltzel, a spokesperson for the Nebraska legislature, sees more of a gray area.
“Some argue that the rule cannot be changed after general election voting begins in Nebraska. In-person early voting begins 30 days before an election, or Oct. 7 this year. Others contend that the only requirement is that the law be changed before Electoral College members cast their votes in December. To my knowledge, the attorney general has not officially weighed in on the issues, so I don’t have a definitive answer,” she wrote.
ABC News’ Allison Pecorin contributed to this report.
Michael Siluk/UCG/Universal Images Group via Getty Images
(WASHINGTON) — The Uncommitted movement, the pro-Palestinian group critical of the Biden administration’s handling of the war in Gaza, announced Thursday that it will not endorse Vice President Kamala Harris, but also does not recommend a third-party vote in November.
The group made the announcement as Harris campaigns Thursday in Michigan, home to sizable Arab American and Muslim populations that could hold outsized sway this year in the crucial swing state. The movement was founded to push voters to vote “uncommitted” on primary ballots rather than punch a ticket for Biden to register their discontent with his tight support for Israel amid the bloody war in Gaza.
The group said in a statement that “Harris’s unwillingness to shift on unconditional weapons policy or to even make a clear campaign statement in support of upholding existing U.S. and international human rights law has made it impossible for us to endorse her.”
Still, the group added that it “opposes a Donald Trump presidency, whose agenda includes plans to accelerate the killing in Gaza while intensifying the suppression of anti-war organizing” and “is not recommending a third-party vote in the Presidential election, especially as third party votes in key swing states could help inadvertently deliver a Trump presidency given our country’s broken electoral college system.”
“We urge Uncommitted voters to register anti-Trump votes and vote up and down the ballot. Our focus remains on building a broad anti-war coalition both inside and outside the Democratic Party,” the group said.
The statement comes before Harris campaigns in Detroit, where she’ll both rally with supporters and hold an event with Oprah Winfrey.
Uncommitted has remained a thorn in the Democratic Party’s side since the war in Gaza kicked off last year following Hamas’ brutal attack on Israel, which killed about 1,200 people, according to Israeli officials. The Hamas-run Gaza Ministry of Health said more than 41,000 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza since the Israel-Hamas war began.
The group repeatedly criticized Biden, and Uncommitted votes in Democratic primaries raised concerns about cracks in the president’s base of support, even before a ruinous June debate tanked his campaign. Uncommitted netted more than 100,000 votes in the primary in Michigan, where Trump won by about 11,000 votes in 2016.
The movement has demanded that Harris meet with Palestinian-American families who have lost family members in Gaza, as well as support an immediate cease-fire (which she has done) and an arms embargo on Israel (which she has said she opposes). Uncommitted activists also waged a sit-in at the Democratic National Convention after the party refused their demand to have a Palestinian speaker make an address.
The Harris campaign has said she will continue to meet with leaders from Palestinian, Muslim, Israeli and Jewish communities.
Harris, for her part, has sounded a more empathetic tone than Biden about the civilian death toll in Gaza but has insisted on Israel’s right to defend itself and refused to make the kind of policy shifts from Biden that the Uncommitted movement sought.
Harris’ campaign sounded a similar note in a statement, with a spokesperson vowing that she would “work to earn every vote, unite our country, and to be a President for all Americans” and “will continue working to bring the war in Gaza to an end in a way where Israel is secure, the hostages are released, the suffering in Gaza ends, and the Palestinian people can realize their right to dignity, security, freedom and self-determination.”
Uncommitted organizers have also remained vociferously opposed to Trump, who has bear-hugged Israel and used “Palestinian” as a slur.
The war in Gaza has loomed large in Michigan given its electorate and tight statewide margins.
A super PAC affiliated with Republicans is running ads in Michigan ZIP codes with heavy Muslim or Arab populations highlighting Harris’ support for Israel and second gentleman Doug Emhoff’s Judaism, a seemingly back-handed attempt to hurt support for the Democratic ticket there. Harris’ campaign is also running digital ads targeted to heavily Arab neighborhoods in and around Detroit emphasizing her statement that she “will not be silent about human suffering in Gaza.”
In a sign of how contentious the war has been, critics of the administration’s approach to Gaza have been in turn critical of each other.
“Translation: We can’t endorse Kamala, even though we’d like to, because the community we claim to represent would tear us apart. So instead, we’re going to publicly state that we don’t support her while also not endorsing any alternative, effectively helping her win,” Abandon Harris, another group that wants the U.S. to take a tougher stance in its relationship with Israel, said in a statement.
