Politics – Page 316

Trump green card comments angered some Republicans but could appeal to business

June 26, 2024 by WDNY Radio

(WASHINGTON) — Former President Donald Trump — who has made harsh opposition to immigration a defining message of the GOP — last week pitched what would be one of the most significant expansions of U.S. immigration in decades.

Speaking on a podcast hosted by tech businessmen, Trump announced his support for giving a green card to every noncitizen graduate of a U.S. college (“staple a green card to every diploma,” said the former president).

Hours later, following outrage from some anti-immigration Republicans, he issued a clarification. A statement from a spokesperson given on Friday to ABC News said that the proposed program would involve an “aggressive vetting process,” and that “this would only apply to the most thoroughly vetted college graduates who would never undercut American wages or workers.”

Whether or not they become a major part of his messaging, Trump’s recent comments offer a glimpse of what appeared to be in contrast to how he talks about immigration on the campaign trail — for example, calling for the mass deportation of migrants in the country illegally.ahead of a hotly-contested presidential election where it will be a top issue — and a high-stakes first debate this Thursday.

ABC News spoke to conservative experts and immigration policy insiders to discuss how a potential shift in tone on immigration could play with voters.

“It runs against type, in many ways,” said Whit Ayres, a long-time Republican political strategist. “In some senses, it’s a ‘Nixon goes to China’ kind of phenomenon, where the guy who has been the most critical of immigration offers an opportunity for immigrants who are most likely to create jobs and grow our economy to stay in America.”

For key independent voters, Ayres believes, more vocal support for high-skill immigration could offer a needed complement to the fiery anti-immigrant rhetoric that Trump has long made his calling card.

“It could make swing voters and suburban voters take another look at the way he’s approaching the immigration issue,” Ayres said, “and make it seem more rational than emotional.”

Daniel Di Martino, an economist who studies immigration and a fellow at the conservative Manhattan Institute, also noted that the stance appeals to business leaders looking to hire high-skilled immigrants.

“The audience here is corporations and businesses — not voters, necessarily,” said Di Martino.

Trump announced the position on green cards during an appearance on a podcast hosted by several businessmen from the tech industry, which relies disproportionately on high-skilled worker visas. In recent weeks, Trump has made overtures to Silicon Valley, looking to draw support from a group that has tended to side with Democrats.

As several interviews with conservative immigration advocates and policymakers made clear, though, Trump’s position isn’t without its critics.

“My first-rip reaction was roll-backward shock,” said one senior official who served in the Department of Homeland Security during the Trump administration. “This is so outrageously unthought-through it’s amazing.”

If all foreign students were to receive a green card on graduation, the official objected, “you’re not buying an education — you’re buying citizenship.”

“It’s a terrible idea,” concurred Mark Krikorian, director of the Center for Immigration Studies and an avowed immigration restrictionist. “But it doesn’t surprise me coming from President Trump, because he’s never been a restrictionist.”

“He subscribes to the standard Republican mantra, ‘illegal good, legal bad,'” Krikorian added.

Another former Trump immigration official — former acting director of ICE Tom Homan — was more approving.

“If we’re going to immigrate, let’s immigrate some highly-skilled workers,” Homan said, noting that he believes Trump’s comments on the podcast referred back to proposals from early in his administration.

In 2017, the former president issued an executive order commissioning a review of the H1-B high-skill visa program and backed legislation that would have substantially reduced the number of green cards granted each year, saying that it would “prioritize immigrants based on the skills they bring to our Nation.”

Before his election as president, in 2015, Trump tweeted language similar to his comments on the podcast last week, writing that “When foreigners attend our great colleges & want to stay in the U.S., they should not be thrown out of our country.” But weeks before the 2020 election, the Trump administration would go on to modestly restrict the H1-B program.

Despite opposition from some conservatives, experts interviewed by ABC News agreed that Trump did not risk losing support from opponents of immigration among his base.

“What are those people going to do? Vote for Joe Biden?” asked Ayres. “They’re not going to vote for Donald Trump, because he wants to have high-skilled immigrants in the country? Really?”

