Harris says she would appoint a Republican to cabinet if elected
Kamala Harris said that if elected she would appoint a Republican to serve in her cabinet.
In her first major interview since becoming the Democratic nominee, the vice-president told CNN journalist Dana Bash that she had spent her career “inviting diversity of opinion”.
“I think it’s important to have people at the table when some of the most important decisions are being made that have different views, different experiences. And I think it would be to the benefit of the American public to have a member of my Cabinet who was a Republican,” Harris said.
Key events
Michael Sainato
Donald Trump continued his attacks on Kamala Harris in blustering – and often demonstrably false – remarks at a Michigan steel plant on Thursday.
Trump gave the speech in front of an American flag between groups of supporters wearing hard hats and reflective work vests. He walked out to greet the crowd to God Bless the USA by Lee Greenwood, a Trump supporter, as his campaign has received cease and desist letters from musicians for unauthorized use of their music in 2024 campaign videos and rallies including Abba, Beyoncé, Celine Dion, and the Foo Fighters.
“Your long economic nightmare will very soon be over,” Trump said. “When was the last time you heard about the American dream. They don’t talk about it. They copy everything else I do so I guess that’ll be that they’ll be copying that.”
Trump accused Kamala Harris of being a “Marxist” and a “fascist”, and he criticized the Biden administration’s immigration policies.
He jumped on the criticism the Harris campaign has received for the lack of interviews she has given to the press – Harris sat down with CNN this week in her first major interview. Trump also repeated falsehoods about US election integrity, polling and abortion laws.
The Republican presidential candidate has escalated his attacks on Harris in recent days.
Harris says she would appoint a Republican to cabinet if elected
Kamala Harris said that if elected she would appoint a Republican to serve in her cabinet.
In her first major interview since becoming the Democratic nominee, the vice-president told CNN journalist Dana Bash that she had spent her career “inviting diversity of opinion”.
“I think it’s important to have people at the table when some of the most important decisions are being made that have different views, different experiences. And I think it would be to the benefit of the American public to have a member of my Cabinet who was a Republican,” Harris said.
Kamala Harris says ‘values have not changed’ on climate and border security in first clip from CNN interview
In the first clip of the CNN interview with Kamala Harris and Tim Walz, the vice-president said that her values have not changed.
CNN journalist Dana Bash asked Harris what voters should make of the changes to some of her policy positions.
“Dana, I think the most important and most significant aspect of my policy perspective and decisions is my values have not changed,” Harris said.
“You mentioned the Green New Deal. I have always believed that the climate crisis is real, that it is an urgent matter to which we should apply metrics that include holding ourselves to deadlines around time,” she said. “We did that with the Inflation Reduction Act.”
“My value around what we need to do to secure our border – that value has not changed. I spent two terms as the attorney general of California prosecuting transnational criminal organizations, violations of American laws regarding the illegal passage of guns, drugs and human beings across our border. My values have not changed.”
CNN journalist Dana Bash shared a photo of her interview with Tim Walz and Kamala Harris, and said we’ll see the first excerpt from their talk in about 10 minutes:
Trump to deliver campaign speech at Michigan steel plan
Michael Sainato
Donald Trump is scheduled to speak this afternoon about the economy at a steel plant in Potterville, Michigan.
It’s the Republican candidate’s eighth visit to the state this year, and his speech will take place at Alro Steel’s facility in the town just west of the state capital, Lansing.
The Secret Service will receive additional military support to protect presidential and vice-presidential candidates, Reuters reports.
Lloyd Austin, the defense secretary, approved a request for unspecified support to the agency, which will be provided by the military’s US Northern Command at different locations, a Pentagon spokesperson announced. She did not elaborate on what kind of support would be provided.
CNN journalist Dana Bash conducted the interview with Kamala Harris and Tim Walz this afternoon.
It was Harris and Walz’s first joint interview since becoming the Democratic standard bearers, as well as Harris’s first sit-down interview since Joe Biden ended his bid for a second term.
