(CARMEL, Ind.) — In an exclusive interview with ABC News’ “World News Tonight” anchor David Muir, former Vice President Mike Pence was pressed on his rhetoric in the days leading up to the riot at the United States Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
“When I first heard about it in early December, that there might be a rally in Washington,” Pence told Muir, “I thought it might be useful to just call attention to the legal process that would take place on the floor of the House and Senate, where members, under the Electoral Count Act, would have the opportunity to evaluate allegations of voting irregularities, evaluate any evidence that would be presented, and ultimately resolve those issues in the peaceful transfer of power.”
Muir asked Pence about some of his words to supporters leading up to the rally: “But you knew the temperature was rising in the country. You knew what the former president was saying about widespread fraud and these theories being put forth by Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell and the president himself. And you actually thought a rally on the morning of Jan. 6 was a good idea?”
Pence, who is releasing the memoir So Help Me God on Tuesday, responded: “Well, when I first heard about it in December, as I wrote in my book, it occurred to me that it might be useful, to simply have supporters in town to call attention to the legal process.”
“In hindsight,” Muir asked, “do you think that that was a good idea?”
“In hindsight, it was not a good idea,” Pence replied.
“There was an expectation created that I could do something to change the outcome of the election,” he continued. “In fact, as we drove up to the Capitol, I was sitting next to my daughter in the motorcade, and I looked out across the east front of the Capitol and people were cheering our motorcade, David, and in a peaceful gathering.”
“And my heart sank,” he added. “I just looked at my daughter and said that my heart went out to those people because they’d been told that I could do something to change the outcome of an election that we’d lost. And I looked at my daughter and just said: ‘God bless them all.'”
Muir asked Pence on whether his own words at a Georgia rally two days before the Capitol riot could have given incentives to the crowd: “In looking back to that moment, do you have any regrets about your own rhetoric? Just two days before Jan. 6, you were in Georgia and you said: ‘We all have our doubts about the election. Come this Wednesday, we’ll have our day in Congress. We’ll hear the evidence.’ Were you feeding the false hope?”
“No,” Pence responded, “not in the least.”
Muir pressed: “But do you regret the rhetoric when you look out the window and you see people? And you wrote in your book: ‘These people had been told that the outcome of the election could be changed.’ You knew the rhetoric that was out there. Were you feeding into it by saying this just two days before the election: ‘We’ll see the evidence. Wednesday will be our day.’?”
“No, David,” Pence replied, “not in the least.”
Muir pressed Pence on what was “the evidence” he was referring to at that rally.
“You write in the book about the attorney general, Bill Barr, Dec. 1, saying: ‘There was no widespread fraud that would’ve overturned this election.’ You write it in the book that you are aware that he said that. You agreed with him. You write about the 60 cases that did not go your way. Why are we still saying two days before Jan. 6 to America and to your supporters: ‘We’ll have our day’? In looking back, was there an opportunity there for you to take down the temperature?”
“Well, David, hindsight is always 20-20,” Pence responded. “But I never imagined the violence that would ensue on Jan. 6.”
Pence was overseeing Congress’ certification of the 2020 Electoral College results on Jan. 6, 2021, when a large crowd urged on by then-President Donald Trump marched to the United States Capitol, overran security and vandalized the building, sending Pence and congressional lawmakers into lockdown.
Trump, who has insisted he did nothing wrong, ultimately told the rioters to leave but only after berating Pence for not blocking the certification — which Pence noted he couldn’t legally do — and repeating baseless conspiracy theories about widespread fraud in the 2020 election.
During the exclusive interview at the former vice president’s home in Indiana, Muir pressed Pence further on the Capitol riot, whether Trump should ever be in the White House again, if Pence will run for president, whether Trump hurt Republicans in the midterms and what Pence makes of authorities saying classified documents were taken from the White House.
ABC News’ Tal Axelrod, Adam Carlson and Esther Castillejo contributed to this report.
(WASHINGTON) — Former President Donald Trump is expected to announce Tuesday night that he is running for president in 2024, marking his third bid for the White House.
Speaking at a rally in Ohio last week, Trump told supporters, “I’m going to be making a very big announcement on Tuesday, November 15, at Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Florida.”
The announcement, which Trump has been hinting at for months, would come as the embattled former president faces multiple criminal and civil investigations and as his party is grappling with a worse-than-expected showing in the midterm elections, raising questions about the former president’s power over the GOP.
Trump, who lost his reelection bid in 2020 but did not concede and has continued to spread false claims that the 2020 election was “rigged” and “stolen,” repeatedly teased another run for the White House throughout the last year and told a rally crowd last week to expect a “big announcement.”
The third presidential run for Trump, who transformed himself from a real estate mogul into a reality TV star before becoming the self-described “MAGA king,” would come at an unprecedented point in American history that would see a former one-term president who never conceded his election loss enter a bid to regain power as the frontrunner for his party’s nomination.
Trump’s election falsehoods culminated on Jan. 6, 2021, in a violent attack on the U.S. Capitol that was carried out by pro-Trump supporters, for which nearly 1,000 people have now been criminally charged. The former president has repeatedly downplayed the riot and has vowed to pardon those charged in the attack if he becomes president again.
Trump is the subject of several federal investigations, including the Jan. 6 probe, the investigation into Trump’s handling of documents recovered at Mar-a-Lago, and an investigation into his fledgling social media company, Truth Social.
Some aides have suggested the former president believes that declaring his candidacy would shield him from the probes — but many legal experts say a run would not result in any special protections for the former president.