“He has got so much credibility on these issues, he can actually take a position that seems slightly at variance with what he said in the past on immigration and get away with it,” Ayres added.

“Nobody’s going to stop voting for him because of what he said,” echoed Di Martino. “If anything, that can only earn him more votes.”

Supreme Court rejects challenge to Biden admin’s contact with social media companies

June 26, 2024 by WDNY Radio

(WASHINGTON) — The Supreme Court on Wednesday rejected a Republican-led challenge to the Biden administration’s communication with social media companies about misinformation on their sites about COVID-19 and the 2020 election, stating the plaintiffs did not have legal standing to sue.

The 6-3 opinion was authored by Justice Amy Coney Barrett. Justices Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch dissented.

“The plaintiffs, without any concrete link between their injuries and the defendants’ conduct, ask us to conduct a review of the years-long communications between dozens of federal officials, across different agencies, with different social-media platforms, about different topics,” Barrett wrote. “This Court’s standing doctrine prevents us from ‘exercis[ing such] general legal oversight’ of the other branches of Government.”

Five things to watch in the first 2024 general election debate

June 26, 2024 by WDNY Radio

(WASHINGTON) — President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump will face off in-person Thursday for the first of two presidential debates this year, offering the two a high-profile opportunity to try to gain an edge in a race characterized by persistently narrow polling margins.

The debate, moderated by CNN, is occurring unusually early in the election cycle and features the atypical combination of a president and a former president both having to defend their White House records. They will also be clashing under unique circumstances — CNN will have the ability to mute candidates’ microphones when they’re not talking, and there will be no studio audience.

Debates in the past have produced signature moments that helped alter the course of the presidential race, while others have failed to make a dent. Biden and Trump both come into the debate with widespread worries over the fitness for office and character, as well as universal name recognition — and thus hardened voter opinions — that leave few opportunities for fluctuations in the White House contest.

Here are five things to watch Thursday:

Do any gaffes or knockout punches break through?

Traditionally, most parts of debates are forgotten by the time voters head to the polls in November. But marquee moments have the potential to break through.

Gaffes — think Rick Perry’s “oops” moment in a 2011 GOP primary debate — or knockout punches — think Ronald Reagan citing his opponent’s “youth and inexperience” in 1984 — have been able to pierce the national consciousness and live on throughout history, even beyond the years in which those elections took place.

Radars for such moments will be particularly high in Thursday’s debate, as worries over the two candidates’ fitness for office are staples in the race.

Biden, the country’s oldest president ever at 81 years old, is the target of ceaseless attacks over his mental acuity from Trump and his allies, who at times disseminate misleadingly edited videos to appear as if he’s lost during public appearances.

Trump, meanwhile, has made a series of flubs on the trail, including confusing or forgetting people’s names, though polls show worries over his mental fitness for office aren’t as widespread over concerns about Biden.

Strategists said a bad gaffe could damage either campaigns’ chances of victory in November, but that a strong performance, especially for Biden, could help mitigate worries over his age.

Biden “can’t stumble around words. He can’t drift off into these incoherent little tangents that he occasionally does because all he has to do is screw up once, and that’s going to be the thing that lives,” said veteran GOP strategist David Kochel. “I just think there’s a huge opportunity for him to put a lot of things to rest. But it’s also a minefield.”

Character or policy?

Both candidates have ping ponged back and forth between hitting each other on character and policy, still searching for the playbook that’ll put their opponent away.

Biden has repeatedly cast Trump as a threat to democracy, citing his role in inciting the Jan. 6, 2021, riot on Capitol Hill and his vow to be a “dictator” on his first day in office — a comment Trump’s allies say was made in jest. He also more recently began highlighting Trump’s recent conviction on 34 felony counts in New York.

He’s also sought to knock the former president on abortion, a key animating policy issue for Democrats, COVID-era economic slumps and for helping dash a bipartisan immigration bill in Congress earlier this year.

Trump, meanwhile, has focused on the president’s age and dubbed him the head of the “Biden crime family,” citing both unfounded allegations of corruption and the president’s son’s recent conviction on gun charges.

Trump also has spoken to voter frustrations over inflation and the border.