Before the broadcast, the New York Times published a Q&A with CNN reporter Astead Herndon, who last year had a lengthy interview with Harris for a profile. He remembers his talk with the vice-president as “arduous”. Here’s more:
In a word or two, how would you describe that 2023 interview?
Arduous! When she sat down, I asked her if she liked her job, and she said she did – but that she didn’t like doing this. I was putting her in a position to self-reflect, and to articulate her own story of growth and change. I thought she would want to tell a story on that front, and was surprised that she did not.
During the interview, she showed a reluctance to label herself politically, like when you asked her how she saw herself in the world of California politics. How did that shape the interview and shape your understanding of her?
It showed how she does not view herself with those labels and feels confined by those boxes. I think she’s someone who doesn’t like feeling known, doesn’t like you assuming to have figured her out, and I think that’s true politically and personally.
I don’t think she loses any sleep over whether you think she’s a moderate or progressive. I think she thinks, ‘I’m a person who makes big and hard decisions, with all the evidence in front of me.’ That’s what’s mattered most as a prosecutor and attorney general, and I think that’s how she views political leadership.
Donald Trump has not said much publicly about the campaign staffer who pushed aside an employee of Arlington national cemetery during his visit there earlier this week.
But JD Vance has responded by calling the episode “fake”, and downplaying the uproar it generated:
This is so obvious. This entire scandal is so fake.
Fake Kamala attacking DJT for honoring those who died instead of firing the people responsible for their deaths. https://t.co/I2kKFbIrtK
— JD Vance (@JDVance) August 29, 2024
The Trump campaign earlier this week said it would release video proving that the incident did not happen the way it has been reported, but has not yet done so.
The setting for Kamala Harris and Tim Walz’s interview with CNN is Kim’s Cafe, a local Black-owned business in Savannah, Georgia.
Perhaps Harris or Walz will explain their choice of the venue in the interview, which airs at 9pm this evening. But it can be surmised that it’s part of their outreach to African American voters, a bloc that could decide the outcome in several swing states, including North Carolina, Michigan and Pennsylvania.
Here’s more from the Guardian’s Melissa Hellman on what Black voters in Georgia are looking for from the Democratic ticket:
JD Vance addressed his previous comments about former president Donald Trump during his speech to the firefighters’ union on Thursday, telling them that “once upon a time” he wasn’t a “Trump guy either”, adding that “the president never lets me forget it”.
Vance continued:
But the truth is, I didn’t fully believe in the promises Trump made, I didn’t believe in the promises that any politician made, and you shouldn’t either. But I didn’t change my mind because of Donald Trump’s promises, I changed my mind because he did a good job for the American people.
During his speech to the International Association of Fire Fighters in Boston on Thursday, JD Vance was met with boos and heckles as he told the crowd that he and the former president Donald Trump “are proud to be the most pro-worker Republican ticket in history”.
“I know this is a diverse union,” Vance said later in his speech. “Some of you love President Trump, and some of you clearly don’t, I’ve heard from both sides just giving this little speech.”
In 2019, the International Association of Fire Fighters union endorsed Joe Biden for president, and called him one of the “strongest and most influential voices for hard-working Americans”.
“After supporting Democrats so long in this union, what has it gotten you?” Vance asked the crowd on Thursday.
JD Vance urges tech billionaire Peter Thiel to ‘get off the sidelines’ and fund campaign – report
The Financial Times reported on Thursday that Vance made the plea in an interview with the outlet.
Vance reportedly told the Financial Times:
I’m going to keep on talking to Peter and persuading him that – you know, he’s obviously been exhausted by politics a little bit – but he’s going to be really exhausted by politics if we lose and if Kamala Harris is president.
He is fundamentally a conservative guy, and I think that he needs to get off the sidelines and support the ticket.
This comes as last year, Thiel said that he was not planning on funding any 2024 races after he backed Trump in 2016. But, he said at the time, “there’s always a chance I might change my mind”.
