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  • Trump boasts Harris easier than Biden to beat, steps up personal attacks


Trump boasts Harris easier than Biden to beat, steps up personal attacks

Republican presidential nominee former President Donald Trump speaks at a campaign rally at the Mohegan Sun Arena at Casey Plaza, on Aug. 17, 2024, in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania. (AP)
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Updated 18 August 2024
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Trump boasts Harris easier than Biden to beat, steps up personal attacks

  • In a bid to counter Harris' surge in polls, Trump has sought to portray her as far left on a number of policies
  • Rejecting calls against personal attacks, Trump went on to call Harris a “radical” and a “lunatic”
Updated 18 August 2024

WILKES-BARRE, Pennsylvania: Republican Donald Trump said on Saturday he believed Democrat Kamala Harris will be easier to beat than President Joe Biden even as some polls showed her edging ahead in the race for the Nov. 5 presidential election.
Trump, the former president, made the remarks at a rally in Wilkes-Barre in the northeastern part of Pennsylvania, a state looming large in the campaign. Vice President Harris will conduct a bus tour of western Pennsylvania starting in Pittsburgh on Sunday, ahead of the kickoff of the Democratic National Convention on Monday in Chicago.
“I believe she will be easier to beat than him,” said Trump, referring to her as “radical” and a “lunatic.”
Trump has sought to portray Harris as far left on a number of policies. At the rally he highlighted her previous call for a ban on fracking, an industry important to the state. Harris’ campaign has recently indicated she would not support a ban.
He also continued to attack Harris on personal terms, even as some political analysts say such comments could hurt Trump with moderate voters.
“Have you heard her laugh? That is the laugh of a crazy person,” Trump said.
Pennsylvania was one of three Rust Belt states, along with Wisconsin and Michigan, that helped power Trump’s upset victory in 2016. Biden, who grew up in Scranton, Pennsylvania, flipped the trio back to the Democrats in 2020.
With 19 electoral votes out of the 270 needed to secure the White House, compared with 15 in Michigan and 10 in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania may be the biggest prize in this year’s election and potentially tip the balance for both candidates.
Harris’ entry into the race after Biden ended his reelection bid last month has upended the contest, erasing the lead Trump built during the final weeks of Biden’s shaky campaign. Harris is leading Trump by more than two percentage points in Pennsylvania, according to the poll tracking website FiveThirtyEight.

Trump has hammered Harris on the economy, associating her with the Biden administration’s inflation woes and likening her latest proposal against price gouging to measures in communist nations. Trump says a federal ban on price gouging for groceries would lead to food shortages, rationing and hunger and on Saturday asked why she hadn't worked to solve prices when she and Biden were sworn into office in 2021.
“Day one for Kamala was three and a half years ago. So why didn’t she do it then? So this is day 1,305," Trump said.
He predicted financial ruin for the country and Pennsylvania in particular, citing Harris’ past opposition to fracking, an oil and gas extraction process.
“Your state’s going to be ruined anyway. She’s totally anti-fracking,” Trump said.

Blanketing airwaces with ads
Trump won Pennsylvania in 2016 by about 44,000 votes, a margin of less than one percentage point, while Biden prevailed by just over 80,000 votes in 2020, a 1.2 percent margin.
Both campaigns have made the state a top priority, blanketing the airwaves with advertisements. Of the more than $110 million spent on advertising in seven battleground states since Biden dropped out in late July, roughly $42 million was spent in Pennsylvania, more than twice any other state, the Wall Street Journal reported on Friday, citing data from the tracking site AdImpact.
Democratic and Republican groups have already reserved $114 million in ad time in Pennsylvania from late August through the election, more than twice as much as the $55 million reserved in Arizona, the next highest total, according to AdImpact.
The Harris campaign said on Saturday it planned to spend at least $370 million on digital and television ads nationwide between the Labor Day holiday on Sept. 2 and Election Day.
The battleground states — seen as critical for winning the election — also include Arizona, North Carolina, Nevada and Georgia.
New polls published on Saturday by the New York Times found Harris leading Trump among likely voters in Arizona, 50 percent to 45 percent, and in North Carolina, 49 percent to 47 percent, and narrowing the former president’s leads in Nevada, 47 percent to 49 percent, and in Georgia, 46 percent to 50 percent. A pollster from the Trump campaign said the poll results underestimated the Republican candidate’s support.
Trump and Harris have visited Pennsylvania more than half a dozen times each this year. Trump was wounded during an assassination attempt at his rally near Butler, Pennsylvania, on July 13.
Trump will give remarks on the economy at a campaign event in York, Pennsylvania, on Monday. His running mate, US Senator JD Vance, will hold an event in Philadelphia that day as well.
Trump’s trip on Saturday to Wilkes-Barre in Luzerne County is aimed at solidifying support among the white, non-college-educated voters who lifted him to victory in 2016. The blue-collar county voted Democratic for decades before swinging heavily toward Trump in 2016, mirroring other similar regions around the country.
Trump won Luzerne in 2020 by 14.4 percentage points, a smaller margin than his 19.4 point win in 2016. With Biden out of the picture, Trump likely sees room for gains in this area of the state, said Chris Borick, a political science professor at Muhlenberg College.
“This is the type of place where Trump has lots of strengths,” Borick said, referring to the state’s northeast region. “Marginal gains in a region like this certainly could have some impact on his ability to take back Pennsylvania.”