“If he says the word reproductive rights or abortion less than 100 times over the course of the 90 minutes, he’s probably failing. But I expect he’ll raise that in almost every answer. If they ask him about tax policy, he’s going to talk about abortion,” GOP strategist Alex Conant said of Biden. “I think beyond that, he’s going to want to remind people about Jan. 6.”

“Trump’s obviously gonna try to talk about inflation as much as possible,” he added.

Whichever tact the candidates take — an emphasis on character or policy — could indicate where they think their opponents are most vulnerable.

Offense vs. defense

The unique nature of a president clashing with his predecessor also leaves it unclear who will be able to seize the offensive.

Traditionally during a presidential reelection campaign, debates are characterized by the president defending his record in the White House, while a challenger is on the offensive while also defending a record in the Senate or governor’s mansion — less impactful and relatable to everyday voters.

Now, though, both candidates will have White House records to back up, leaving it unclear whether either will be able to seize the offensive — and if one or the other will end up stuck on their back foot for the 90-minute tete-a-tete.

Already, millions of dollars have been dumped into ads tearing into the candidates’ respective records — but being seen as a superior attacker on stage could pay dividends for either contender.

Early timing

Thursday’s debate is happening atypically early for a general presidential election, the impacts of which are unclear.

On the one hand, strategists speculated, the timing of the debate has a chance to set the tone for the race in voters’ minds before they truly start tuning in.

“I think it makes the debate more important, because it’s it’ll set the tone for the rest of the campaign. For Biden, who is desperate to make this a choice, not a referendum, it frames the race early on in a way that his campaign wants to frame it. And I think Trump is looking for a knockout punch,” Conant said.

However, the debate will be taking place months before Labor Day, the unofficial day highlighted by politicos as the earliest that most voters start paying attention to the race in earnest. And five months is a political lifetime, meaning the debate could be flushed from voters’ minds by ever-changing news cycles.

“It’s hard to see how there is a big shift or a big thing in this race where there’s also a lot of fairway left to play,” Republican pollster Robert Blizzard said.

Who does the novel format help?

The new format for the debate — which both campaigns agreed to — marks a significant departure from past clashes.

Recently dominated by crosstalk and crowd appeals, this Thursday’s event will in theory be tamer. Microphones will be turned off when candidates are not answering questions, and no audience will be present to cheer or jeer.

The conventional wisdom among operatives in both parties is that the new rules favor Biden by robbing Trump of the ability to feed off an audience or devolve the event into inaudible crosstalk.

“[Trump] is the king, undisputed, undefeated king of crosstalk at a debate. Rewrote the rules basically about it. But he also likes to feed off of a crowd. And so, you take away the feeding off the crowd, you don’t know how President Trump’s going to react to not having that instant feedback from a crowd,” said Chip Saltsman, a strategist who worked on former Vice President Mike Pence’s now-suspended presidential campaign.

However, Republicans also said they hope that limiting crosstalk could make Trump appear less like a bully — at least to the audience at home. There’s still nothing to stop the former president from at least talking during Biden’s answers.

President Biden to pardon veterans convicted under regulation used to keep LGBT members from serving

June 26, 2024 by WDNY Radio

(WASHINGTON) — President Joe Biden announced Tuesday that he will pardon U.S. veterans who were convicted by the military under a regulation that allowed people to be kicked out for being gay.

The White House says the move will impact thousands of military veterans, though officials declined to give a specific number.

“Today, I am righting an historic wrong by using my clemency authority to pardon many former service members who were convicted simply for being themselves,” Biden said in a statement.

“Despite their courage and great sacrifice, thousands of LGBTQI+ service members were forced out of the military because of their sexual orientation or gender identity,” Biden added. “Some of these patriotic Americans were subject to court-martial, and have carried the burden of this great injustice for decades.”

Biden’s clemency of LGBTQ veterans is a symbolic effort to correct for an era when the military prosecuted people under Article 125 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice, which prohibited gay sex. It was in place from 1951 to 2013.

An estimated 100,000 service members since World War II have been kicked out of the military because of their sexual orientation, officials say, including more than 13,000 under the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy between 1994 and 2011.