Still, Michigan Democrats touted Uncommitted’s statement, particularly urging against third-party votes, as the best-case scenario for Harris given that the policy shifts they were asking for would have been difficult for the vice president to swallow.
Jim Ananich, the former Democratic state Senate leader in Michigan, dubbed the statement “close to a win.”
Josh Hovey, a Michigan communications strategist, added that “the best case would have been a full endorsement because the margin of victory will likely be very close again this year and Harris needs to win this state if she’s going to win the Electoral College.”
But “this is the second-best scenario and sends a message to Harris that they need her to do more on this issue while also recognizing that her victory is the one that is most likely to result in the U.S. taking a stronger approach to addressing the humanitarian crisis,” Hovey added.
(WASHINGTON) — Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign said on Thursday that it did not use any materials that the FBI said Iranian hackers gathered from email accounts associated with former President Donald Trump’s campaign and sent to President Joe Biden’s campaign before he left the race.
Trump’s campaign on Wednesday demanded more information from Harris’ campaign including that it disclose the materials it received and whether it was used.
A Harris campaign official told ABC News that “the materials were not used.” The campaign declined to comment on whether or not they would comply with the Trump campaign’s request to disclose what they received.
Over the summer, Iranian hackers sent unsolicited emails to individuals associated with then-candidate Biden that “contained an excerpt taken from stolen, non-public material from former President Trump’s campaign as text in the emails,” according to information released by the FBI and other U.S. intelligence agencies on Wednesday.
The contents of those excerpts are not yet clear.
The FBI said there was no information indicating that the recipients of the information replied to the hackers’ messages.
The White House said Biden only learned Wednesday about the Iranian hackers sending what the FBI called “stolen” information from the Trump campaign to individuals associated with his campaign.
“We learned about the statement yesterday, and the president has been made aware of it now,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said Thursday. “You’ve seen us take actions to hold accountable those who week to undermine confidence in our democracy, and we will continue to do so.”
Harris’ campaign said Wednesday that it has cooperated with law enforcement and the investigation into the messages and said it was “not aware of any material being sent directly to the campaign.”
“A few individuals were targeted on their personal emails with what looked like a spam or phishing attempt,” Harris campaign spokesperson Morgan Finkelstein said in a statement Wednesday.
Trump’s campaign said hackers are interfering to help Harris and Biden “because they know President Trump will restore his tough sanctions and stand against their reign of terror.”
Iran’s Mission to the United Nations called the intelligence agencies’ findings “fundamentally unfounded, and wholly inadmissible.”
ABC News’ Selina Wang, Jack Date and Luke Barr contributed to this report.
(NEW YORK) — Second gentleman Doug Emhoff blasted remarks made by Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders, who said Vice President Kamala Harris “doesn’t have anything to keep her humble” because she does not have biological children.
“We know that all parents, no matter how you become one, make the same sacrifices and revel in the same joys of raising children as any parent anywhere,” Emhoff defended his wife while speaking at a campaign event in Brooklyn, New York, Wednesday evening.
“As if keeping women humble, whether you have children or not, is something we should strive for. It is not,” the second gentleman said. “Women in this country will never humble themselves before Donald Trump.”
Emhoff referred to Sanders’ comment as “unbelievable,” and he expressed his appreciation for his wife, ex-wife Kerstin Emhoff, and their “big, beautiful, blessed family.”
Harris is the stepmom to Cole and Ella Emhoff, her husband’s children from his first marriage.
Kerstin Emhoff jumped to Harris’ defense as well, responding to a video of Sanders on X.
“Kamala Harris has spent her entire career working for the people, ALL families. That keeps you pretty humble,” she wrote Tuesday.
Sanders had been speaking at a Michigan town hall with former President Donald Trump on Tuesday when she made the comments. “So my kids keep me humble. Unfortunately, Kamala Harris doesn’t have anything keeping her humble,” she said.
During a visit Wednesday to a Bitcoin bar in Greenwich Village, New York, Trump was asked about Sanders’ remarks and whether Harris should be attacked for not having biological children.
“Well, I just don’t know what I think about it, you know,” Trump said during the event.
Ohio Sen. JD Vance previously commented on Harris and other women for not having children with his well-known “childless cat ladies” comment.