JD Vance, the Republican vice-presidential candidate and Ohio senator, spoke at the International Association of Fire Fighters convention in Boston earlier this afternoon.
Right as Vance was about to begin his speech, the vice-presidential hopeful was met with a mix of applause and boos from the crowd.
“Sounds like we’ve got some fans and some haters”, Vance said. “That’s OK. Let’s listen to what I have to say here and I’ll make my pitch.”
Tim Walz, the Democratic vice-presidential candidate and Governor of Minnesota, spoke at the same convention on Wednesday.
The day so far
The army has issued a rare statement rebuking Donald Trump’s campaign for their conduct at Arlington national cemetery earlier this week. It acknowledged that one of their employees was “pushed aside” during his visit in what it described as an “unfortunate” incident. Meanwhile, Kamala Harris and Tim Walz are set for their first interview since ascending to the top of the Democratic ticket, which CNN will air at 9pm tonight (though we may see excerpts earlier in the day). The pair are currently in south Georgia, as part of their strategy to limit losses in rural areas of a swing state that could be vital to their path to the White House. Late yesterday, a poll showed Harris drawing near even with Trump in the four Sun Belt swing states, including Georgia, while polling released today showed a similar dynamic in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.
Here’s what else has happened today so far:
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Trump shared a TikTok video of his visit to Arlington national cemetery, which may have violated federal law, NPR reports.
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The big question of the 10 September presidential debate appears to have been answered: microphones will be off when the candidates aren’t speaking, as Trump preferred, according to a copy of the rules obtained by the Associated Press.
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Democratic Senate candidates are holding their own against the GOP in key races nationwide, Emerson College found, though it did not poll the re-election prospects of Democratic senators in the red states Montana and Ohio.
Donald Trump and Kamala Harris will meet for the first time when they debate on 10 September.
But the two sides have been at odds in recent days over whether or not the candidates’ microphones would be on or off when it isn’t their turn to speak. Harris’s campaign wants them activated, but Trump appears to prefer them to be off – as they were during his June debate against Joe Biden.
The Associated Press obtained a copy of the rules that debate host ABC News shared with the campaigns, which indicates that mics will be off, as Trump prefers. Here’s more:
Next month’s debate between Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump won’t have an audience, live microphones when candidates aren’t speaking, or written notes, according to rules that ABC News, the host network, shared this week with both campaigns.
A copy of the rules was provided to the Associated Press on Thursday by a senior Trump campaign official on condition of anonymity ahead of the network’s announcement. The Harris campaign on Thursday insisted it was still discussing the muting of mics with ABC.
The parameters now in place for the Sept. 10 debate are essentially the same as they were for the June debate between Trump and President Joe Biden, a disastrous performance for the incumbent Democrat that fueled his exit from the campaign. It is the only debate that’s been firmly scheduled and could be the only time voters see Harris and Trump go head to head before the November general election.
The back-and-forth over the debate rules reached a fever pitch this week, particularly on the issue of whether the microphones would be muted between turns speaking.
Harris’ campaign had advocated for live microphones for the whole debate, saying in a statement that the practice would “fully allow for substantive exchanges between the candidates.”
Biden’s campaign had made microphone muting condition of his decision to accept any debates this year, a decision some aides now regret, saying voters were shielded from hearing Trump’s outbursts during the debate.
“It’s interesting that Trump’s handlers keep insisting on muting him, despite the candidate himself saying the opposite,” Harris spokesman Ian Sams said. “Why won’t they just do what the candidate wants?”
Kamala Harris and Tim Walz will tape their interview with CNN in Savannah, Georgia, after spending yesterday on a bus tour of the swing state’s southern counties.
While most Democratic supporters these days are found in Georgia’s urban and suburban areas, Harris and Walz’s tour is part of a strategy to win at least some votes in GOP-leaning rural areas of the state.
Harris will cap off the swing with a solo rally in Savannah at 5.30pm today, though Walz won’t be in attendance. Their joint interview is scheduled to air on CNN at 9pm.