The practical impact of offering clemency to people who were convicted is that it could allow veterans to take advantage of benefits they’ve been denied, such as military pensions, home loans and college tuition benefits.

But veterans will not automatically have their convictions wiped — they have to apply and go through a military approval process.

“Once they apply for that certificate of pardon, they can then use that certificate of pardon to apply to have their discharge characterization changed with the relevant military branch. And that for many of them should unlock, down the road, access to critical benefits,” a senior administration official said on a call with reporters on Tuesday.

Asked if the administration is doing outreach to contact veterans who might’ve been discharged from the military decades ago and are unaware they can have their charges wiped, an official was sparse on details but said the White House and the Department of Veterans Affairs are working on plans.

Wednesday’s announcement comes on the heels of multiple other efforts since Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell was repealed to address the injustices endured by LGBTQ service members.

Since 2012, for example, service members who were kicked out have been able to apply to a military board for a chance to have official records upgraded to remove references to sexual orientation and qualify for more benefits.

But only one-in-four eligible veterans has done so, according to the Pentagon.

And in 2023, the Biden administration announced that the military would for the first time begin proactively reviewing discharge records to identify and help those who were kicked out and have not come forward. But that, too, required veterans to apply for their records to be altered.

Veteran advocates have criticized application-based relief as too obstructive, putting the onus on veterans to fix the military’s wrongs and limiting the reach of the policy.

Biden administration’s asylum executive action decreased encounters by 40%: DHS

June 26, 2024 by WDNY Radio

(WASHINGTON) — President Joe Biden’s executive action on asylum, which was rolled out three weeks ago, has decreased encounters along the border by 40%, the Biden administration said.

The executive action established a rule to turn away migrants who are claiming asylum between ports of entry after there have been seven consecutive days of more than 2,500 encounters along the southern border.

The restrictions on asylum claims would remain in place for an additional 14 days once daily encounters at the border fall to a seven-day average of 1,500 or less.

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), the Texas Civil Rights Project and other civil rights organizations filed a federal complaint challenging the rule, saying it puts vulnerable migrants at risk.

The administration claims the new rule is having an impact, but said the rule is “no substitute” for the bipartisan border bill which failed to advance in the Senate in May.

The daily average of encounters along the border are 2,400 a day — not enough to lift the asylum restrictions but trending downward, the administration said.

The numbers come as Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas will be along the southwest border on Wednesday, touring operations.

Since the executive action was implemented, DHS has removed and returned more than 24,000 individuals to more than 20 countries, including by operating more than 100 international repatriation flights.

Economy is top of mind for Black men in Michigan

June 25, 2024 by WDNY Radio

(SAGINAW, Mich.) — For many in Saginaw, Michigan, a town less than two hours north of Detroit, the once-thriving hub for the auto industry is now a shell of itself.

After several major factories closed in the county, the local economy has struggled to fully recover.

“Some of the things that have plagued us are the lack of good jobs, the ones that can take care of a family,” Hurley Coleman III, executive director of Saginaw County Community Action Center, told ABC News’ “Nightline.”

Coleman’s organization helps to provide low-income and elderly Saginaw residents with resources like food and housing assistance.

While the U.S. unemployment rate is at 4%, dropping to historic lows during the Biden administration’s first term, Black unemployment in Michigan is roughly 50% higher than the national average, hovering over 6.1%, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

“My concern personally is our Black community and our men and our women, being able to have the opportunity to go into homes, financial literacy, education, opportunities to advance,” Coleman said.

In this county, which is roughly 45% Black, according to the U.S. Census, voters have looked to both parties in recent elections in hopes of change.

In 2008 and 2012, Saginaw voted for former President Barack Obama. Trump won the county in 2016, but Biden took a close victory in 2020 by just 303 votes.

In a battleground like Michigan, a key state needed to win the Oval Office, Saginaw is a pivotal county.

Both the Biden and Trump campaigns have made stops in Saginaw, focusing on making sharp contrasts to one another in their vision for rebuilding the economy.

“I’m going to turn it around. I’ll bring you the car industry back to Michigan,” Trump said to voters during a campaign stop on May 1.

Biden met with Coleman during his visit to Saginaw on March 14.