In addition, Trump’s namesake family real estate business, The Trump Organization, is currently on trial in New York for tax evasion and fraud — charges that would not be affected if he’s reelected president. The company has denied wrongdoing.
Trump, who was twice impeached during his four years in office but was not convicted either time, maintains a tight grasp on his Republican base. Six in 10 Republicans back the former president as their party’s leader, according to an ABC News/Washington Post poll from earlier this year.
In the lead-up to the 2022 midterms, Trump’s Super PAC poured millions into key races, and the former president wielded his political power by endorsing hand-picked candidates for major congressional seats, including Senate candidates Mehmet Oz in Pennsylvania and Herschel Walker in Georgia. The former president ramped up his already busy rally schedule in the final weeks of the campaign, holding multiple events over the weekend leading into Election Day.
But after at least 30 of Trump’s endorsed candidates, including Oz, lost their races, some have begun to question his ability to continue winning elections for the party.
Trump has already taken aim at some potential presidential primary opponents, including possible 2024 rival Ron DeSantis, who on Tuesday cruised to reelection as governor of Florida. In a statement released last week, Trump attacked DeSantis as an “average” governor, saying that DeSantis was “politically dead” until Trump endorsed him in 2018 and griping over DeSantis’ refusal to say whether he’ll run for president in 2024.
“Well, in terms of loyalty and class, that’s really not the right answer,” Trump said, disparaging the Florida governor as “Ron DeSanctimonious.”
Sources close to Trump say he has soured on DeSantis as the Florida governor’s political star has risen and as some in the party have expressed that they would prefer DeSantis to run for president instead of him.
(WASHINGTON) — The 2022 midterm elections shaped up to be some of the most consequential in the nation’s recent history, with control of Congress at stake.
All 435 seats in the House and 35 of 100 seats in the Senate were on the ballot, as well as several influential gubernatorial elections in battleground states like Arizona, Georgia, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.
Democrats were defending their narrow majorities in both chambers and retained control of the Senate, though control of the House isn’t yet clear. But a Republican flip of the lower chamber would be enough to curtail most of President Joe Biden’s legislative agenda and would likely result in investigations against his administration and even his family.
Here is how the news is developing. All times Eastern:
Nov 15, 3:07 AM EST
Arizona Republican Juan Ciscomani projected to win House seat
Republican Juan Ciscomani will win in his election bid to represent Arizona’s 6th Congressional District, ABC News can report, defeating Democrat Kirsten Engel and flipping a House seat for Republicans from retiring Democratic Rep. Ann Kirkpatrick.
With 99% of the expected vote in, Ciscomani is leading Engel by 3,502 votes, 50.5% to 49.5%.
Ciscomani, a longtime aide to Republican Gov. Doug Ducey, is seen as a rising star in the Republican Party. He ran a focused campaign — without an endorsement from former President Donald Trump — on issues including border security, the economy and “conservative family values.”
Ciscomani tweeted a thread on Monday accepting victory and thanking Ducey for encouraging him to run and for “being a sounding board through this process”
“In the best country in the world where anything is possible, I am now honored to represent my hometown in the U.S. Congress. I am ready to serve, find solutions for our district’s challenges, & be a strong independent voice for our community,” he wrote.
He beats Engel, a former Environmental Protection Agency attorney and Arizona state senator, who served just nine months before resigning to run for the vacant seat. Her campaign focused on abortion rights, making for a competitive race in the district which covers most of Pima County, including most of Tucson and Cochise County.
Nov 15, 12:21 AM EST
GOP Rep. David Schweikert holds House seat, Dems’ long-shot hope of holding majority fades
Incumbent Republican Rep. David Schweikert will win reelection in Arizona, ABC News can report, projected to defeat Democratic challenger Jevin Hodge and hold a House seat for Republicans.
With 99% of the expected vote in, Schweikert is leading Hodge by 3,008 votes, 50.4% to 49.6%.
Hodge had led Schweikert leading into the weekend, but with larger drops in recent days from Republican areas in Maricopa County, Hodge’s odds of overtaking Schweikert faded, along with Democrats’ hopes of keeping the House.
This will be Schweikert’s seventh term in Congress but his first for District 1 after redistricting. Schweikert fought characterizations of corruption after the House reprimanded him last year for 11 ethics rules violations for improper spending by his office and his campaign. He was fined $50,000 as part of a settlement agreement to end the yearslong probe.
Hodge would have become the first Black Arizonan elected to Congress had he won and is seen as a rising star in the Democratic Party.
Nov 14, 9:23 PM EST
Katie Hobbs projected to beat Kari Lake for Arizona governor
Democrat Katie Hobbs is projected to win her race against Republican Kari Lake, ABC News reports, flipping the Arizona governor’s seat for the first time in more than a decade as midterm voters across the nation appear to have delivered a stunning rejection of election deniers and extremists in midterm contests.
Hobbs, the incumbent secretary of state, cast her matchup with Lake as a choice between sanity and “chaos.”
“Do we want to elect a governor whose entire platform boils down to being a sore loser — or a governor who’s going to get the job done for Arizona?” Hobbs said on the campaign trail, calling Lake her “election-denying, media-hating, conspiracy-loving, chaos-causing opponent.”
Hobbs served eight years in the Arizona Legislature before being elected secretary of state and gaining prominence in 2020 with her defense of Arizona’s voting system against a barrage of baseless fraud accusations that then-President Donald Trump and his allies thrust in the national spotlight.