’Really fired up’

Harris and her running mate, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, will make multiple stops across Allegheny and Beaver counties on Sunday, the campaign said. The tour is the first time Harris, Walz and their spouses have campaigned together since their first rally as a presidential ticket in Philadelphia earlier this month.
Her campaign has tried to soften her stance on fracking, saying she would not ban it, even though that was her position when she was seeking the 2020 presidential nomination.
Some Democrats in Pennsylvania acknowledge the challenges but say the economy is what concerns most people in the area.
Pennsylvania Lt. Gov. Austin Davis said in an interview that voters are “really fired up.” David Harris' rally in Philadelphia to introduce her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, along with 36 field offices, including several in more Republican-leaning parts of the state.
“The energy has clearly shifted in a dramatic way toward Vice President Harris,” Davis said. He argued that Trump “just goes on rambling rants and just makes personal attacks on Harris.”
On Sunday, Harris plans a bus tour starting in Pittsburgh, with a stop in Rochester, a small town to the north. Trump has scheduled a visit Monday to a plant that manufactures nuclear fuel containers in York. Trump's running mate JD Vance is expected to be in Philadelphia that day.
Trump's Saturday rally is his fifth at the arena in Wilkes-Barre, the largest city in Luzerne County, where he has had victories the past two elections. Biden bested Trump in neighboring Lackawanna County, where the Democrat has long promoted his working-class roots in Scranton.
Some of Biden's loyal supporters in this former industrial city of 76,000 were upset to see party leaders put pressure the president to step aside.
Diane Munley, 63, says she called dozens of members of Congress to vouch for Biden. Munley eventually came to terms with Biden's decision and is now very supportive of Harris.
“I can’t deny the enthusiasm that’s been going on with this ticket right now. I am so into it,” Munley said. “It just wasn’t happening with Joe, and I couldn’t see it at the time because I was so connected to him.”
She said she does not know a Democrat or even independent in her circle of a couple hundred people who is not fully committed to Harris and Walz.
“We are all-in on Kamala Harris,” Munley said. “All in 110%.”
Robert A. Bridy, 64, a laborer from Shamokin, Pennsylvania, traveled to the rally to show support for Trump. He said the election feels tight in this state and added that his union and a close friend are trying to convince him to vote for Harris and other Democrats, but he has voted for Trump since 2016.
“It’s close. You can’t change Democrats’ minds no matter what. They’ve got a one-track mind, and that’s it,” he said.
Bridy called Trump a “working class guy like us.” Trump is a billionaire who built his fortune in real estate.
“He’s a fighter,” Bridy said. “I’d like to see the closed borders. He doesn’t mess around. He goes at it right away and takes care of business the way it should be.”
With election day rapidly approaching, Harris is trying to distance herself from unpopular Biden policies, while getting ahead of Trump’s attempts to brand her a liberal extremist.
The past week has seen the two sides home in on voters’ worries about the economy.
Trump hammered Harris on Saturday, saying her push for a federal ban on price-gouging by companies that unfairly raise prices was the sort of policy favored by communist countries.
On Friday, Harris held an event in North Carolina to unveil a series of proposals to ease the burden of post-Covid pandemic inflation.
She noted that the US economy was booming while conceding that “many Americans don’t yet feel that progress in their daily lives.”
“Donald Trump fights for billionaires and large corporations,” she said. “I will fight to give money back to working- and middle-class Americans.”
 