“We talked about inflation and what it feels like to go to the grocery store. To pull out $25 and figure out how far that $25 can stretch,” Coleman told “Nightline.”

“I believe in what President Biden is trying to accomplish and I will be standing with him,” Coleman added.

First Lady Jill Biden and Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff have also made campaign stops in Saginaw, visiting Baldwin’s Smokehouse BBQ, a Black-owned business in East Saginaw.

The owner of the restaurant, Roy Baldwin, 69, told ABC News he voted for Biden in 2020 and plans to do so again in November, but he remains worried about the economy, as he struggles to bounce back from inflation.

“I don’t think either one could make a big difference in the economy. I think things just got to level out. I don’t think a president really has much power to change any of that,” Baldwin said, noting that he thinks division in Congress has stalled policies that would benefit him.

Despite his worries, he says he’s committed to casting a ballot in November.

“My motivation in voting goes back to being a child. When my parents and other Blacks were not allowed to vote, and saw the struggle of at least having a voice,” Baldwin said. “We fought for it. We died to have a right and a voice.”

But not everyone is convinced.

At a gathering hosted by Coleman’s organization, a group of fathers brainstormed ways to improve their community for their children.

Among them was Antonio Brooks, a 47-year-old community organizer who grew up in Saginaw and watched the area transform after multiple factory closures caused a rise in poverty.

Brooks tells ABC News that he has voted Democrat in every election for more than two decades, a political stance he says he was taught to follow in the Black community he was raised in. But this election cycle, for the first time, he is considering not voting at all.

“I have the right to stand firm in my own beliefs and what I believe is they’re [Trump and Biden] not good candidates for the people,” Brooks said.

Brooks voted for Biden in the 2020 presidential election, hoping to see the passage of the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act, reform the president and other Democrats advocated for to prevent and remedy racial profiling by law enforcement at the federal, state and local levels.

However, several attempts to pass police reform ultimately have failed in Congress, never making it to Biden’s desk during his first term.

“All we do is go in and just vote for a straight ticket. We don’t really vet the ballots and we don’t really vet the candidates. We just vote Democrat. So we’re not holding them accountable. We’re just giving them our vote,” Brooks said. “I feel like you don’t deserve it, I’m not giving it to you anymore. I keep it to myself.”

While the Black community still overwhelmingly supports Democrats, some of that support could be eroded. A recent ABC News/Ipsos poll shows that some Black people may have moved away from President Joe Biden.

Rep. Byron Donalds, R-Florida, a prominent Black conservative and a vice presidential contender, has been actively courting undecided Black voters in hopes of getting them to vote for Trump. The congressman most recently moderated a roundtable discussion with Trump at a church in Detroit on June 15.

In the last three presidential election cycles, Black men were more likely than Black women to vote Republican, according to ABC News analysis of exit polling data.

“I believe that voters in our country are shifting underneath the feet of the political parties,” Donalds told ABC News Chief National Correspondent and “Nightline” Co-Anchor Byron Pitts.

“I think there’s a frustration with the American people just with politics overall. I think people are somewhat tired of politics being the first, or fifth, topic in every room they walk into. And at the end of the day, I think the American people just want common sense policies that work,” Donalds said.

Supreme Court poised to deliver major rulings on presidential immunity, abortion access

June 25, 2024 by WDNY Radio

(WASHINGTON) — The Supreme Court, nearing the end of its term, is poised to soon deliver rulings in high-profile cases on everything from presidential power to abortion access.

The justices will release opinions on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday this week. It will mark the first time in at least a decade the justices have done three opinion days in a row.

The timing means key decisions, some with enormous consequences for the 2024 campaign, could be handed down just before President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump meet on stage in Atlanta for their first debate.

Blockbuster cases still to be resolved include whether Trump is immune from criminal prosecution on charges stemming from his efforts to overturn his 2020 election loss; whether hundreds of Jan. 6 rioters were improperly charged with obstruction; and whether a federal law protecting emergency care overrides a state abortion ban.

Here is a deeper dive into the some of the dozen cases pending before the nation’s high court.