Nov 14, 6:55 PM EST
McDaniel says she’ll run for another term leading RNC: Source
Republican National Committee (RNC) Chair Ronna McDaniel indicated Monday that she’ll run for another term atop the GOP.
A source familiar with the matter confirmed to ABC News that McDaniel signaled her reelection bid on a call with members Monday morning, during which she said she would run if party members wanted her to and that she plans to move forward seeking reelection.
Her bid for the chairmanship, which will be decided in January, comes after disappointing midterm election results for the party.
McDaniel has served three terms atop the RNC and was first elected in 2017 with an endorsement from former President Donald Trump.
Should she win reelection, McDaniel would serve as party chair during the 2024 presidential election, which by party bylaws would force her to remain neutral during the race even if Trump, the de facto party leader, runs for a third time.
Nov 13, 9:47 PM EST
Hobbs’ campaign manager calls her ‘the unequivocal favorite’
Katie Hobbs’ campaign manager, Nicole DeMont, made the following statement after tonight’s vote drop from Maricopa County appeared to fall short of Republican Kari Lake’s hopes, not quite declaring victory for Hobbs but saying it’s going that way.
“With the latest tabulation results from Maricopa, Pinal and Pima counties, Katie Hobbs is the unequivocal favorite to become the next governor of Arizona,” she said. “Katie has led since the first round of ballots were counted, and after tonight’s results, it’s clear that this won’t change.”
Hobbs, a Democrat, is leading Lake by about 26,011 votes in the yet-to-be-called race, according to unofficial county tallies so far. There are about 160,000 ballots left statewide.
Maricopa County dropped approximately 97,000 more ballots Sunday night, and Lake netted about 9,000 votes there. Just ahead of Maricopa, Pima County released another 12,000 votes, where Hobbs netted more votes. Pinal County also dropped 3,000 votes, giving Lake a slight boost.
-ABC News’ Libby Cathey
Nov 13, 6:24 PM EST
Election-denying candidate Doug Mastriano fully concedes in Pennsylvania race
Doug Mastriano, the election-denying candidate for Pennsylvania governor, officially conceded Sunday night to Democrat Josh Shapiro, the state attorney general, capping a week in which the state senator was silent about his defeat but never seemed poised to challenge the results, despite previously casting doubt on the integrity of the election.
“Difficult to accept as the results are, there is no right course but to concede, which I do, and I look to the challenges ahead,” Mastriano wrote in a statement. “Josh Shapiro will be our next governor, and I ask everyone to give him the opportunity to lead and pray that he leads well.”
Mastriano, one of the proponents of baseless claims of 2020 election fraud, suggested multiple times in the weeks prior to Election Day that he questioned the methods by which votes were counted this year.
In his concession statement, he argued that “Pennsylvania is in great need of election reform.”
-ABC News’ Will McDuffie and Oren Oppenheim
Nov 13, 1:42 PM EST
Cortez Masto celebrates Nevada Senate win: ‘I will always fight’
Nevada Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto took center stage on Sunday at the Carpenters International Training Center in Las Vegas to celebrate her victory in last week’s election, which ensured Democrats will retain control of Congress.
“Thank you, Nevada. Thank you. I am so grateful to every volunteer who knocked on doors, who made phone calls, who wrote postcards and letters and who had the courage to publicly stand up and fight for our state,” she said.
“To all Nevadans, whether you voted for me or not, I will always fight for you always,” she said.
Cortez Masto said her narrow win over Republican Adam Laxalt, a former state attorney general and son and grandson of former senators, was not just about her but the people of the state, working-class families and the Latinos who have continued to support her throughout her time as senator.
“Like all of you, I’ve never forgotten where I come from and where my family came from … I will continue to fight for our Latino community,” she said.
More broadly, she said, “I cannot thank you enough for all of the time, commitment, effort — everything that you put into this election. Now we celebrate, and let’s continue the work.”
Laxalt has yet to speak or concede. He had acknowledged on social media that as vote-counting continued, Cortez Masto was narrowing the gap between them and could win.
-ABC News’ Abby Cruz
Nov 13, 1:26 PM EST
House progressives speak out after midterm results
Washington Democratic Rep. Pramila Jayapal told reporters on Sunday that in the wake of her party’s surprising midterm performance, in which they bucked history to limit their losses in the House, next year’s Congress will see the “most progressive Democratic caucus in decades.”
Jayapal, chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus (CPC), said at a news conference with newly elected lawmakers that her group will have 100-plus members come January.
She said that, despite the pattern of past cycles and the Biden White House’s unpopularity, there was “no red wave” and a majority of the CPC-endorsed candidates won their races so far.
Jayapal wouldn’t say if she’ll support Speaker Nancy Pelosi if the California lawmaker runs again for leadership — or if she herself will run for House leadership.
For the lame-duck session before the next Congress starts in January, Jayapal said her group’s goals include raising the debt limit and reviving the child tax credit. She said CPC is holding an executive board meeting soon to lay out a plan.
Incoming Florida Rep. Maxwell Frost — who will be the first Gen Z member of Congress — said at the news conference that what young people care about is not “anything different than anyone else.”
“The difference is the lens in which they see those same issues,” he said.
Control of the House remained unprojected as of Sunday as vote-counting continues.
(WASHINGTON) — The House Jan. 6 committee said Monday it was evaluating all of its options after former President Donald Trump sued to block a subpoena from the panel for documents and testimony.