Topics: US Election 2024 Democratic Party Donald Trump Kamala Harris

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Alberto Fujimori, Peru’s divisive former president, dies at age 86

Updated 8 sec ago
Reuters
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Alberto Fujimori, Peru’s divisive former president, dies at age 86

  • First elected president in 1990, the son of Japanese immigrants stabilized Peru's economy and dealt a death blow to a Maoist rebellion
  • But he later turned into an autocrat and a slew of corruption scandals during his rule later turned public opinion against him
Updated 8 sec ago
Reuters

Jailed for human rights abuses in war against Maoist rebels slayed hyperinflation that had thrown millions of Peruvians out of work

 

First elected president in 1990, the son of Japanese immigrants stabilized Peru's economy and dealt a death blow to a Maoist rebellion

But he later turned into an autocrat and a slew of corruption scandals during his rule later turned public opinion against him

 

 

LIMA: Former Peruvian president Alberto Fujimori, who steered economic growth during the 1990s but was later jailed for human rights abuses stemming from a bloody war against Maoist rebels, died on Wednesday. He was aged 86.
Close colleagues visited him earlier in the day, reporting that he was in a critical condition.
“After a long battle with cancer, our father... has just departed to meet the Lord,” his daughter Keiko Fujimori wrote in a message on X, also signed by the former leader’s other children.
Fujimori, the son of Japanese immigrants, was the little-known chancellor of a farming university when elected to office in 1990. He quickly established himself as a cunning politician whose hands-on style produced results even as he angered critics for concentrating power.
He slayed hyperinflation that had thrown millions of Peruvians out of work, privatized dozens of state-run companies, and slashed trade tariffs, setting the foundations for Peru to become, for a while, one of Latin America’s most stable economies.
Under his watch, the feared leader of the Maoist Shining Path, Abimael Guzman, was captured — dealing a crucial blow to a movement that in the 1980s seemed close to toppling the Peruvian state. Guzman died in prison in September 2021.
But many Peruvians saw Fujimori as an autocrat after he used military tanks to shut down Congress in 1992, redrafting the constitution to his liking to push free-market reforms and tough anti-terrorism laws.
A slew of corruption scandals during his 10-year administration also turned public opinion against him.
Shortly after he won a third election in 2000 — amending the constitution to run — videos emerged of his top adviser and spy chief Vladimiro Montesinos doling out cash to bribe politicians. Fujimori fled to exile in Japan.
He resigned via fax from Tokyo and then unsuccessfully campaigned for a Japanese senatorial seat.
Montesinos was later captured in Venezuela and jailed, convicted by the hundreds of videos he recorded of himself handing out cash bribes to politicians and business and media executives.
The cases against Fujimori piled up — including accusations that he had ordered the use of death squads in his battle against Shining Path militants.
Fujimori was safe in Japan — he was a dual citizen and Japan does not extradite its citizens. So many were shocked when in 2005 he decided to head back to Peru, apparently in hopes of forgiveness and a return to politics.
Instead, he was detained during a layover in Chile, extradited to Peru in 2007, and in 2009 he was convicted and sentenced to 25 years in prison.