Presidential immunity

In what is likely the most consequential case before the court this term, the justices will decide whether a former president is shielded from criminal liability for “official acts” taken while in the White House.

In Trump v. United States, Trump is seeking to quash the federal election subversion case brought by special counsel Jack Smith by claiming immunity.

Lower courts flatly rejected Trump’s argument, but the justices appeared open to the idea of some level of immunity for former presidents when they heard arguments in April. Their questioning largely focused on what types of official acts would be protected and which would not.

How the justices make that determination will set a new standard for presidential power, and will affect whether Trump stands trial for his unprecedented actions in the aftermath of the 2020 election.

Jan. 6 obstruction charges

A felony obstruction charge used by federal prosecutors against alleged Jan. 6 rioters is being put to the test in Fischer v. United States.

A former Pennsylvania police officer charged for his alleged participation in the U.S. Capitol attack is challenging the government’s use of a 2002 law enacted to prevent the destruction of evidence in financial crimes. The law includes a sweeping provision for any conduct that “otherwise obstructs, influences or impedes an official proceeding.”

The Supreme Court appeared divided on whether the government’s broad interpretation of the law should stand or be narrowed, with conservatives on the bench questioning the lack of prosecutions under the law for matters unrelated to financial or documentary crimes.

The court’s decision could upend hundreds of Jan. 6 cases, including Trump’s. Felony obstruction is one of the four charges the former president is facing in his federal election subversion case.

Idaho abortion ban and emergency care

In Moyle v. United States, the question before the court is whether a federal law requiring emergency rooms to provide stabilizing care to all patients overrides Idaho’s strict abortion ban.

Idaho’s law prohibits nearly all abortions, with exceptions in cases of rape, incest or when the mother’s life is at risk.

The Biden administration argues the law is conflict with the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act, or EMTALA, which requires hospitals receiving Medicare funds to provide “necessary stabilizing treatment.”

The case marks the first time the court is evaluating state-level abortion restrictions passed after the fall of Roe v. Wade. Since the court’s conservative majority struck down Roe, 21 states have successfully enacted restrictions or bans on abortion and 14 of those states have total bans with few exceptions.

Homeless encampment ban

In the most significant case on homelessness in decades, the justices are weighing whether a local ordinance to bar anyone without a permanent residency from sleeping outside amounts to “cruel and unusual” punishment under the Eighth Amendment.

Officials in Grants Pass, Oregon argue the ordinance is necessary to protect public spaces and encourage a growing tide of unhoused residents to seek shelter. A lower court ruled that punishing homeless people with fines and the possibility of jail time for public camping when they have nowhere else to go is unconstitutional.

A majority of Supreme Court justices seemed to favor the city’s arguments when it heard the case in April.

Social media regulation and free speech

The Supreme Court will determine whether state laws restricting how social media companies moderate content violate the First Amendment.

The measures from Florida and Texas seek to place limits on how the private companies can manage user accounts and feeds on their platforms. Both were passed amid conservative concerns that Facebook and X, formerly known as Twitter, were censoring viewpoints on their site based on politics.

In another case, Murthy v. Missouri, the justices will decide if the Biden administration went too far in communicating with social media companies about misinformation on their sites about COVID-19 and the 2020 election.

Republican-led states argued the government’s conduct amounted to illegally coercion, while the administration argued their contact with the companies was aimed at protecting national security and public health.

The justices appeared likely to reject the states’ challenge and side with the Biden administration when it heard arguments in March.

Ahead of debate, Trump escalates calls for Biden drug tests, accusations of CNN bias

June 25, 2024 by WDNY Radio

(WASHINGTON) — With only days to go until he faces off against President Joe Biden in Thursday’s CNN debate, former President Donald Trump is escalating his demands that Biden take a pre-debate drug test, something the Biden campaign rejected as “desperate.”

That’s in addition to a growing list of complaints Trump and his campaign are making about CNN, accusing the network and its moderators of being biased.

“DRUG TEST FOR CROOKED JOE BIDEN??? I WOULD, ALSO, IMMEDIATELY AGREE TO ONE!!!” Trump wrote on his social media platform Monday afternoon and later fundraising off his call.

