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)
Short Url
Updated 18 August 2024
Follow

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”

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.”
 


German parliament passes controversial antisemitism text

Updated 7 sec ago
Follow

German parliament passes controversial antisemitism text

BERLIN: The German parliament on Thursday overwhelmingly backed a resolution aimed at tackling a spike in anti-Semitism linked to the war in Gaza.
However, critics of the resolution — including voices from the Jewish community — say it could restrict artistic and academic freedom.
The text calls for a ban on public funding for any group “that spreads anti-Semitism, calls into question Israel’s right to exist or calls for a boycott of Israel.”
In cases of anti-Semitic acts in schools and universities, it calls for those responsible to be excluded from classes or even expelled.
The resolution was proposed and supported by MPs from the center-left Social Democrats (SPD), the conservative CDU-CSU, the Greens and the liberal Free Democrats (FDP).
About 100 Jewish artists and intellectuals living in Germany said in a statement that the resolution would “weaken, rather than strengthen, the diversity of Jewish life in Germany by associating all Jews with the actions of the Israeli government.”
The general secretary of Amnesty International’s Germany chapter, Julia Duchrow, said that while Amnesty “explicitly welcomes the goal of adopting measures to fight anti-Semitism... the resolution adopted today not only fails to achieve this, it could lead to serious violations of basic human rights and legal uncertainty.”
“This resolution leaves space for abuse, criminalizes legitimate criticism of Israeli government policy and serves the racist narrative of ‘imported anti-Semitism’,” she said.
In an open letter in October 2023, Amnesty and 103 other civil society organizations had warned against conflating anti-Semitism and criticism of the policies of the Israeli government.
“Branding legitimate criticism of Israel’s human right record as anti-Semitic also undermines the fight against genuine anti-Semitism,” they pointed out.
While also mentioning anti-Semitism from the far right and far left, the German parliament’s resolution says that “in recent months the alarming extent of anti-Semitism based on immigration from North Africa and the Middle East has become clear.”
This accusation against immigrants from North Africa and the Middle East — who could be Christian, Jewish or Muslim and might either support or oppose the policies of the Israeli government — was criticized by some in the Greens.
But it was backed by the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD), whose MPs also voted for the text.
AfD lawmaker Juergen Braun called “mass immigration... the central problem endangering Jewish life in Germany.”
The far-left Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance (BSW) was the only party to vote against the resolution, with the other far-left Die Linke party abstaining.

Arab American US election successes marred by claims of Islamophobia and anti-Arab bias

Updated 22 min 49 sec ago
Follow

Arab American US election successes marred by claims of Islamophobia and anti-Arab bias

  • Several Arab Americans candidates were reelected despite growing concerns about anti-Arab sentiment amid ongoing wars in Gaza, Lebanon and Iran
  • Syrian American candidate for Illinois House of Representatives says she was targeted by anonymous Islamophobic and anti-Arab attacks during campaign

CHICAGO: Alongside Donald Trump’s victory over Kamala Harris in the US presidential election on Tuesday, and amid ongoing tensions in Gaza, Lebanon and Iran, several Arab American incumbents won reelection to their offices at state and congressional levels, some of them unchallenged.

Four Arab American members of Congress will return to the Capitol to represent their districts in California, Illinois, Minnesota and Michigan, while five were reelected to State House seats in Illinois, Michigan, Colorado and Iowa.

In some places, however, there were allegations of Islamophobia and anti-Arab sentiment as opponents sought to capitalize on voter concerns about terrorism and foreign conflicts.

Suzanne Akhras, a Syrian American Democrat who lost to Republican incumbent Nicole La Ha in the race to represent the 82nd District in the Illinois House of Representatives, said she was targeted by anonymous text messages and phone calls falsely linking her to Islamic terrorism, including claims of ties to Hamas.

“These calls and texts tried to portray me as a danger to the community I love,” she said in a campaign video message to voters in September. “I have lived in Burr Ridge for nearly 20 years. I have been a PTA parent. I have spent my life advocating for vulnerable people and being of service. I founded a very successful non-profit organization.

"I am a proud American. I cherish our shared values of freedom; freedom to express our diverse faiths and freedom to celebrate the diversity of our backgrounds and cultures. Those freedoms I hold dear are under attack in our district. These attacks against me are based on racism, Islamophobia and are xenophobic.”

Akhras, who said she has been recognized as an “upstander” by the Illinois Holocaust Museum for confronting hate speech and crime, said the “disturbing calls and text messages” began shortly after she began campaigning door-to-door. She criticized the Republican Party in the state for failing to denounce the attacks, and accused La Ha of running an “abhorrent and dangerous, xenophobic” smear campaign.