“Former President Trump has failed to comply with the Select Committee’s subpoena requiring him to appear for a deposition today,” the committee chair, Mississippi Rep. Bennie Thompson, and Wyoming Rep. Liz Cheney, the vice chair, said in a statement.
“Even though the former President initially suggested that he would testify before the committee, he has since filed a lawsuit asking the courts to protect him from giving testimony,” Thompson and Cheney said.
They said that Trump’s “attorneys have made no attempt to negotiate an appearance of any sort, and his lawsuit parades out many of the same arguments that courts have rejected repeatedly over the last year. The truth is that Donald Trump, like several of his closest allies, is hiding from the Select Committee’s investigation and refusing to do what more than a thousand other witnesses have done.”
Trump’s attorneys have described a different situation.
In their lawsuit, his lawyers argued that he retained immunity as a former president and that while other presidents and former presidents have voluntarily agreed to testify before Congress, his legal team claimed that no president has been compelled to do so.
They described the committee subpoena as “invalid” because they said it did not further a legislative purpose and claimed it was overly broad and infringed on his First Amendment rights.
Thompson told reporters Monday night that Trump’s lawsuit “kinda puts everything on hold right now” and said the committee will “take a position at some point.”
Thompson didn’t rule out a vote to hold Trump in contempt but said the panel first needed to determine how it plans to respond to the lawsuit.
“I’m saying the first thing we do is see how we address the lawsuit and at some point after that, we’ll address the path forward,” he said.
Committee member Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., told ABC News that “our three general avenues for potential response are referral for criminal contempt, an effort to get a court to compel participation through a civil contempt proceeding and then exercising inherent powers of contempt of Congress, which we haven’t done yet.”
“Beyond that, we can use the general social-shaming mechanisms of American political culture to raise the point that everybody should be complying with the law, including former presidents of the United States,” Raskin said.
The Jan. 6 committee had extended the deadline for Trump to comply with their documents request by one week. The initial deadline was Nov. 4.
The committee also asked Trump to appear for a deposition on Monday.
As ABC News previously reported, this move was expected by Trump’s team to attempt to run out the clock on the subpoena before Republicans potentially retook the House following the 2022 midterm elections.
With some midterm results still outstanding, ABC News estimates that the GOP could gain the majority in the chamber in January, though control has not been projected.
(PHOENIX) — Democrat Katie Hobbs is projected to win her race against Republican Kari Lake, ABC News reports, flipping the Arizona governor’s seat for the first time in more than a decade as voters across the nation appear to have delivered a stunning rejection of election deniers and extremists in midterm contests.
After her projected victory, Hobbs said in a statement, in part: “I want to thank the voters for entrusting me with this immense responsibility. It is truly an honor of a lifetime, and I will do everything in my power to make you proud. I want to thank my family, our volunteers, and campaign staff. Without all of your hard work, passion, and sacrifice this night would not be possible. Thank you from the bottom of my heart.”
“For the Arizonans who did not vote for me, I will work just as hard for you – because even in this moment of division, I believe there is so much more that connects us,” she said, adding, “Let’s get to work.”
Hobbs, the incumbent secretary of state, cast her matchup with Lake as a choice between sanity and “chaos.”
“Do we want to elect a governor whose entire platform boils down to being a sore loser — or a governor who’s going to get the job done for Arizona?” Hobbs said on the campaign trail, calling Lake her “election-denying, media-hating, conspiracy-loving, chaos-causing opponent.”
Hobbs served eight years in the Arizona Legislature before being elected secretary of state and gaining prominence in 2020 with her defense of Arizona’s voting system against a barrage of baseless fraud accusations that then-President Donald Trump and his allies thrust in the national spotlight. This heightened profile helped her sail through the Democratic primary, but polling had shown her statistically tied with — if not behind — Lake leading up to the election.
“It’s called ‘battleground’ for a reason,” Hobbs would say of their race.
Lake, among Trump’s favorite endorsees, left her job as a local TV news anchor last year, citing discontent with the media, and months later announced a bid for governor, saying God and Arizona voters called on her to run. Lake pitched herself as “ultra MAGA” and a “mama bear” fighting for the “Arizona First” movement, and she said her first act as governor would be to declare an invasion at the southern border.
“I welcome the attacks, and I welcome every bit of it with ultimate gladness,” Lake said on the heels of her primary win. “Because this fight before us proves to us that God is with us. He has chosen me, and he has chosen you.”
Lake embraced Trump’s attacks on the election he lost. On the stump, she often called President Joe Biden “illegitimate” and said she would not have fulfilled her legal duty to certify his win in 2020. If elected governor, she said she would sign legislation to eliminate electronic counting machines and move to “one-day voting” in the state where voting by mail is a popular option.
“When people tell me what’s the top issue in Arizona, I say, ‘OK, border’s big, the economy’s big, inflation is a problem, our election integrity’ — but what’s really going to get us to the polls, us mama bears and papa bears, is what they’re trying to do to our kids,” Lake said on election eve, leaning into social issues and attacks on “gender confusion.”
Given her embrace of election denialism, Lake is not widely seen as a candidate who will accept her defeat after all the votes are counted.
“We’re gonna win — and when we win, it’s going to be come to Jesus for elections in Arizona,” Lake said while voting in downtown Phoenix last Tuesday. “There’s going to be a come to Jesus.”
Asked last month if she would concede her race if she lost, Lake told ABC News Chief Washington Correspondent Jonathan Karl that she would — “if we have a fair, honest and transparent election.”