’FUJI-SHOCK’
Once jailed, Fujimori’s public appearances were limited to hospital visits where he often appeared disheveled and unwell.
While detractors dismissed his health complaints as a ploy to get out of prison, then-president Pedro Pablo Kuczynski briefly pardoned Fujimori in 2017.
Months later Kuczynski was impeached and the pardon overturned by Peru’s top constitutional court, sending Fujimori back to the special prison that held him and no other inmates.
The court restored the pardon in December 2023, releasing the ailing Fujimori, who had suffered from stomach ulcers, hypertension and tongue cancer. In May 2024, Fujimori announced he had been diagnosed with a malignant tumor.
Fujimori’s legacy has been most passionately defended by his daughter Keiko, who has been close to clinching the presidency herself three times on a platform that has included pardoning her father and defending his constitution.
The late Fujimori was born in Lima on Peruvian Independence Day, July 28, 1938.
A mathematician and agricultural engineer, Fujimori was a political nobody when he decided to run for the presidency, driving a tractor to his campaign rallies. He surprised the world by defeating renowned writer Mario Vargas Llosa in the 1990 election, with heavy support from the left.
He touted himself as an alternative to the country’s white elite and gained crucial support from Peru’s large Indigenous and mixed race populations.
As Peru battled what was among the world’s worst hyperinflation, Fujimori promised not to carry out drastic measures to tame it.
But on his second week in office he suddenly lifted the subsidies that kept food essentials affordable, in what became known as the ‘Fuji-shock.’
“May God help us,” Fujimori’s finance minister said on TV after announcing the measure. Inflation worsened in the short-term but the bet paid off, eventually stabilizing the economy after over a decade of crisis.
Even as support for him started to wane, Fujimori pulled off audacious stunts in his second term.
In 1997, he devised a plan to dig tunnels under the Japanese ambassador’s residence in Lima to end a four-month hostage crisis after another insurgency, the Tupac Amaru Revolutionary Movement, took 500 people captive for 126 days.
In a surprise attack, Fujimori sent in more than 100 commandos in a raid that killed all 14 insurgents.
Only two commandos and one of the remaining 72 hostages died. Television footage showed Fujimori calmly stepping over the corpses of the insurgents after the raid.
Fujimori was married twice. A public falling-out with his first wife Susana Higuchi while he was president led him to name daughter Keiko as the first lady. The couple had three other children, including Kenjo Fujimori, also a politician. (Reporting by Marco Aquino and Peter Parker; Editing by Rosalba O’Brien, Bill Trott, Anthony Esposito and Michael Perry)

Topics: Alberto Fujimori Peru

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While Trump touts his debate performance, allies, donors and advisers lament it

Updated 12 September 2024
Reuters
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While Trump touts his debate performance, allies, donors and advisers lament it

  • “I think it was one of my better debates, maybe my best debate,” Trump told the “Fox & Friends” program
  • “My honest opinion is that Trump underperformed and she overperformed,” said donor Bill Bean, a commercial real estate investor in Fort Wayne, Indiana
  • Republican Senator Lindsey Graham, a prominent Trump ally, says the former president had failed to stay focused and lost chances to tout his record
Updated 12 September 2024
Reuters

Some Republican officials, donors and advisers said Donald Trump, the Republican presidential candidate, had botched his debate with Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris, although Trump himself praised his performance.
“I think it was one of my better debates, maybe my best debate,” Trump told the “Fox & Friends” program on Wednesday, adding that he was not sure whether to do another one. “I’d be less inclined ... because we had a great night.”
Harris, 59, put Trump, 78, president from 2017-2021, on the defensive in a combative presidential debate on Tuesday with a stream of attacks on his fitness for office and his myriad legal woes. The election takes place on Nov. 5.
Republican Senator Lindsey Graham, a prominent Trump ally, was one of the few party leaders to publicly say Trump’s performance was poor.
“A missed opportunity,” Graham told reporters of Trump’s debate performance, adding that the former president had failed to stay focused and lost chances to tout his record.

Sen. Lindsey Graham, center, and other Trump allies line up to speak to FOX News host Sean Hannity in the spin room after Tuesday's presidential debate in Philadelphia. (AP)

Chris Christie, a former Trump ally-turned-critic who ran against Trump for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, said Harris was “exquisitely” prepared whereas Trump was not.
“Whoever did debate prep for Donald Trump should be fired. He was not good tonight at all,” Christie, who helped Trump with debate preparation in the 2016 election cycle, said on ABC News.
The Trump campaign did not respond to a request for comment on whether there would be a shake-up of Trump’s debate team.
With eight weeks to go before the election, and days until early voting starts in some states, the debate offered a rare head-to-head opportunity to face tens of millions of TV viewers.
Their ABC News debate attracted 67.1 million television viewers, according to Nielsen data, topping the roughly 51 million people who watched Trump debate then-candidate President Joe Biden in June.

