Donald Trump has called Kamala Harris a “far-left bum” and failed vice president.
At a speech in Florida to rally his religious base, the former president launched a tirade against his Democrat opponent.
“She was a bum three weeks ago,” Trump said. “She was a bum, a failed vice president.”
In the hour-long address hosted by Turning Point Action, Trump made appeals to his conservative supporters by making wild allegations against Ms Harris’ stance on abortion.
“If Kamala Harris has her way, they will have a federal law for abortion, to rip the baby out of the womb in the eighth, ninth month and even after birth – execute the baby after birth,” he claimed, in perhaps his most egregious calumny.
Trump went on to call Ms Harris out for missing a speech by Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, to Congress.
“She doesn’t like Jewish people. She doesn’t like Israel. That’s the way it is, and that’s the way it’s always going to be. She’s not going to change,” he said.
Trump’s speech comes as polls show Ms Harris is closing the gap on Trump in an increasingly tighter race to when Mr Biden was still in the presidential running.
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11:46AM
Fred Trump III: ‘Donald was the kind of child who could drive almost anyone around the bend’
An explosive new memoir paints the Trump family as cruel and backstabbing, but Donald’s nephew, Fred Trump III, is ready to lay the past to rest.
I have a name – Trump – that is extraordinarily polarising, and keeps getting more so. Up until now, I have stayed quiet, even as those around me took their potshots. But silence is golden only when there is nothing that needs to be said.
So where did the cruelty in the Trump family come from? I’ve wrestled with that question for years. Who planted the seeds of narcissism? How did Trump loyalty become such a one-way street? Were all the outsized achievements in spite of these complicated relationships… or because of them? And what does all this mean for my generation of Trumps – my cousins Donald Jr, Ivanka, Eric, Tiffany, Barron, and David, my sister Mary, and me – and our children?
My father’s father, Fred Sr, was the Trump who first defined what it meant to be a Trump. He lived what could only be called a prosperous life. Having worked since he was a skinny 10-year-old, he’d risen to the pinnacle of the New York property world, ending up with a stunning portfolio that included scores of high-rise apartment buildings in Brooklyn and Queens. He had political juice and was known everywhere he went. But he had a terrible relationship with my father, who blamed him for ruining his life.
It was one of those can’t-live-together, can’t-live-apart situations. But it was my father, his namesake, who died just shy of his 43rd birthday. So, who paid the ultimate price?
Read Fred Trump III’s full piece
11:23AM
Netanyahu works to mend ties with Trump at Mar-a-Lago
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu worked to mend ties with Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump on Friday and offered measured optimism about progress toward a cease-fire deal for Gaza.
At Trump’s Florida Mar-a-Lago estate, where the two men met face-to-face for the first time in nearly four years, Mr Netanyahu told journalists he wanted to see US-mediated talks succeed for a cease-fire and release of hostages.
“I hope so,” Mr Netanyahu said, when reporters asked if his US trip had made progress. While Netanyahu at home is increasingly accused of resisting a deal to end the 9-month-old war to stave off the potential collapse of his far-right government when it ends, he said Friday he was “certainly eager to have one. And we’re working on it.”
10:50AM
US DOJ asks court to reject TikTok challenge to crackdown law
The US Department of Justice asked a federal appeals court late on Friday to uphold an April law requiring China-based ByteDance to sell TikTok’s US assets by Jan 19 or face a ban.
The DOJ argued in its filing that TikTok under Chinese ownership poses a serious national security threat because of its access to vast personal data of Americans, asserting China can covertly manipulate information that Americans consume via TikTok.
“The serious national-security threat posed by TikTok is real,” the department said. “TikTok provides the Chinese government the means to undermine U.S. national security in two principal ways: data collection and covert content manipulation.”
10:22AM
Comment: Kamala Harris is the Meghan Markle of American politics
The similarities between the Vice President and the Duchess are truly uncanny, writes Camilla Tominey.
There had always been something strangely familiar about Kamala Harris. But I couldn’t quite put my finger on it – until she emerged from Joe Biden’s shadow after the US President announced his resignation on Sunday.
The penchant for spouting word salad; the slightly awkward misplaced laughter; the courting of chat show hosts; the celebrity iPhone moments; the loathing of Donald Trump; the unfortunate bullying allegations.
And then the penny dropped. Meghan! Kamala Harris reminds me of the Duchess of Sussex.
As she continues to spoon Montecito jam into jars, I wonder what Prince Harry’s wife is thinking right now. It has been suggested that Meghan one day dreamed of being the first mixed race, female President of the United States. Now Harris could beat her to it.
Read Camilla Tominey’s full piece
9:56AM
Trump returns to Minnesota with Midwesterner Vance to try to swing Democrat-leaning state
Donald Trump is taking his campaign back to Minnesota, a state that has favoured Democrats but that the former president thinks could be in his reach this year.
Trump is set to hold a rally on Saturday night in St. Cloud, Minnesota, this time bringing along his running mate JD Vance and the expectation Trump will face Vice President Kamala Harris in November instead of President Joe Biden.
In May, Trump headlined a GOP fundraiser in St. Paul, where he boasted he could win the state and made explicit appeals to the iron mining range in northeast Minnesota, where he hopes a heavy population of blue-collar and union workers will shift to Republicans after years of being solidly Democratic.
9:40AM
Trump accuses Harris of anti-Semitism in overblown speech
US presidential candidate Donald Trump falsely accused election rival Kamala Harris of being an anti-Semite who plans to allow the murder of newborn babies, in a speech meant to rally religious supporters on Friday that quickly went off the rails.
The vice president, who is married to a Jewish man, has gained ground on Trump in polling since she replaced Joe Biden on the top of the Democratic ticket just days ago.
Former Republican president Trump dedicated much of his address at a religious convention in southern Florida to assailing Harris’s record as a senator and as Biden’s number two, but many of his attacks were smears untethered to reality.
The post US politics live: Trump calls Kamala Harris a ‘far-left bum’ appeared first on The Telegraph.