During the campaign, Lake repeatedly called on Hobbs to recuse herself as secretary of state, insisted she was “not losing to Katie Hobbs” and recently hired Republican National Committee attorney Harmeet Dhillon as her team continues to weigh legal challenges to the vote.
Lake had also suggested foul play in the primary election before she won. “We outvoted the fraud,” she declared at the time.
Hobbs is the third statewide Democrat whom ABC has projected will win their midterm race this year, after Sen. Mark Kelly and Adrian Fontes, who will succeed Hobbs as secretary of state. While the Republican ticket more often than not campaigned together, the Democrats regularly appeared separately, despite a coordinated campaign under Mission for Arizona, raising questions about unity on the ticket.
Hobbs faced criticism from pundits and voters alike for refusing to debate Lake, with Lake calling her a “coward,” but she maintained she wouldn’t engage with Lake and “make Arizona the subject of national ridicule.”
Laurie Roberts, a columnist for The Arizona Republic, called Hobbs’ refusal to debate Lake “a new level of political malpractice.”
“This is two candidates, each asking to govern a state of more than seven million people for the next four years. Voters have a right to see them, side by side,” Roberts wrote. But that opportunity never materialized.
Lake also highlighted accusations of racism and sexism against Hobbs, citing a winning lawsuit filed by Talonya Adams, a former staffer in Hobbs’ state Senate office who was fired. Hobbs said last year, about Adams, “I can say with certainty on my part, my decision in the termination was not based on race or gender. There were other factors.”
‘Not a Trump state’
Hobbs chose to run a largely low-key campaign when compared to Lake’s rallies and moderated Q&A events, which turned out hundreds. Like Trump, Lake also embraced — and often sparred with — the press.
Republicans flocked to Arizona to fuel the enthusiasm for Lake, including Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin, South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem and Steve Bannon.
But Trump also drew massive crowds in the Grand Canyon State — and, notably, lost in 2020 to Biden by more than 10,000 votes.
And there were prominent names that campaigned against Lake. Outgoing Rep. Liz Cheney invested in TV ads in Arizona, clipping Cheney saying during a Q&A at the McCain Institute at Arizona State University, “I don’t know that I have ever voted for a Democrat — but if I lived in Arizona now, I absolutely would. And for governor and for secretary of state.”
Former President Barack Obama weighed in too, saying that being governor “is about more than snappy lines and good lighting.”
“Katie, she may not be flashy,” Obama said at a rally with Democrats earlier this month in Phoenix. “She could have been. She just chooses not to be, because she’s serious about her work.”
Barrett Marson, a GOP strategist in Arizona, tweeted Friday after Kelly defeated Republican Blake Masters, “Arizona is a conservative state but not a Trump state. And voters keep telling us that.”
Marson predicted Hobbs would win in a state where a third of registered voters are independents because moderate GOP and right-leaning independents “couldn’t stomach” Lake, he said. “And of course, they listened to Lake who proudly said she was driving a stake in the heart of McCain republicans. Looks like the foot’s on the other shoe.”
Lake narrowly won her primary against real estate developer Karrin Taylor Robson, seen as the more establishment candidate endorsed by former Vice President Mike Pence and outgoing Republican Gov. Doug Ducey.
Ducey had said that Lake was “putting on an act,” calling her “Fake Lake,” but he ultimately supported her bid after her primary win.
Lake made border security her top issue, alongside election integrity. She repeated lines from Trump’s winning 2016 presidential race, calling migrants who come across the border “known terrorists … murderers and rapists” while often tying herself to his thinking. “I know President Trump said that many, many years ago. That’s a fact,” she said at a “Faith and Family” festival.
While she struggled to articulate her own plan for the border, Hobbs blamed inaction from both parties in Washington and warned that Lake’s plan at the southern border would “bring untold levels of chaos into our state.” The top issues on her stump included public education, water management and housing affordability.
Hobbs ran TV ads promising to establish a state-level child tax credit and to cut the sales tax on feminine hygiene products, diapers, baby formula and over-the-counter medicines.
Her campaign picked up momentum in September, when a pre-statehood, near-total ban on abortion took effect in the wake of the Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade. Hobbs and state attorney general candidate Kris Mayes hit the trail together to say they would not enforce any bans on abortion in Arizona, unlike their opponents.
Asked by ABC News last month if she would support legislation that protected abortion until viability, following the guidelines of Roe, Hobbs said she didn’t want to “talk about hypotheticals.”
“The reality is right now that Arizonans are living under an extreme ban at 15 weeks or the possibility of an entire ban, and we need to focus on making sure that Arizonans have access to safe legal abortion,” she said. “And that’s what I’ll do.”
Lake was rumored to be a potential 2024 vice-presidential pick if Trump were to win the Republican nomination, but it’s unclear what her political future holds with her projected loss in the governor’s race.
Because Arizona is one of five states without a governor’s mansion, Hobbs will likely continue to reside in the greater Phoenix area, with her husband, Pat, two children and their dog, Harley.
(WASHINGTON) — The White House will return for another round of the fight for COVID-19 funding.
After multiple failed attempts this past winter and spring to secure more money to address the pandemic, the White House plans on requesting $10 billion during the lame-duck session of Congress before newly elected lawmakers begin in January, sources familiar with the discussions confirmed to ABC News.
It could potentially be one of the last chances for Democrats to receive additional COVID funding if there is a divided government next year, but it also comes at one of the lowest points of public concern over the entire pandemic. In a recent poll from Quinnipiac University that asked voters about the most urgent issues ahead of the midterms, only 1% said the pandemic.