The number does not capture the full extent of online viewing, which has grown in popularity as traditional TV audiences decline.
Six Republican donors and three Trump advisers, all but one asking to remain anonymous to speak freely, also told Reuters they thought Harris had won the debate largely because Trump was unable to stay on message.
Several brought up, with dismay, Trump’s amplification of a false online claim that numerous Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, were eating residents’ pets.
Two of Trump’s advisers said they doubted the debate would move the needle in opinion polling.
In Reuters interviews with 10 undecided voters, six said after the debate they would now either vote for Trump or were leaning toward backing him. Three said they would now back Harris and one was still unsure how he would vote.
Still, in a sign of confidence in the debate’s outcome, Harris’ campaign challenged Trump to a second round in October.
Two of the six donors said they were not sure whether Trump should debate her again, with one saying it would hinge on whether his handlers were confident he could be more focused in a second round. Two other donors, however, said they thought Trump needed a second debate in order to regain momentum.
“My honest opinion is that Trump underperformed and she overperformed,” said donor Bill Bean, a commercial real estate investor in Fort Wayne, Indiana. On the prospect of a second debate, Bean said: “I’d like to see one.”

Topics: US Election 2024

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An Ohio city reshaped by Haitian immigrants lands in an unwelcome spotlight

Updated 12 September 2024
AP
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An Ohio city reshaped by Haitian immigrants lands in an unwelcome spotlight

  • Its story of economic renewal and related growing pains has been maliciously distorted by false rumors that Haitian immigrants are eating their neighbors’ pets
  • The falsehoods were spread online by Republican VP candidate JD Vance, and Donald Trump amplified those lies during Tuesday’s nationally televised debate
  • It’s part of a timeworn American political tradition of casting immigrants as outsiders
Updated 12 September 2024
AP

SPRINGFIELD, Ohio: Many cities have been reshaped by immigrants in the last few years without attracting much notice. Not Springfield, Ohio.
Its story of economic renewal and related growing pains has been thrust into the national conversation in a presidential election year — and maliciously distorted by false rumors that Haitian immigrants are eating their neighbors’ pets. Donald Trump amplified those lies during Tuesday’s nationally televised debate, exacerbating some residents’ fears about growing divisiveness in the predominantly white, blue-collar city of about 60,000.
At the city’s Haitian Community Help and Support Center on Wednesday, Rose-Thamar Joseph said many of the roughly 15,000 immigrants that arrived in the past few years were drawn by good jobs and the city’s relative affordability. But a rising sense of unease has crept in as longtime residents increasingly bristle at newcomers taking jobs at factories, driving up housing costs, worsening traffic and straining city services.

In this image taken from video, Rose-Thamar Joseph, from the Haitian Community Help and Support Center, speaks to The AP, on Sept. 11, 2024, in Springfield, Ohio. (AP)

“Some of them are talking about living in fear. Some of them are scared for their life. It’s tough for us,” Joseph said.
A “Welcome To Our City” sign hangs from a parking garage downtown, where a coffee shop, bakery and boutique line the main drag, North Fountain Street. A flag advertising “CultureFest,” which the city describes as an annual celebration of unity through diversity, waves from a pole nearby.
Melanie Flax Wilt, a Republican commissioner in the county that holds Springfield, said she has been pushing for community and political leaders to “stop feeding the fear.”
“After the election and everybody’s done using Springfield, Ohio, as a talking point for immigration reform, we are going to be the ones here still living through the challenges and coming up with the solutions,” she said.
Ariel Dominique, executive director of the Haitian American Foundation for Democracy, said she laughed at times in recent days at the absurdity of the false claims. But seeing the comments repeated on national television by the former president was painful.
“It is so unfair and unjust and completely contrary to what we have contributed to the world, what we have contributed to this nation for so long,” Dominique said.
The falsehoods about Springfield’s Haitian immigrants were spread online by Trump’s running mate, JD Vance, on the eve of Tuesday’s debate between Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris. It’s part of a timeworn American political tradition of casting immigrants as outsiders.
“This is what’s happening in our country. And it’s a shame,” Trump said at the debate after repeating the falsehoods. When challenged by ABC News moderator David Muir over the false claims, Trump held firm, saying “people on television” said their dogs were eaten, but he offered no evidence.

Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, left, and his running mate J.D. Vance have recently placed Springfield, Ohio, in the national spotlight by spreading false rumors that Haitian immigrants in the city are eating their neighbors’ pets. (Getty Images photo/AFP)

Officials in Springfield have tried to tamp down the misinformation by saying there have been no credible or detailed reports of any pets being abducted or eaten. State leaders are trying to help address some of the real challenges the city faces.
Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine, a Republican, said Tuesday he would add more law enforcement and health care resources to an aid package the state has already provided to Springfield.
Many Haitians have come to the US to flee poverty and violence. They have embraced President Joe Biden’s new and expanded legal pathways to enter, and have shunned illegal crossings, accounting for only 92 border arrests out of more than 56,000 in July, the latest data available.
The Biden administration recently announced an estimated 300,000 Haitians in the US could remain in the country at least through February 2026, with eligibility for work authorization, under a law called Temporary Protected Status. The goal is to spare people from being deported to countries in turmoil.
Springfield, about 45 miles from the state capital of Columbus, suffered a steep decline in its manufacturing sector toward the end of the last century, and its population shrank as a result. But its downtown has been revitalized in recent years as more Haitians arrived and helped meet the rising demand for labor as the economy emerged from the pandemic. Officials say Haitians now account for about 15 percent of the population.

- Mike DeWine speaks, Jan. 14, 2019, in Cedarville, Ohio. (AP Photo/John Minchillo, Pool, File)
 

The city was shaken last year when a minivan slammed into a school bus, killing an 11-year-old boy. The driver was a Haitian man who recently settled in the area and was driving without a valid license. During a city commission meeting on Wednesday, the boy’s parents condemned politicians’ use of their son’s death to stoke hatred.
On Sept. 6, a post surfaced on the social media platform X that shared what looked like a screengrab of a social media post apparently out of Springfield. The post talked about the person’s “neighbor’s daughter’s friend” seeing a cat hanging from a tree to be butchered and eaten, claiming without evidence that Haitians lived at the house. It was accompanied by a photo of a Black man carrying what appeared to be a goose by its feet.
On Monday, Vance posted on X “Reports now show that people have had their pets abducted and eaten by people who shouldn’t be in this country. Where is our border czar?” The next day, he posted again on X about Springfield, saying his office had received inquiries from residents who said “their neighbors’ pets or local wildlife were abducted by Haitian migrants. It’s possible, of course, that all of these rumors will turn out to be false.”
With its rising population of immigrants, Springfield is hardly an outlier. So far this decade, immigration has accounted for almost three-quarters of US population growth, with 2.5 million immigrants arriving in the United States between 2020 and 2023, according to the US Census Bureau. Population growth is an important driver of economic growth.
“The Haitian immigrants who started moving to Springfield the last few years are the reason why the economy and the labor force has been revitalized there,” said Guerline Jozef, executive director of the Haitian Bridge Alliance, which provides legal and social services to immigrants across the US.
She said Haitian clients in Springfield have told her that, out of fear, they are now considering leaving the city.

Topics: US Election 2024 Springfield Ohio US immigration crisis Donald Trump lies

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France’s new PM says to form government ‘next week’

Updated 12 September 2024
AFP
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France’s new PM says to form government ‘next week’

Updated 12 September 2024
AFP

REIMS: France will have a new government next week, recently installed conservative Prime Minister Michel Barnier said on Wednesday, as he sounded out candidates to run ministries faced with an unpredictable hung parliament.

“We’re going to do things methodically and seriously,” Barnier told reporters in the eastern city of Reims.

He was “listening to everybody” in a political scene split into three broad camps since July’s inconclusive snap parliamentary elections.

“We’re going to name a government next week,” he said.

Later on Wednesday, his own right-wing Republicans (LR) party announced that they were ready to join his government. The party was reduced to just 47 deputies in the 577-seat National Assembly in July’s elections.

Barnier, who has previously served as the environment, foreign and agriculture ministers and was the EU’s former chief Brexit negotiator, was named last week by President Emmanuel Macron as his compromise pick for head of government.

With no longer even a working majority in parliament following his decision to dissolve the National Assembly, Macron delayed picking a PM for weeks over the summer as he tried to find someone who would not suffer an immediate no-confidence vote.

The chamber is fairly equally divided between Macron’s centrist supporters — now loosely allied with Barnier’s rump conservative party — the left-wing NFP alliance and the far-right National Rally (RN).

NFP leaders have vowed to vote no confidence in any government not headed by them after they secured the most seats in the July vote, but fell well short of a majority.

Macron appears to have taken care to find a candidate in Barnier who does not immediately raise the hackles of the RN.

Rumours are swirling in Paris about who might claim key ministries after Barnier said he was open to working with people on the left or right.