In the 2021 clip, which only recently resurfaced, Vance accused Harris and the Democrats of being “a bunch of childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives and the choices that they’ve made, and so they want to make the rest of the country miserable too.”
There has been much backlash to Vance’s remark, and some have even made mocked the comment by making it their own. Most famously, Taylor Swift signed her endorsement for Harris as a “childless cat lady.”
ABC News’ Will McDuffie, Gabriella Abdul-Hakim, Fritz Farrow, and Chris Donovan contributed to this report.
President Joe Biden speaks at a reception in celebration of Hispanic Heritage Month at the White House in Washington, D.C., on Sept. 18, 2024. (Jim Watson/AFP via Getty Images)
(WASHINGTON) — President Joe Biden on Thursday called the Federal Reserve’s rate cut the day before an “important signal” from the Fed to Americans that inflation is cooling, but he cautioned that it “doesn’t mean the work is done” to improve the economy.
In remarks on Thursday at the Economic Club of Washington, D.C., Biden said, “Yesterday was an important day for the country.”
“Two and a half years after the Federal Reserve began raising interest rates, it announced that it began lowering interest rates,” Biden said. “I think it’s good news for consumers, and that means the cost of buying a home, a car, and so much more would be going down. And it’s good news in my view, for the overall economy.”
The president in his remarks discussed how far the U.S. has come since the COVID-19 pandemic, including supply chain issues, high costs of food and goods, and baby formula shortages. He also checked through all of his legislative achievements such as the American Rescue Plan, Inflation Reduction Act, Chips and Science Act and the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law.
“At its peak, as you all know, inflation was 9.1% in the United States. Today it’s much closer to 2%,” Biden said. “It doesn’t mean our work is done. Far from it. Far from it, no one should confused why I’m here. I’m not here to take a victory lap. I’m not here to say, ‘A job well done.’ I’m not here to say ‘We don’t have a hell of a lot more work to do.’ We do have more work to do.”
White House Chief of Staff Jeff Zients told reporters on a call previewing Biden’s remarks that president and Vice President Kamala Harris are still looking ahead to the work that is not finished, pointing to the cost of child care and housing as two of the biggest areas.
One White House official on the call was asked about whether the administration was concerned about rising unemployment in response to today’s rate cut, but the official brushed off the concern, saying that the Fed’s data today shows “the labor market remaining solid,” and adding that unemployment has “remained the lowest on average of any administration in 50 years.”
A reporter also asked whether rising tensions in the Middle East could be a setback in the fight against rising inflation. The different White House official said that it is one of the “geopolitical risks that we consistently monitor.”
“But our assessment, you know, right now is that the economy is in a healthy place, and that the kind of range of risks, while we continue to monitor them are do not pose a significant risk to the to the outlook,” the White House official added.
In his remarks Thursday, Biden also falsely claimed that he has “never once spoken to the chairman of the Fed since I became president.” He actually met with Jerome Powell in the Oval Office in May 2022.
(NEW YORK) — Former President Donald Trump, in his first rally since the most recent apparent assassination attempt, painted a bleak picture of his hometown of New York City at a raucous rally just miles away in the suburbs of Long Island and painted his Democratic opponents as a “threat to democracy.”
In the appearance before thousands at Nassau Coliseum, Trump also vowed to visit the city of Springfield, Ohio — a town he has repeatedly targeted with falsehoods about the Haitian population there eating “pets,” despite assertions from officials, including the state’s Republican governor that they are untrue. He said he would visit in the next two weeks.
Trump’s pointed comment about Democrats came as he and his surrogates have repeated that rhetoric from his opponents about him being a threat to democracy was responsible for the attempts on his life.
Trump’s reason for his Long Island rally on Wednesday night was to appeal to voters in New York, a blue state. Wednesday night’s event was Trump’s second rally in the state, on top of the multiple campaign stops he made in between his court appearances for his New York civil fraud trial.
As he addressed the crowd, Trump said a Harris win in November would turn New York “into a third-world country, if it isn’t already.”
Trump has often claimed during this campaign that crime has been on the rise in New York City and other metropolitan areas. But those claims appear to be at odds with data collected separately by the FBI and New York City officials.
The city has recorded 11% fewer murders this year compared to 2023, according to data released this week by the mayor and police commissioner. Total violent crime complaints, including murder, rape and robbery, have fallen in New York City by almost 3% this year and about 81% over the last 31 years, according to the data.