The Washington Post first reported the impending request.
People familiar with the budget discussions told ABC News that that $10 billion request would go toward the “research and development of next-generation vaccines and therapeutics” — which has been a major priority for the administration — as well as research into long COVID and global efforts to combat the virus.
There would also be some money set aside for combating other infectious diseases, these people said.
“While COVID-19 is no longer the disruptive force it once was, we face new subvariants in the U.S. and around the world that have the potential to cause a surge of infections, hospitalizations, and deaths—particularly as we head into the winter months, a time when viruses like COVID spread more quickly,” one person familiar with the discussions said in a statement.
“That means an urgent need for additional COVID-19 funding remains to help us stay on our front foot against an unpredictable virus with the tools we know work to protect the American people against COVID-19,” the source continued.
The push for more COVID funding first began in March, when the White House requested $22.5 billion from Congress and said it was running out of money to buy tests, treatments and vaccines.
But Republicans stonewalled the effort, skeptical of how Democrats had spent the billions in COVID aid that had already been allotted. Texas Sen. John Cornyn and others linked such efforts to high inflation.
“The problem is they want to keep spending more money and throw more gasoline on the inflation fire,” he said in September. “I think that’s a bad idea.”
Some in the GOP also pointed to Biden’s remark in a TV interview that the pandemic was “over.”
“The president saying the pandemic is over is … just kind of mind-boggling,” Louisiana Sen. Bill Cassidy, who previously worked as a doctor, said in September. “He wants tens of billions for COVID and he says the pandemic is over?”
Republican Sens. Mitt Romney and Richard Burr, some of the only conservative allies in Congress on the COVID funding cause, worked on a deal that would’ve given the administration $10 billion by pulling from other programs, but that eventually fell apart. In June, the White House took matters into its own hands and moved $10 billion of already-allocated money away from certain COVID efforts so that the government could purchase new bivalent boosters — the latest shots, which target the BA.4/5 subvariants — and Paxlovid, an oral treatment that significantly reduces hospitalization and death.This $10 billion, if granted, wouldn’t necessarily be a replacement of those lost funds.
Instead, the White House would aim to fund new research and treatments that could keep the country ahead of the virus even as it mutates and changes.
(CARMEL, Ind.) — Former Vice President Mike Pence said in an exclusive interview with ABC’s World News Tonight anchor David Muir that while he was working to connect with military and law enforcement officials during the Jan. 6 riot, he couldn’t speak to then-President Donald Trump’s apparent inaction.
“Over the course of several hours, you spoke with the acting defense secretary. You spoke with the joint chiefs of staff, Gen. [Mark] Milley. You spoke the acting attorney general, Jeff Rosen, with the chief of Capitol police. Where was the president in all this?” Muir asked the former vice president.
“David, I was at the Capitol. I wasn’t at the White House,” Pence told Muir. “I can’t account for what the president was doing that day. I was at a loading dock in the Capitol where a riot was taking place.”
Muir pressed Pence on reports that Trump was watching the riot unfold on television at the White House.
“But why wasn’t he making these calls?” Muir pressed.
Pence responded: “That’d be a good question for him.”
In an exclusive interview at the former vice president’s home in Indiana, Muir also pressed Pence on whether Trump should ever be in the White House again, whether Pence will run for president, whether Trump hurt Republicans in the midterms, and what Pence makes of authorities saying classified documents were taken from the White House.
Pence was overseeing Congress’ certification of the 2020 Electoral College results on Jan. 6, 2021, when a large crowd urged on by Trump marched to the Capitol and then overran security and vandalized the building, sending Pence and congressional lawmakers into lockdown.
Trump, who has insisted he did nothing wrong, ultimately told the rioters to leave but only after berating Pence for not blocking the certification — which Pence noted he couldn’t legally do — and repeating baseless conspiracy theories about widespread fraud in the 2020 election.
(WASHINGTON) — Newly reelected New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu on Sunday described the outcome of the midterm elections, with a stronger-than-anticipated performance by Democrats, as a “rejection of extremism.”
“I think the Democrats did a very good job of defining a lot of these candidates before they even had a chance to introduce themselves and then, obviously, you have all this other national stuff happening that I think scared a lot of folks, this extremism that’s out there,” Sununu, a Republican, told ABC “This Week” anchor George Stephanopoulos in an exclusive interview.
Sununu easily defeated Democratic state Sen. Tom Sherman on Tuesday, becoming only the second governor in New Hampshire history to win a fourth term. By contrast, the state’s Republican Senate nominee, Donald Trump-backed Don Bolduc, lost by a 10-point margin to Democratic incumbent Maggie Hassan.
“How do you explain that?” Stephanopoulos asked.
“Candidate quality matters. You know, there’s a chance of extremism that I think a lot of Republicans were painted with, rightfully or not,” Sununu said. He also said he had no regrets about choosing not to run against Hassan himself: “Look, with all due respect, the Senate’s the B-team compared to being a governor.”
He criticized the unpopularity of some “policies out of D.C.,” like on inflation, but said that voters had other priorities with their ballots.
“What I think people said was, ‘Look, we can work on these policies later, but as Americans, we got to fix extremism right now,'” he said.
“By extremism, do you mean the politics espoused by Donald Trump?” Stephanopoulos asked.
Sununu responded: “I think there’s an extreme left and an extreme right. In this sense, I think a lot of folks are saying, ‘Look, it’s not about payback, it’s about solving problems,’ right?”
A national abortion ban proposed by Republican South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham and the attack on House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband had underlined the public’s concerns, he said.