Akhras, who wears a hijab and whose husband, Dr. Zaher Sahloul, helps provide humanitarian medical services to refugees and displaced people in conflict zones, including Gaza, also said that despite winning the Democratic primary in March, she received no support from the Illinois Democratic Party.

Elsewhere, Darrell Issa, who is of Syrian-Lebanese heritage, was reelected to Congress as the representative for California’s 48th district, defeating Democrat Stephen Houlahan with 60.2 percent of the vote.

In Minnesota, Democrat Ilhan Omar, who is of Somali descent, was reelected as the member of the House of Representatives for the 5th District with 75 percent of the vote, easily defeating her Republican rival, Arab American Dalia Al-Aqidi.

Democrat Rashida Tlaib, who is Palestinian American , defeated Republican James Hopper with 69.7 percent of the vote in Michigan’s 12th Congressional District. Republican Darin LaHood, who is of Lebanese heritage, ran unopposed in Illinois’ 16th District.

Two Arab American members of Congress, Democrat Anna Eshoo from California and Republican Garret Graves from Louisiana, did not seek reelection.

At the state level, Democrat Nabeela Syed, who is of Indian heritage, secured a second term in the State House as the representative for the 51st District with 55 percent of the vote, ahead of Republican rival Tosi Ufodike.

In Michigan’s 3rd District, Democrat Alabas Farhat defeated Republican Richard Zeile with 67.9 percent of the vote. Democrat Iman Jodeh was reelected in Colorado’s 41st District, gaining 61 percent of the vote against Republican Robert McKenna.

Palestinian American Abdelnasser Rashid and Syrian American Sami Scheetz, both Democrats, retained their seats without a challenge in Illinois’ 21st District and Iowa’s 78th District respectively.


US military judge reinstates 9/11 mastermind plea deal — official

Updated 07 November 2024
Follow

US military judge reinstates 9/11 mastermind plea deal — official

  • Prosecution can appeal decision but it was not immediately clear if they would do so
  • Agreements triggered anger among some relatives of victims of the 2001 attacks

WASHINGTON: A US military judge has reinstated plea agreements for 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and two other defendants, an official said Thursday, three months after the deals were scrapped by Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin.
The agreements — which are understood to take the death penalty off the table — had triggered anger among some relatives of victims of the 2001 attacks, and Austin said that both they and the American public deserved to see the defendants stand trial.
“I can confirm that the military judge has ruled that the pretrial agreements for the three accused are valid and enforceable,” the US official told AFP on condition of anonymity.
The prosecution has the opportunity to appeal the decision, but it was not immediately clear if they would do so.
The plea deals with Mohammed and two alleged accomplices were announced in late July in a step that appeared to have moved their long-running cases toward resolution after years of being bogged down in pre-trial maneuverings while the defendants remained held at the Guantanamo Bay military base in Cuba.
But Austin withdrew the agreements two days after they were announced, saying the decision should rest with him given its significance.
He subsequently told journalists that “the families of the victims, our service members and the American public deserve the opportunity to see military commission trials carried out in this case.”
Much of the legal jousting surrounding the men’s cases has focused on whether they could be tried fairly after having undergone methodical torture at the hands of the CIA in the years after 9/11 — a thorny issue that the plea agreements would have avoided.


US military ready to carry out lawful orders of next administration, Pentagon chief says

Updated 07 November 2024
Follow

US military ready to carry out lawful orders of next administration, Pentagon chief says

  • “The US military will also continue to stand apart from the political arena;,” Austin wrote

WASHINGTON: US Défense Secretary Lloyd Austin told troops that the Pentagon was committed to an orderly transition to the incoming administration of Donald Trump, adding that the military would not get involved in politics and was ready to carry out “all lawful orders.”
“The US military will also continue to stand apart from the political arena; to stand guard over our republic with principle and professionalism; and to stand together with the valued allies and partners who deepen our security,” Austin wrote in a memo to troops that was sent out on Wednesday night.


Germany arrests a US citizen over accusations of spying for China

Updated 07 November 2024
Follow

Germany arrests a US citizen over accusations of spying for China

  • The suspect, who was only identified as Martin D., was arrested in Frankfurt
  • His home was being searched

BERLIN: Germany’s federal prosecutor office said it arrested an American citizen on Thursday who allegedly spied for China.
The office said that the suspect, who was only identified as Martin D., was arrested in Frankfurt and that his home was being searched.
The accused, who until recently worked for the US Armed Forces in Germany, is strongly suspected of having agreed to act as an intelligence agent for a foreign secret service.
Earlier this year, he contacted Chinese government agencies and offered to transmit sensitive information from the US military to a Chinese intelligence service, according to an investigation by Germany’s domestic intelligence service.
He had obtained the information in question in the course of his work in the US army, the prosecutor’s statement said, without giving any further information.