“For now, the names in circulation seem to be just wish lists of people wanting to receive a ministerial portfolio,” Politico’s French edition wrote on Wednesday.

One prominent Socialist, Karim Bouamrane, mayor of the Paris suburb of Saint-Ouen, said he had turned down an invitation to serve.

“We have a right-wing prime minister approved of by the RN, a prime minister under supervision,” Bouamrane told Franceinfo radio.

An October 1 deadline to file a draft government budget for 2025 puts Barnier under pressure to get moving and sets him and his new team up for a fierce battle over taxes and spending.

In particular, both the NFP and RN promised ahead of the July elections to overturn last year’s unpopular pension reform that increased the official retirement age to 64 from 62.

Topics: France

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Trump and Harris attend 9/11 memorial after brutal debate

Updated 12 September 2024
AFP
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Trump and Harris attend 9/11 memorial after brutal debate

Updated 12 September 2024
AFP

NEW YORK: Kamala Harris and Donald Trump shook hands Wednesday at New York’s 9/11 memorial to mark the anniversary of the attacks, briefly putting politics aside hours after they clashed in a fiery presidential debate.

The solemn display of unity was a stark contrast to the evening before, when the Democratic vice president forced the rattled Republican former president onto the defensive in a bruising televised encounter.

Any sense of harmony from the commemoration of the 2001 Al-Qaeda attacks is likely to be short-lived, with the US election still on a knife-edge with less than eight weeks to go, despite polls showing a crushing debate win for Harris.

The 78-year-old Trump came out swinging even before the ceremony, claiming — without evidence — in an interview with Fox News that the ABC News debate in Philadelphia was “rigged” against him.

“It was a rigged deal, as I assumed it would be, because when you looked at the fact that they were correcting everything and not correcting with her,” he complained — referring to pushback from the moderators to some of his brazenly false statements.

The debate was watched by 57.5 million Americans, according to preliminary figures from ratings agency Nielsen — more than the 51.3 million who watched the catastrophic performance in June that forced President Joe Biden out of the race.

Trump appeared to be in two minds about the Harris campaign’s call for a second debate. He initially said on social media “why would I do a rematch?” but later said he’d be ready for two more.

The rivals kept their animosity hidden at the Ground Zero memorial, however, in an extraordinary encounter that also included the outgoing president.

Biden, 81, looked on as Harris and Trump shared their second handshake in the space of a few hours — having had their first ever such greeting at the start of the debate, in an unexpected move initiated by Harris.

Wearing commemorative blue ribbons, they all then watched as the names of the almost 3,000 victims of the attacks on the Twin Towers were read out.

“We stand in solidarity with their families and loved ones. We also honor the extraordinary heroism on display that fateful day by ordinary Americans helping their fellow Americans,” Harris said in a statement.

She and Biden headed later to the site in Pennsylvania where a hijacked plane crashed on 9/11, with Trump following later.

During his visit, Biden briefly donned a red “Trump 2024” cap given to him by a Trump-supporting firefighter. The image went viral but the White House said it was a gesture of “unity.”

Biden and Harris later visited the site where another jet was flown into the Pentagon outside Washington in 2001.

The solemn atmosphere could not have been more different to Wednesday night’s debate.

Both candidates declared victory but it was former prosecutor Harris who landed blows on issues including abortion, and repeatedly managed to bait convicted felon Trump into angry remarks on past grievances.

Trump also boosted a debunked claim about migrants eating pet cats and dogs in Ohio, earning a correction from the ABC moderator.

A CNN snap poll said Harris performed better than Trump by 63 percent to 37, while a YouGov poll said Harris laid out a clearer plan by 43 to 32 percent.

US media and commentators broadly agreed Harris had come out on top — but that it may not move the dial much in a deeply polarized and entrenched electorate.

“I thought Kamala did a good job... and kind of gave us hope,” Tanya James, a retired teacher from Texas, said Wednesday outside the White House.

Ikaika Juliano, a musician from Florida, thought however that the Democratic contender “is fake.”

Harris meanwhile got a boost with pop megastar Taylor Swift offering her backing minutes after the debate. Trump said Swift would “probably pay a price for it in the marketplace.”

But the race remains neck and neck going into the final stretch.

Harris heads Thursday to North Carolina and Trump is due onstage in Arizona, two of the half-dozen swing states expected to decide the election.

Topics: US Election 2024

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