“They [voters] said, ‘Look, enough of this. We have to start putting in folks that are definitely going to come together and work across the aisle,'” he said.
“America has been asking for more moderation for quite some time,” Sununu said. “There’s just, you know, certain parts of the Republican Party that haven’t listened so well. We’ve just got to get back to basics. It’s not unfixable.”
Stephanopoulos noted that prominent election deniers running in key elections across the country lost their races. He asked Sununu if the party needed to move past that messaging “once and for all.”
“We should have been moving on from that stuff immediately,” said Sununu, who was quick to break with others in his party by affirming Joe Biden’s election win in November 2020.
Questioning elections “taps into an extreme base and a fire that’s there with some folks, but at the end of the day, you can’t govern if you don’t win,” he said, adding that some losing candidates “went way too far right in some of their primaries” and “let the other side define them.”
Sununu has said Trump should not announce another presidential bid before Christmas, a view he echoed on “This Week” when Stephanopoulos asked if he thought Trump’s impending announcement of a 2024 comeback was a good idea.
Sources have told ABC News Trump could launch his campaign as early as this week. The former president teased last week that he’d be making a “very big” announcement on Tuesday at Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Florida.
“I think it’s a terrible idea for him,” Sununu said, citing a desire that many people have to move away from politics during the holiday season. “So now’s just a horrible time for big political statements. ‘Save that for early 2023’ would be my message.”
“But can you see any circumstance by which you would support Donald Trump in 2024?” Stephanopoulos asked.
“Not really, because I think there’s going to be a lot of great candidates out there,” Sununu said.
When Stephanopoulos raised the prospect of Sununu running for president himself, given how prominent New Hampshire is in the primary process, the governor said that he’s focused on his current job.
“A lot of folks are talking about that,” he said, “but look, I’ve got a state to run.”
(WASHINGTON) — Speaker Nancy Pelosi demurred on Sunday during an appearance on ABC’s “This Week” about whether she intends to run for her position again if Democrats hang onto the House.
Pelosi’s comments to anchor George Stephanopoulos come after a stronger-than-anticipated performance by Democrats in the midterms in which they bucked historical trends to keep the Senate and still have a path to narrowly keep the House as vote counting continues.
“Right now I’m not making any comments until this election is finished, and we have a little more time to go,” she said of her future role in House leadership. “I wish it [the counting] was faster.”As of Sunday, ABC News estimates that Democrats will win 206 seats in the House to 211 for the Republicans. Eighteen seats have not been projected. Democrats would need to win 12 for the majority.
In 2018, in order to win the necessary votes to become speaker for a second time, Pelosi said she would limit her speakership for two terms, with her second term finishing this January. She has not said recently whether she will abide by that pledge.
Looking forward to 2024, Stephanopoulos asked Pelosi, “Do you think President [Joe] Biden should run again?”
“Yes, I do. … He has accomplished so much: over 10 million jobs under his leadership, working with the private sector, of course. He has just done so many things that are so great,” she said, adding: “He put money in people’s pockets, vaccines in their arms, children back to school, people back to work.”
Heading into Election Day, race experts at FiveThirtyEight and elsewhere had predicted Democrats could be running into a “red wave” that would deliver a yawning majority for Republicans, given how past midterm cycles had gone and voters’ sour feelings about the Biden White House and inflation.
Instead, Democrats in the House and Senate both defended incumbents in tight races and flipped seats held by Republicans, though the GOP could still win a razor-thin majority in the next Congress.
Democrats’ over-performance, Pelosi said on “This Week,” was fueled by ignoring the conventional wisdom and running on a playbook centered around protection of abortion access and democracy while emphasizing a kitchen-table focus on lowering prices.
“We never accepted when the pundits in Washington said we couldn’t win because history, history, history. Elections are about the future,” she said.
“I’m very proud of our candidates. … They had courage, they had purpose and they understood their district,” she continued.
Still, Pelosi said she was “disappointed” about the election results in New York, where Republicans flipped four House seats after an aggressive Democratic gerrymander was tossed in court.The GOP’s wins in New York are now key to whether they retake the lower chamber in Congress. Stephanopoulos asked Pelosi how she sees Republican leader Kevin McCarthy governing his caucus, as speaker, if he holds a small majority.
Pelosi noted that Democrats currently maintain a similar margin and have been successful in passing legislation.
“It depends on their purpose. In our House, we had those kinds of numbers. But we were united,” she said.
She said that it would be “very important” during the lame-duck session of Congress, before the new class of lawmakers is sworn in in January, to extend the country’s debt limit to avoid financial face-offs, as under President Barack Obama, when Republican lawmakers sought cuts to federal spending in order to increase the limit.
“Madam Speaker, if you do decide to step away from Congress, how do you want your speakerships to be remembered?” Stephanopoulos asked.
“Well, I don’t have any plans to step away from Congress. You asked me about running for leadership,” Pelosi said.
As for her legacy, she pointed to the passage of the Affordable Care Act: “When we had the opportunity to expand health care for all Americans, that has to be my major accomplishment. I take great pride in that.”
Meanwhile, as former President Donald Trump prepares for a comeback bid, Pelosi said his candidacy would be “bad news for the country.”
“This is a person who has undermined the integrity of our elections, has not honored his oath of office, who has encouraged people, strange kinds of people, to run for office who do not share the values of our democracy,” she said. “So he’s not been a force for good.”