Attorney General Merrick B. Garland said in June that the most recent national crime data collected by the FBI made clear that a “historic decline in violent crime is continuing.”
Trump on Wednesday thanked law enforcement that thwarted an apparent assassination attempt on him on Sunday and praised the woman who captured a picture of the suspect’s vehicle, saying he’d like to meet her.
Then he turned to his Democratic opponent, “the radical left Democrat politicians and the fake news media.”
“The message is it’s time to stop the lies, stop the hoaxes, stop the smears, stop the lawfare or the fake lawsuits against me, and stop claiming your opponents will turn America into a dictatorship,” Trump said. “Give me a break. Because the fact is that I’m not a threat to democracy. They are.”
He also pledged to restore SALT (state and local deductions), which his 2017 tax cut capped at $10,000.
Outside the Coliseum ahead of Trump’s event, vendors lined up selling various Trump merchandise. The celebration, which included music blaring through speakers, featured golden cars with Trump’s face on the front and bedazzled Trump jackets. Trump’s campaign claimed that 60,000 tickets were requested, which would make it one of Trump’s largest rallies during this campaign cycle.
The line for attendees stretched around the building hours before doors opened.
Trump’s rally was on the same day he was initially scheduled to be sentenced in his New York civil fraud trial. The judge in the case delayed his sentencing from Sept. 18 until Nov. 26 — after the presidential election.
Ahead of his Wednesday rally, Trump worked to court New Yorkers by promising to reverse a tax policy he signed into law in 2017. In a post on his social media platform, Trump claimed he would “get SALT back,” suggesting eliminating the cap on state and local tax deductions. In his 2017 tax law, Trump capped deductions at $10,000.
A majority of New York’s congressional Republican delegation has been pushing to reverse the SALT deduction cap on Capitol Hill, spearheading the ongoing debate around the issue.
However, while many local Republicans have celebrated Trump’s posture change, it also comes as he has recently rolled out a series of tax breaks, raising concerns about significant increases to the deficit.
“WHAT THE HELL DO YOU HAVE TO LOSE? VOTE FOR TRUMP! I will turn it around, get SALT back, lower your Taxes, and so much more,” the former president posted on his social media network ahead of his Wednesday rally.
In May, Trump pledged to turn New York red during a campaign rally in deep-blue South Bronx, New York, attempting to court the Hispanic and Black voters that make up a majority of the area’s population.
“We have levels of support that nobody’s seen before … Don’t assume it doesn’t matter just because you live in a blue city. You live in a blue city, but it’s going red very, very quickly,” Trump said at the time.
The Trump campaign has worked to court New Yorkers this campaign cycle, attempting to at least pull enthusiasm away from Democrats and help make down-ballot races more competitive.
Trump on Wednesday also repeated false claims about the mostly legal immigrants living in Springfield, where he says he’ll be holding a campaign stop soon, going on to suggest he could may not back alive from the visit.
“I’m going to go there in the next two weeks. I’m going to Springfield and I’m going to Aurora. You may never see me again, but that’s okay. Got to do what I got to do. Whatever happened to Trump? ‘Well, he never got out of Springfield.'”
“We’re going to take those violent people and we’re going to ship them back to their country, and if they come back in, they’re going to pay a hell of a price,” Trump said, alluding to the Haitian residents who are mainly either legally authorized to live and work in the U.S. or are protected from expulsion by law.
Trump also again falsely suggested that schools were being heavily occupied by children who don’t speak English, suggesting the mayor should just kick them out.
“So the mayor of Springfield, and I think he’s a very nice person, but instead of saying, we’re getting them all out, we’re getting them out, he says very simply, we’re hiring teachers to teach them English. Can you believe it? We are hiring interpreters,” Trump said, making an unsupported claim.
This is also his first large-scale campaign rally after an apparent assassination attempt on Trump while he was golfing in West Palm Beach on Sunday. The day prior, Trump held a town hall where nearly 4,000 Michigan voters attended; the Nassau rally is expected to be four times the size.
Trump had also made multiple smaller campaign stops in New York City before and after his mandated court appearance throughout his seven-week hush money payment criminal trial earlier this year to highlight several campaign messaging at each stop.
In mid-April, he visited a small bodega in Harlem that was the scene of a fatal stabbing two years earlier to highlight what he claimed was the failure of Democratic prosecutors in New York to ensure public safety as they prosecute him. Later that month, he visited a construction site in midtown Manhattan to boast support from union workers and working-class voters.