Trump has called for Biden to be drug-tested as early as April, saying he would debate Biden “anytime” and “anywhere” if the president takes a drug test. He has escalated such attacks since he and Biden agreed to debate in May, citing Biden’s strong showing in his State of the Union address in March.

At his recent rally in Philadelphia on Saturday, Trump continued to push the baseless claim that if Biden did well on Thursday night, it would be because he was taking performance-enhancing drugs.

“So, a little before debate time, he gets a shot in the ass — they want to strengthen him up so he comes out, he’ll come out, okay, I say he’ll come out all jacked up, right? All jacked up,” Trump told the crowd.

The Biden campaign quickly dismissed Trump’s demand, saying he would not submit to a drug test.

“Donald Trump is so scared of being held accountable for his toxic agenda of attacking reproductive freedom and cutting Social Security that he and his allies are resorting to desperate, obviously false lies,” a Biden campaign spokesman said.

“Trump’s going to talk trash like that all the time because that’s what he does. The other day you may remember he was trying to question our president’s mental acuity and he could not remember the name of his own doctor so tell President Trump, bring whatever he’s got — President Biden will be standing there, ready for him,” Biden campaign adviser Mitch Landrieu said on CNN. (Trump had referred to his White House physician Ronny Jackson as Ronny Johnson at a campaign rally.)

Calling for drug tests has been a tactic Trump has used repeatedly for years. He previously called on Biden to take a drug test before their 2020 debates, suggesting without evidence that Biden must have been on “performance-enhancing drugs” during that year’s Democratic primary. In 2016, Trump made similar unsubstantiated claims about Hillary Clinton.

At the same time, Trump and his campaign also are continuing to level accusations that CNN will favor President Biden on Thursday, a charge fueled by Trump’s national press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, during an appearance on CNN that was cut short Monday.

On “CNN This Morning,” anchor Kasie Hunt attempted to get Leavitt to answer questions about the Trump campaign’s debate preparations and expectations.

Leavitt, instead, tried to attack CNN and debate moderator Jake Tapper.

She was quickly cut off twice by Hunt who said she wouldn’t give Leavitt a platform to criticize her colleagues. After Leavitt continued her attacks against the CNN debate moderators, she was dropped from the segment.

“You come on my show, you respect my colleagues. Period. I don’t care what side of the aisle you stand on, as my track record clearly shows,” Hunt posted on X after the show wrapped.

“You cut off my microphone for bringing up the debate moderator’s history of anti-Trump lies,” Leavitt responded on X. “This proved our point that President Trump will not be treated fairly on Thursday. Yet he is still willing to go into this 3-1 fight to bring his winning message to the American people, and he will win.”

In a statement to ABC News, a CNN spokesperson called Jake Tapper and Dana Bash “well respected veteran journalists” with extensive experience moderating major political debates.

“There are no two people better equipped to co-moderate a substantial and fact-based discussion and we look forward to the debate on June 27 in Atlanta.”

On the campaign trail, Trump also has complained about the debate being hosted by CNN as well as about the rules he and his campaign agreed to, including not having an audience and the mics being muted when it’s not the candidate’s turn speaking.

“You know, I agreed to the debates. They came up to me and they said, ‘We’re going to do a debate. We’d like to challenge you to a debate.’ But they didn’t want me to accept. So, they gave me something that I couldn’t accept,” said Trump at a rally in Racine, Wisconsin, last week.

“They thought I would say, no, I don’t want to do because CNN is so, you know, it’s fake news. But I think maybe they’ll be honest,” Trump said. “I think fake Tapper would really help himself if it were honest. But you’ll see immediately if it is or not.”

Trump green card comments could signal some moderation on immigration

June 25, 2024 by WDNY Radio

(WASHINGTON) — Former President Donald Trump — who has made opposition to immigration a defining message of the GOP — last week pitched what would be one of the most significant expansions of U.S. immigration in decades.

Whether or not they become a major part of his messaging, Trump’s recent comments offer a glimpse of what appeared to be a more moderate approach to talking about immigration ahead of a hotly-contested presidential election where immigration will be a top issue — and a high-stakes first debate this Thursday.