(DENPASAR, Indonesia) — President Joe Biden often describes his relationship with China’s President Xi Jinping in terms of miles — the thousands he says they traveled together when they were vice presidents.
But despite their personal history, the two have never met in person in their current roles. That will change Monday when they come together for a highly anticipated summit in Indonesia.
As they meet on the sidelines of the annual gathering of the Group of 20 leaders, this year held on the island of Bali, each man will have the wind at his back: Biden following Democrats’ surprising performance in the midterm elections, and Xi after securing a third term in office with the approval of the country’s Communist Party.
Biden told reporters Sunday that “I know I’m coming in stronger, but I don’t need that.” He cited his long relationship with Xi and noted, too, that Xi’s “circumstance has changed, to state the obvious, at home.”
“I’ve always had straightforward discussions with him,” Biden said during a visit to Phnom Penh, Cambodia. “There’s never any miscalculation about what each of us — where each of us stand. And I think that’s critically important in our relationship.”
The U.S. and China have expressed a desire to effectively manage their ties and tensions, and the White House said this meeting will focus on maintaining communication about areas of contention — and cooperating on areas of mutual interest.
“Having the two presidents actually be able to sit face-to-face, and not face-to-face with a video screen between them, for the first time in President Biden’s presidency — it just takes the conversation to a different level, strategically,” Biden’s top national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, said Friday.
On the agenda: Trade, Ukraine and more
Amid China’s military and economic rise, Biden and Xi are expected to discuss how to “responsibly manage competition, and work together where our interests align, especially on transnational challenges that affect the international community,” according to White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre.
“What I want to do with him, when we talk,” Biden told reporters Wednesday, “is lay out … what each of our red lines are, understand what he believes to be in the critical national interest of China, what I know to be the critical interest of the United States and determine whether or not they conflict with one another. And if they do, how do we resolve it and how to work it out.”
Economic competition is a key component of that. China has taken issue with American tariffs on Chinese goods, while the U.S. accuses Beijing of engaging in unfair trade practices.
Sullivan told reporters on Air Force One, while en route to Bali, that the president intends “to make clear in the meeting [with Xi] that the United States is prepared for stiff competition with China but does not seek conflict, does not seek confrontation, wants to make sure that we manage that competition responsibly.”
Sullivan said that their meeting could last multiple hours.
The leaders will also discuss Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, according to the White House.
Xi has spent years building a bond with Russian President Vladimir Putin and Beijing has largely toed Moscow’s line on the war — while declining both to provide military assistance to Putin’s forces or to join widespread sanctions on his country.
But there have been some recent cracks in China’s position. Xi did recently state, publicly, that he was opposed to threatening the use of nuclear weapons.
That apparent disapproval of Putin’s saber-rattling drew praise from Sullivan, who on Thursday called the comment “constructive.”
Lingering distrust, but a desire to talk
Despite lingering distrust and a resentment of the U.S. government since the Trump administration initiated a trade war on China, Xi’s most important bilateral relationship remains with the United States even as issues remain over China’s handling of the COVID-19 pandemic, Hong Kong, Taiwan and human rights in its Xinjiang region.
After House Speaker Nancy Pelosi visited the self-governing island of Taiwan in August, the Chinese retaliated by largely freezing all exchanges with the United States.
Taiwan, which Beijing considers part of China, has been a third rail for Xi, and in the lead-up to China’s crucial Communist Party congress in mid-October, Xi had to demonstrate his resolve to his fellow party members — especially over Taiwan.
But after he secured his third term as leader, cementing his near-absolute authority over the party and the country, a flurry of activity signaled his desire to stabilize, if not mend, his country’s relationship with the U.S.
Within days of the conclusion of the party congress, Xi sent a personal message of reconciliation to an annual dinner held by the National Committee on U.S.-China Relations, a nonprofit group headquartered in New York.
“China stands ready to work with the United States to find the right way to get along with each other in the new era on the basis of mutual respect, peaceful coexistence and win-win cooperation, which will benefit not only the two countries but also the whole world,” Xi said.
He then added that he hoped the attendees of the annual gathering would “play an active role in helping Sino-U.S. relations return to the track of healthy and stable development.”
Chinese diplomats have started to once again engage with their American counterparts, and in the weeks that followed Xi’s message, a flurry of meetings took place — absent the rancor that had permeated the relationship in the preceding months.
China’s ambassador to the U.S., Qin Gang, paid a visit to the official residence of the American ambassador to China, Nicholas Burns. Secretary of State Antony Blinken spoke with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi, who was newly elevated to China’s all-powerful Politburo Standing Committee, and Chinese climate envoy Xie Zhenhua connected with his American counterpart, John Kerry, on the sidelines of the U.N. climate conference known as COP27, in Sharm-el-Sheikh, Egypt.
The Chinese previously suspended talks with the U.S. on climate issues — the countries’ sole area of agreement — to protest Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan.
Low expectations
The White House has warned reporters to expect no major announcements or a joint statement from the countries following the Biden-Xi meeting on Monday.
“It’s about the leaders coming to a better understanding and then tasking their teams to do intensive work,” Sullivan said Friday.
And despite its overtures, Beijing has portrayed the meeting as the United States’ idea.
“The Chinese side takes seriously the U.S. proposal for a meeting between the two presidents in Bali,” a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson, Zhao Lijian, said Thursday. “The teams on both sides are in communication on this.”
Both the U.S. and China are hoping to find enough common ground to keep their relationship from deteriorating beyond repair, especially over Taiwan.
ABC News’ Sarah Kolinovsky contributed to this report.
